
Time for Gates to go, some top Microsoft investors tell board - coloneltcb
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/01/us-microsoft-gates-investors-idUSBRE9901H320131001
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beambot
I didn't realize that Gates would be 100% divested 2018 (per a long-planned
sell off of his shares)... Interesting. I know his main emphasis is elsewhere
(the foundation), but I suppose that just strengthens the investors' opinion:
"You're getting out of your stake, so get out of the way."

~~~
adventured
This is of course only three of the top 20 investors making that argument.
It's almost meaningless at this point.

They seem to make a big deal out of him selling and it was quoted in another
article that one of the complaining investors would like to see the chairman
retain a larger stake. It's an absurd statement. It's exceptionally rare for
companies a fraction of Microsoft's size to have a chairman sitting on 4.5% of
the company (even more so with a company nearly 40 years old).

Gates is sitting on $12 billion in stock. The number of people that have that
much stock in any one company, is a very short list. That position all by
itself would rank roughly in the top 90 in the world on the rich list. If you
further narrowed it down to how many people hold that much stock in one
company, I'd bet it's down to a few dozen.

I can see arguments over Ballmer having been allowed to poorly steer the
company for so long (and the chairman not replacing him sooner), but
complaints about Gates' holdings are just stupid. Gates has about $61 billion
outside of Microsoft, he can throw around $5 billion without much concern, and
it certainly wouldn't be a big deal for him to hold onto shares in MSFT worth
that much just for influence sake. I'd argue it's very unlikely he'll divest
all of his shares in his baby.

~~~
beambot
Of course you're right re:equity. Very few non-founder chairmen hold
equivalent equity (in percent), and very few founder chairmen hold equivalent
equity (in dollars).

But it's impossible to know Bill's level of commitment. If we use Ballmer's
tenure as an indicator of Gates' direction from above... then asking Bill to
step down is as obvious as a (forced) resignation by Ballmer. I think the
investors (who own 1/20th of the company as well) are rightfully concerned.
Didn't Gates pick Ballmer as his successor?

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mortdeus
IMHO If Microsoft executives really want to begin turning things around for
their company, they need to take a step back and really refocus their
philosophy towards becoming an innovative software company again.

~~~
abhinai
again?

~~~
singingfish
and not just a bunch of predatory [people who lack warmth and depth] who do
things differently from everyone else in search of an illusory competitive
advantage.

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swalsh
Maybe a bad thread for this....

if I wanted to diversify my skill set beyond C#, what would you recommend?
I've played with Java, python, clojure, ruby, and objective-C but i've been
writing C#, and C++ for the past i think 7 years now.. that I never really
seem to gravitate to far away from it, and i find myself wanting to use these
languages like i use C#.

~~~
cbhl
Frankly, I find one of the biggest issues I had moving away from C# for the
first time was learning how to code without IntelliSense.

Once you get into that mindset, I find that the real way to figure out a
language is to use it for something "real" (but not mission-critical), such as
an assignment for school or a personal project.

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debacle
So three investors out of the top twenty that collectively own just slightly
more shares than Gates himself want him out?

Stop the presses.

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abhinai
Ballmer may be the face of problems and there is no denying that he is
clueless, but we all know that Gates has been making all the major decisions
for him.

Microsoft's recent failures as are much Gates' failures as they are Ballmer's.
It is only fair that they get the same treatment.

~~~
adventured
This is in fact completely wrong.

According to both of them, Ballmer has been fully in charge of Microsoft in
all respects for more than a decade. Further, Gates has been completely
retired from any decision making role in operations at Microsoft for five
years. For years before that he was a glorified software opinion giver ("chief
software architect"), and by his own statements he was heavily ignored in the
role.

If you have something that proves otherwise, given we have their public
statements (over and over again) on the matter, I'd love to see it.

~~~
rustynails77
That view would also line up with Pirates of Silicon Valley (that Gates stated
was reasonably close to the truth). Gates was a "wheeler and dealer" rather
than being a geek. The way he played Apple and IBM was the sign of a business
genius.

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wellboy
Ousting the founder-founder from the company and leaving it to non-founders,
that's the worst decision any investor, co-founder, board member can make for
a company. Good luck.

~~~
dillona
Not necessarily. It was probably a good idea in Jerry Yang's case, for
instance

~~~
lttlrck
Time will tell.

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hrasyid
That's nice of them. I bet they just want Bill Gates to have more time
available for eradicating diseases in poor countries.

------
Zigurd
If an outside CEO is coming, it makes sense to clear the decks for him or her
to have complete freedom of action. CEO candidates must be wary of having
their hands tied.

I'm a little surprised the Nokia deal was allowed to go through. It is the
last great act of Ballmer's Windows on everything everywhere plan, and the
last prop holding up Windows Phone. And Elop is Ballmer's mini-me. CEO
candidates must see it as an element of strategic lock-in.

------
barista
I doubt it would matter much to Microsoft if he leaves. It's not that he had a
say in the day to day operations and even when it comes to long term strategy
I think Steve needed him because Steve himself was not a technologist. If
another CEO like Mulally takes over then he would benefit from a Bill's inputs
but if they get a tech savvy CEO which I think they should then Bill would be
more of a hindrance than help.

The arguments made in the article seem logical too. He's an icon and it'd be
sad to see him step down but nothing that's impact the company.

~~~
joshlegs
heh. i just watched Pirates of Silicon Valley the other day. Such a good
movie. Gave me a lot of perspective on both Microsoft and Apple.

would suck to see Bill go. But I guess it will have to happen sooner or later.
Idk how much he influences direction any more anyway.

~~~
rustynails77
I second your comments on Pirates of Silicon Valley. I always thought it was a
spoof, but it's actually quite a good film - it's definitely a lot better than
the new Jobs movie ... it gives you much better insight to what sort of man
Steve Jobs was (good and bad).

One of the things that stood out from the movie was just how much Microsoft
"stole" from Apple. I'm not making that comment as flame bait - it's common
knowledge that Microsoft copied Apple ... but I didn't realise that Jobs gave
Gates the actual computers before they were released ... including operating
system and all.. It gives you an understanding of just how much copying
actually happened.

Two sides to the same coin: Gates was most probably the more shrewd operator,
but with little tech skills - he bested Steve Jobs who was much more of a
visionary, but let his guard down with Bill Gates, and paid the penalty.

~~~
marshray
Gates, who kickstarted Microsoft by personally implementing a full BASIC
interpreter in 1024 bytes of ROM, had infinitely more tech skills than Jobs,
who if recent biographies are to be believed went to his deathbed still
believing the Apple II invented the switch-mode computer power supply.

~~~
rbanffy
I believe Paul Allen had a much larger role in Microsoft's BASIC development
than you imply.

I'm also unaware of any 1024-byte full BASIC interpreter.

~~~
marshray
Sorry, I did not mean for it to sound so much like it was a one-man show.

And yes, I misremembered, it was more like 4096 bytes.
[http://web.archive.org/web/20011211233332/www.rjh.org.uk/alt...](http://web.archive.org/web/20011211233332/www.rjh.org.uk/altair/4k/index2.html)

------
avty
Time to split Microsoft into pieces to unlock shareholder value.

~~~
UIZealot
I totally agree. Microsoft basically stopped innovating around 2000, when they
began catering less to the consumer and more to the enterprise, because that's
where the money was.

IMHO, the merging of Win 98/ME and Win NT/2000 took the life out of both. XP
and every release since have been torn between the incompatible goals of
pleasing both enterprises and consumers.

I think splitting Microsoft into two companies, one focused on consumers and
the other on enterprises, makes a lot of sense. These two new companies should
both get full access to the current Microsoft technology stack. And they can
take it in different directions based on the needs of their respective target
market.

We can again have a consumer Windows focusing on competing with Mac OS X/iOS
and Android, leaving the boring enterprise market to the other company.

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
"Microsoft basically stopped innovating around 2000"

Microsoft never innovated in the first place. The BASIC compilers, the command
line, word processor, the spreadsheet, the graphical OS, the visual compiler,
the browser, the graphics drivers... all were invented outside Microsoft.

Microsoft strength was not inventing tech, but on adopting tech made by others
and riding the wave of hundreds of millions of people getting access to
computers.

