52 V2 Thursday November 25 2021 | the timesBusiness
5W
hen Steve Ballmer be-
came Microsoft chief
executive in 2000, the
company was domi-
nant; a tank, unstop-
pable. University students discussed
how to answer likely interview ques-
tions if they were lucky enough to be
considered for a job there.
However, technology rarely stays
still and soon new competitors such as
Google and the once-mighty Nokia
were threatening its dominance. In
theory, this could have been Ballmer’s
chance to understand what had suc-
ceeded in the past and work out what to
do next. He wasn’t a man who operated
like that, however. If there were threats
coming from outside, he felt his job
wasn’t merely to block them — it was to
obliterate them.
Since the Linux operating system
looked to be a threat to Microsoft’s cash
fountains in Windows and Office, Ball-
mer tried to deter its customers by
warning that it was a “cancer,” and as
bad as “communism”.
The announcement of the first iP-
hone by Steve Jobs in 2007, also needed
not just to be criticised but undermined
in its entirety. Ballmer discouraged the
many business customers who looked
to him for advice from buying one.
“It doesn’t have a keyboard,” he ex-
plained, his tone heavy with mockery.
“Which makes it not a very good email
machine.” Although Ballmer was a bril-liant man — as strong in maths at Har-
vard as Bill Gates — he had a hair-trig-
ger temper. His habit of haranguing un-
derlings and being suspicious of
outsiders spread through the company,
with many executives taking on a suspi-
cion towards all external ideas. This
was boosted by the promotion system
called stack ranking that Ballmer had
encouraged at Microsoft. If ten engi-
neers and marketers worked on a
project, two would have to be ranked as
superior, seven as mediocre, and one as
inadequate.
The idea made some sense, as it is of-
ten difficult to tell who the stars of a
project are, but it was handled so me-
chanically that if one colleague
smarmed his or her way up to be la-
belled superior, the others would be cast
down to the category of mediocre — or
even the Dantean pits of inadequate,
from which few mortals escaped. Steal-
ing credit from others and giving up on
co-operation became indispensable.
This is how an ethos spread. With
these attitudes it was natural that out-
side developers were scorned if they
had worked with the enemies at Linux
or Apple.
When Microsoft had to associate
with such developers in joint ventures,
they were rarely made truly welcome,on his CV instead. More impor-
tantly, it came from his experi-
ence raising a child profoundly
disabled with cerebral palsy.
Before that, in his late
twenties, he’d been just one
of the very many slightly
awkward, slightly wary,
skilled engineers the
company was so good at
utilising.
Even when Nadella’s son, Zain, was
born he still felt the universe owed himSoft approach led
Microsoft back
from the brink
The arrival of Satya
Nadella brought a new
way of thinking that
liberated the tech giant,
writes David Bodanis
let alone brought along to the most im-
portant Microsoft retreats.
As Ballmer’s tenure ended, after
more than a decade of fury at enemies,
his achievement was one for the history
books. The firm had missed virtually
every great advance of his era: smart-
phones, famously, but also much of the
cloud, social media and beyond. Al-
though incumbents often have a hard
time in quick-changing fields, this took
some doing.
When he announced his departure in
2013, Microsoft’s stock jumped 7 per
cent.
Ballmer’s successor in February 2014,
Satya Nadella, was the opposite in al-
most every way. Some would say
this was because he was a “bet-
ter” person. But who’s born
better or worse? Background
and personal experience
shape us all.
Ballmer had grown up in a
Detroit automotive family,
where one firm’s gain was a com-
petitor’s loss. He also, from his
sheer physical size and his
intellectual brilliance,
was never forced to
acquire great mod-
esty or moderation.
Nadella, by con-
trast, learnt a genu-
ine modesty — one
going beyond mere
politeness — part-
ly from having fail-
ed to reach the holy
grail of middle-class
Indian families, en-
trance into the pres-
tigious Indian Insti-
tutes of Technology.
It was the University
of Wisconsin in Mil-
waukee that ended upMicrosoft share price1990 95 00 05 10 15 20050100150200250300$350Source: Refinitiv