

Steve Ballmer may be the worst CEO - edw519
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=283

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tx
It's hard for me to imagine myself working at a company where CEO looks, talks
and walks like Ballmer. I just can't stand the idea of a sleazy car salesman
being my boss. In fact I just can't stand the idea of having a boss who's
never wrote a line of code.

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Spyckie
Its not Steve Ballmer's fault. Microsoft just has an outdated business
model/infrastructure. Their business model is Enterprise software development
and sales, which is a problematic model due to many reasons (slow development,
piracy, open source alternatives, etc). Microsoft's approach to competition
(throwing money to develop copies of other company's products) was devastating
to many Enterprise level companies during that era. However, in the era of the
web that approach to competition fails miserably, and its not something I'd
expect the older generation (which wasn't weaned on the web) to understand.
What Microsoft needs is not a new CEO - its a new business directive that
combines Enterprise level software with web-based initiatives in a startup
mindset. Basically, they should create a Y-combinator for themselves with the
ability to "buy out" whatever people make.

Of course, I think Microsoft should have given up software development long
ago and just turned into an investment firm with the money they accrued. That
would have saved web developers a lot of headaches.

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mynameishere
_Update: True, Jerry Yang of Yahoo is clueless. But as I mentioned yesterday,
Yahoo is going out of business because their infrastructure can't compete with
Google._

Huh? I like it when Mr. Nobody calls the founder of a huge company "clueless".
Obviously, Yang is a stopgap CEO after Semel. Yahoo still has more pageviews
than google (IIRC) so I think it's infrastructure is doing okay.

That said, their advertising system is effed up...

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cglee
I'm sure you could come up with a list of should-have-dones in hindsight for
every company out there. Given enough time, I'm sure the same could be said
for Google (couldn't they have prevented the facebook fiasco?). Besides,
didn't MS just report great numbers.

