

A Tale of Two CEOs - erikpukinskis
http://twitpic.com/1snr7r

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1053r
The scaling on the graph makes it difficult to tell, but it looks like the
stock price fell soon after Balmer took over and has gone up and down since
then, but mostly held steady. Why would he be sacked now, if he's survived
almost 10 years with similar performance?

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gojomo
Because investors' patience isn't infinite?

In Ballmer's defense, MSFT has outpaced NASDAQ over the past 10 years, and has
been paying dividends the whole time, so the performance isn't quite as bad as
the flat-to-sinking stock price suggests.

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jbellis
Pedantic note: MSFT started paying dividends in 2003, 1/3 of the way through
the Ballmer period.

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snewe
Maybe Gates simply timed his exit and Microsoft's stock price was going to
fall anyway. Classic endogeneity problem:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogeneity_(economics)>

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natfriedman
A more accurate title might be "A tale of two eras."

The stagnation in Microsoft's stock price has more to do with the market
changing and the company maturing than with who's at the helm.

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wanderr
I'd argue that who's at the helm has a direct influence over whether a company
follows a changing market and grows with it or stagnates (or fails).

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nex3
The Y axis on this graph isn't labeled. Moreover, it's scaled so that the rise
for Bill Gates looks huge compared to everything else.

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gojomo
There's a Y axis on the right. From the numbers there it's clearly
logarithmic. The rise in the Gates era is just as striking, if not more so,
with a linear scale.

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eli
I'd love to see the NASDAQ on graph as well

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gojomo
Perhaps Gates shall return, Jobs-like, as the founder-savior for MSFT?

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mwerty
He's saving _lives_ now.

