News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ballmer on Ballmer: His Exit From Microsoft. Parent comment

Re:Ballmer on Ballmer: His Exit From Microsoft by kosei on Friday November 15, 2013 @05:56PM (#6742708)
I have had the pleasure of seeing Alan Mulally give a couple of talks on leadership, and I can say that he is one of the most inspiring leaders I have ever seen (good video below of a talk he gave). Not because he drives people, but because he empowers them. Microsoft is a company with over 100,000 FTEs and honestly I don't think you need a great tech visionary leading as much as you need someone at the top to empower the tech visionaries running their products, and get out of their way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIwz1KlKXP4

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ballmer on Ballmer: His Exit From Microsoft by digikata on Friday November 15, 2013 @07:25PM (#6742980)
He does seem to be quite the leader, but there are very strong correlations between aircraft development and production (where Mulally came from) and car development and production. For Ford, Mulally is a person with deep background in design and physical manufacturing in addition to having great leadership qualities. Is it enough to just have leadership capabilities and weak roots in the core skills of the company?

Even if you say that Microsoft wants a strong future presence in hardware manufacture - building phones and tablets is a very different game than building planes and cars.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ballmer on Ballmer: His Exit From Microsoft by kosei on Friday November 15, 2013 @08:30PM (#6743179)
I still don't think one has to be the subject matter expert in everything a business does. Mulally should be an expert in building teams to make complex manufactured devices, and he should be hiring (or empowering) experts who understand services or tech functionality better than him. We can't hope that every leader can be a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk :)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ballmer on Ballmer: His Exit From Microsoft by hackula1 on Friday November 15, 2013 @10:43PM (#6743489)
Perhaps hardware design is exactly what MS needs. They have certainly been fumbling in the area, despite a strong push.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ballmer on Ballmer: His Exit From Microsoft by CamperBob2 on Saturday November 16, 2013 @12:12AM (#6743728)
Mulally is at least as qualified to lead Microsoft as Lou Gerstner was to lead IBM.

He can't possibly be worse-qualified than Ballmer.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ballmer on Ballmer: His Exit From Microsoft by jczhang on Friday November 15, 2013 @07:49PM (#6743071)
This is great, but I can't hear the student's. Any transcript of this?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ballmer on Ballmer: His Exit From Microsoft by kosei on Friday November 15, 2013 @08:27PM (#6743173)
Sorry, don't have one :(
[ Parent | on HN ]