Microsoft News, Part Two

[CharlieChomper]

For the latest installment, since there was some overlap, this involves the now official number one man at Microsoft (previously, the officially number two person behind Bill Gates), Steve Ballmer and a glimpse into the company.

For those who don't know about Steve Ballmer aside from what I wrote above, it's hard to know where to begin to describe the man. Without writing a post the size of what could be an inevitable book (as there really is that much out there concerning him and reasons as to why he's rightfully earned the distinction of truly being the most hated man at Microsoft and right up there with SCO's CEO of being amongst the most hated men in the tech industry).

He's often seen by most people as the industry "bully" to put it nicely (there are also a number of people who are actually loyal to Microsoft that I've encountered over the years or who have worked for the company who even feel this way about him) and has been known to do whatever he feels is "necessary" to try and get whatever he wants or just get where he wants to be. It doesn't matter, of course, what it involves.

There is, of course, a rather lengthy backstory to him and why he earned the reputation he has (the majority of which I will not get into here). However, amongst the "highlights" are things ranging from the infamous chair throwing incident (or more specifically, according to a sworn statement in Washington state court, when one of Microsoft's key developers told Ballmer he was leaving the company for Google, Ballmer become so enraged that he physically picked up his chair and threw it across the office and proceeded to launch into a very nasty, ugly series of threats and comments (some about Google--there's actually a now famous quote that came of this, but as with the rest of what was said I can't retype it here given the nature of it and the language that was used)) that has now become the subject of jokes and which Ballmer has since denied as having happened, his role in the ousting/firing of Paul Allen (Microsoft's other founder), and some of his comments over the years to mention but a few issues involving him (again, there's much more I could say about the man and some of the things he's actually responsible for having done over the years as well as the tactics he's employed, but this isn't the time or place for that).

As far as his comments are concerned, one of the reasons as to why Bill Gates apparently took a step back for a time within the company eight years or so prior to his officially leaving it this year was due to the tension that had existed between he and Ballmer. The Wall Street Journal even reported upon it and how Gates stormed out of a meeting in a yelling match with Ballmer (ironically, contrary to how he's often regarded within the industry, Ballmer was said to actually be defending colleagues against Gates). However, it didn't stop Ballmer from commenting (and this is a quote from The Wall Street Journal article from back then) that once Gates left, "I'm not going to need him for anything. That's the principle. Use him, yes, need him, no."

However, he's also popular (in the ridicule sense) due to some videos that have been produced over the years by the company featuring he and Gates in various spoofs (some of which can be found on Youtube--the one main exception being the infamous and ironic Matrix spoof which the company ordered pulled from various websites when it was originally posted, when it came out that rather than make the company, Ballmer, or Gates appear "cool" instead caused them to be the source of ridicule (although, one of the characters' names being what it was and an unintentional coincidence involving it didn't help them either).

Also, as with Gates, he has been the subject of food being thrown at him (with Gates, he had someone throw a pie at him which spawned a series of games about it and I'm sure it's probably still out there somewhere for viewing, whereas with Ballmer, he had raw eggs thrown at him when giving a speech in Hungry and caused him to take cover behind a desk--the latter video apparently can now be found on Youtube).

Among the reasons I mention all this is to provide some perspective into why there have been a few articles (the "few" and "articles" contain two separate articles) for Microsoft to get rid of him following the disaster that has been Vista (which Ballmer is seen as being responsible for), the fallout from the Yahoo deal and Microsoft's attempts to attempt a hostile takeover of the company to essentially "gut" it in an attempt to strengthen their own MSN search engine against Google (it's been confirmed that had that deal gone through, the company basically would have laid off the entire company that had been Yahoo--they were after the brand name recognition and advertising revenue, not the actual search engine, itself, or any other part of the company (all of which actually runs a member of the rival 'nix family)), and MS Office's not performing nearly as well as the company had hopes for (which is also being attributed to Ballmer), the loss of market share in the browser "war", to name but a few recent issues with the company.

On that note, there is another article I wanted to share that was written around the time that Bill Gates had left Microsoft this past summer. It provides some insight into the company and part of how it got to where it is now.

Edited to fix a grammar mistake.

[Moon]

I don't think I'd like to work for Ballmer.

[CharlieChomper]

Moon, I think I can say that most people feel that way about him.

Microsoft as a company has a terrible "corporate culture" in general (this is something that has been confirmed by some of their own staff, past and present, as well as a former executive of their's who had been with the company since the beginning and shocked a number of people when he resigned and went public with what was really going on within the company at that time).

It may surprise many people to know that Apple is another company whose corporate culture tends to be just as bad (something that people I've known working for them have confirmed as well). The company's staff is now actually suing the company over some of the things that have gone on there. However, just as with the Microsoft situation in this area, I won't get into it here.

One of the things I forgot to mention and should have clarified in my earlier post is that the prime reason as to why Ballmer was so determined to go after Yahoo in the way he had and at the time he had and took the matter so personally was because while the company has tried to put a more "positive" spin upon Vista and making it out to be such a great selling operating system, etc. despite it not being much of a secret that it's been ridden with issues since the development stages and something of a "disaster" for the company as a whole (and led to frequent "finger pointing" as to who is at fault), on some level, Ballmer is being seen as to blame for it all and if the company had succeeded in taking over Yahoo, he had hopes that it would somehow go toward "redeeming" him in the eyes of the company, the board, and its shareholders, etc.

On a similar note, he's also being blamed for MSN not having done as well as the company had hopes for (while MSN actually, technically began under Gates, Ballmer is the one to whom it's "failure" in the eyes of the company is being attributed to, with some reasoning that he's to blame as he was the one who really pushed for it).

On another related note, another reason as to why they targeted Yahoo more specifically was in an attempt to "rattle" the employees enough and cause enough uncertainty over their employment futures to where they'd consider looking for other jobs elsewhere and end up leaving them (with Microsoft hoping to "poach" away some of the engineering and development staff in the process).

He's also been responsible for having the company go to court to stop one of their former engineers from being able to work for Google (as the chair throwing incident mentioned earlier was not the only incident involving a staff member at Microsoft leaving for Google and Ballmer not taking it well). He went so far as to get a court injunction baring the employee from trying to work there on the grounds that supposedly his doing so might put Microsoft at risk of corporate espionage or cause a competitor to gain access to coding and other company secrets that might somehow "harm" them, and proceeded to sue Google over it as well. They basically put this employee in the position of where they wouldn't be able to find another job anywhere within the industry if Microsoft had been successful. It came out that the reason it became such an issue to Microsoft (and Ballmer) over this employee was because it involved Google, had it been another company they would not have gone to the lengths they had in this. Google ended up going to court to get the injunction lifted, but the final decision put a number of restrictions as to what that employee could/couldn't do in his job at Google and prevented him from working on some of the projects for which he was actually hired (despite their not being things that Microsoft is not in the same markets for).

[Felicity]

Thank you CC. I must say where I live, I am way out of the loop of what is happening. It was really quite an insight for me, and also quite scary how things can get so out of hand as it were.

It is nice to know though, what is happening, and I for one, really appreciate what your share.

Felicity