It seems like these are Nadella’s successes. Someone else mentioned Azure, which is the division Nadella ran before taking over as CEO. It seems he was likely the key there as well.
Meanwhile, during Ballmer’s time at the helm, the stock price was flat the entire time, all growth was under Gates and Nadella. Ballmer famously missed modern smartphones and attempts to course correct all failed, to the point that they gave up. Xbox started under Ballmer, but it’s been reported that it has lost $3b over the last 10 years. When he took over Windows had control of nearly the entire desktop market, when he left it has dropped significant with Apple now holding about 20%. People no longer believe Windows is required to get work done. And when looking at all operating systems, Android is about to surpass Windows, if it hasn’t already.
He was giving a company with an overwhelmingly dominant position and left his successor with an uphill battle for mainstream relevance. It’s crazy when people talk about FAANG, there is no “M”. I think that is due to Ballmer’s mismanagement during the entire era which gave rise to these companies.
Ignoring all the memes, I think he did a bad job. At best, he kept them in the game enough to give Nadella a chance for a recovery, which has been going well.
If you believe the company's culture can be turned around in a year, sure. Personally, I don't believe these changes could have been delivered by Nadella if he had inherited the 2000's Microsoft, which was a consumer product company.
Sure, he missed out on smartphones. By that mark, should we indict Google's leadership for G+ failing against Facebook?
> Meanwhile, during Ballmer’s time at the helm, the stock price was flat the entire time
Well, stock price isn't everything. Ballmer certainly wasn't Jack Welch. My point is that he positioned the company to succeed, not that he communicated well about this positioning.
VS Code was first released in 2015.
The collaboration for LSP was announced in 2016.
GitHub was acquired by Microsoft in 2018.
It seems like these are Nadella’s successes. Someone else mentioned Azure, which is the division Nadella ran before taking over as CEO. It seems he was likely the key there as well.
Meanwhile, during Ballmer’s time at the helm, the stock price was flat the entire time, all growth was under Gates and Nadella. Ballmer famously missed modern smartphones and attempts to course correct all failed, to the point that they gave up. Xbox started under Ballmer, but it’s been reported that it has lost $3b over the last 10 years. When he took over Windows had control of nearly the entire desktop market, when he left it has dropped significant with Apple now holding about 20%. People no longer believe Windows is required to get work done. And when looking at all operating systems, Android is about to surpass Windows, if it hasn’t already.
He was giving a company with an overwhelmingly dominant position and left his successor with an uphill battle for mainstream relevance. It’s crazy when people talk about FAANG, there is no “M”. I think that is due to Ballmer’s mismanagement during the entire era which gave rise to these companies.
Ignoring all the memes, I think he did a bad job. At best, he kept them in the game enough to give Nadella a chance for a recovery, which has been going well.