On July 1st, Bill Gates will retire. He’ll still spend about 20% of his time on Microsoft projects. If Microsoft is to retain 20% of its economic clout in five years time, the company’s board should start working on firing CEO Steve Ballmer now.
Why? Because Ballmer has been in charge of Microsoft for the last several years and he’s been running it into the ground. Even before Gates announced that he was going to retire, Ballmer was already in charge and his record of failure speaks for itself.
1) The Vista Technology Flop. Technically, Vista was crap. You don’t have to believe people like me who think Vista, a year and a service patch since its release, is still an over-priced joke pretending to be an operating system. But, maybe you will believe Microsoft’s top-level executives when they say its trash.
Who was at the wheel of the good ship Microsoft during the tens of thousands of man-years and billions of dollars to create Vista? That would be CEO/captain Steve Ballmer.
2 responses so far ↓
1 davestechshop // May 29, 2008 at 9:09 am
If his track record is really that bad (Bill Gates says it isn’t) then why not support keeping Balmer at the helm to give the Linux world a bit more opportunity to build momentum?
2 sjvn // May 29, 2008 at 9:28 am
I thought about writing it up that way–please, please keep Ballmer!–but I decided this time around to look at it with my business glasses on. Besides, Microsoft is like a super-tanker. It’s course is now set for the next three years no matter who’s at the helm, and that course is one that’s only going to work well for open source and Linux.
Steven
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