Jump to content

Mr. Balmer in the market for a camera?


bill_carson

Recommended Posts

Before you bash him for owning Microsoft stock, read this <A HREF="http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20001123.html">article</A>. Here is the relevant quote:<P>

<BLOCKQUOTE>

This rise of Steve Ballmer says as much about Gates as anything. Ballmer's first office at Microsoft was the end of a sofa in Bill's office. He has always been subservient to Bill, and that subservience has been an important aspect of Ballmer's success at Microsoft. When they were students at Harvard, Ballmer and Gates competed for the Putnam national mathematics prize and while neither won, Ballmer scored higher than Gates, a fact that neither man chooses to mention. In his own right, Ballmer once took an individual business risk that pales anything ever accomplished by Gates. In the late 1980s, when Microsoft was approaching the release of Windows 3.0 -- the first version of the software to do more or less what it claimed -- Ballmer borrowed almost $50 million against his Microsoft stock and anything else he owned, and used the money to buy more Microsoft shares. Software tycoons don't do things like this. They sell shares, not buy them. Gates has never bought a single share of Microsoft, but Ballmer did, and the $50 million grew over the following decade to more than $12 billion, earning him the CEO job he has today. That Gates allowed Ballmer to not only succeed him, but to remake Microsoft in Ballmer's image, indicated that Gates was ready to move on to a new level of competition.

</BLOCKQUOTE>

<P>Sounds pretty gutsy to me...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...