" [About Ballmer] He failed to close the deal to buy Yahoo. This year, Ballmer steered the company into an ill-advised $8.5 billion to buy Skype."
So buying Yahoo was a good thing and buying Skype was ill-advised?
This is a very tabloid-esque article: while I am not a big fan of Groupon's business model, I wouldn't call Andrew Mason one of the worst CEO's in tech.
This seems to be more of a rant on companies that the author has seen getting bad press, rather than the actual qualities of the CEO's running them...
Elop for instance - the reason he is named is because the author thinks the new Nokia WP phone will fail (without even seeing the phone). The man has been in charge for what, less than a year? Nokias dropping market is likely a result of years of stagnation in the feature phone segment, not quite Elop's fault - at least wait till he has time to make an impact before judging him (i.e. a couple months after the new phones launch)
Let me paraphrase Ghostbusters here: Andrew, when Google asks if you want to sell a startup for $6 billion, you say yes!
Unless you're Mark Zuckerberg, in which case you're a visionary because you turned down a crazy-huge offer for your company. Regardless of what you think Groupon is worth (I tend to think it's a bit early to call it), you have to respect a CEO that's in it to win it.
No, the worst CEOs are the ones who turned companies with huge potential into companies that no one has heard anything interesting from in a while. You know, like the guys listed in the article.
As CEOs go, it's not a failure until you lost big and you're not exceptionally bad without having made some really mindbogglingly stupid decisions. A nobody CEO in some garage running his insignificant ragtag shop into the ground just isn't the same as someone who gets handed the reins of a huge empire with endless opportunities and then manages to utterly kill it. This requires not only incompetence but also a very active role and great creativity in the destruction of something that had been great once.
Nothing new here. Bartz, Ballmer, the Nokia guy...the usual large-company/high-viz suspects subject to backseat drivers second-guessing their business. For instance, Bartz failed to live up to the promises of other people.
Write a story about the 5 worst startup CEOs and then we'll be getting useful information.
Well, that's some B.S. right there. Vista was the fast-hack project that came about after the failure of Longhorn. Windows 8 will be, oddly enough, the next Windows 7. Not a great OS, but certainly not bad.
Seriously, though, get rid of Ballmer. In fact, spin off Skype and put him in charge of it. Watch the ship sink from as far away as possible.
So buying Yahoo was a good thing and buying Skype was ill-advised?
This is a very tabloid-esque article: while I am not a big fan of Groupon's business model, I wouldn't call Andrew Mason one of the worst CEO's in tech.
This seems to be more of a rant on companies that the author has seen getting bad press, rather than the actual qualities of the CEO's running them...
Elop for instance - the reason he is named is because the author thinks the new Nokia WP phone will fail (without even seeing the phone). The man has been in charge for what, less than a year? Nokias dropping market is likely a result of years of stagnation in the feature phone segment, not quite Elop's fault - at least wait till he has time to make an impact before judging him (i.e. a couple months after the new phones launch)