Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Microsoft’s Unstoppable Team: until now

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have been the driving force of Microsoft for the last 28 years and an unstoppable team, well that’s until now. Bill Gates turned to the job of chairman in January 2000 and let Steve Ballmer become CEO; now at the end of June we will see this partnership change again.

Gates day-to-day role at Microsoft will end but he has said he will spend 20% of his time working on Microsoft projects, with all successful businessmen, the work will become part of them. Some people have said Gates is retiring, I say to them “That will never happen”. He will take more of a back seat again, but will always have a foot in with the plans and direction of Microsoft, even at 20%.

With Steve Ballmer taking more control of Microsoft’s direction, is this the right choice?

When Gates ends the job as a full-time employee, we will see Ballmer run Microsoft for around another 10 years. Not only will he be 62 years old then but also he will be one of the longest running Fortune 500 CEOs. With the next 10 years being a true Web era and many of Microsoft’s products and services being build for this, does Ballmer have what it takes to keep Microsoft at the top?

The man has energy and loves competition; these are two very good traits for any Ceo, although some people who watch Microsoft closely think that Ballmer is not the right man and even say he has not made crucial decisions when they were needed. These include firing underperforming executives that were not hitting the goals Microsoft needs to hit.

The industry has changed a lot since 2000 and it does look like Microsoft has slipped a little when compared to Apple Inc and Google Inc, these two brands have made massive achievements compared to Microsoft of late.

Since Bill Gates disengaged himself from Microsoft, has it had an affect on their performance?

Source: Read

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