Summary: Bad Boy Ballmer E-Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Herausgeber: Business Book Summaries
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 46

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The must-read summary of Frederic Maxwell's book: "Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft".

This complete summary of the ideas from Frederic Maxwell's book "Bad Boy Ballmer" shows how many people don’t realize that Steve Ballmer works so closely alongside Bill Gates at Microsoft that they almost act as a single unit. In his book, the author explains how the two met at Harvard University in 1973 and Ballmer was later offered a job by Gates at his new company. From managing the firm’s recruitment, to fending off competitors, and eventually becoming the company’s CEO, this summary tells the amazing story of a highly intelligent, focused and inspiring individual.

Added-value of this summary:
• Save time
• Understand key concepts
• Expand your knowledge

To learn more, read "Bad Boy Ballmer" and discover the story behind one of the world's most successful partnerships.

Leseprobe

Book Presentation: Bad Boy Ballmer by Fredric Maxwell

Summary of Bad Boy Ballmer (Fredric Maxwell)

Book Presentation: Bad Boy Ballmer by Fredric Maxwell

About the Author

FREDRIC MAXWELL is a researcher and writer based in Seattle, Washington, Missoula, Montana and south Florida. He has written numerous articles for Newsweek, The New Yorker and Harper’s.

Important Note About This Ebook

This is a summary and not a critique or a review of the book. It does not offer judgment or opinion on the content of the book. This summary may not be organized chapter-wise but is an overview of the main ideas, viewpoints and arguments from the book as a whole. This means that the organization of this summary is not a representation of the book.

Summary of Bad Boy Ballmer (Fredric Maxwell)

“One analyst calls Microsoft ‘the Bill and Steve Show’. A former company vice president talks about ‘the personality of Gates and Ballmer’. Though much of the time Gates and Ballmer act as a single unit, when they divide it is along set lines. Gates is the techie, the strategist, the commander-in-chief. Ballmer’s the business guy, the tactician, the field marshal. Gates ran the antitrust trial defense while Ballmer was running the company. Gates is a ‘balance sheet’ person. Ballmer is an ‘income statement’ type. A former coworker says, ‘Gates likes really smart people, period. Steve likes guys who get stuff done’.”

– Fredric Maxwell

“Microsoft today could stop producing software, close up shop, give away a copy of Windows XP to every one of the over six billion human beings on the planet, and still be more profitable than over 99-percent of all American companies. Microsoft could lay off all fifty thousand of its employees, giving each one of them one hundred thousand dollars in severance pay plus ten thousand shares of stock, and it would still have over twenty-five billion dollars in its coffers. A 10-percent annual return on its remaining wealth would give it two and a half billion dollars a year in income. Imagine a true challenge for Gates and Ballmer. In negotiations with the Justice Department, Gates said, ‘You can give me any seat at the table at Linux, Sun or any other tech company, and I can blow away Microsoft!’ If, like Silicon Graphics and Netscape founder Jim Clark, Gates and Ballmer just walked away from Microsoft and started all over again with, say, a measly billion dollars each, they’d find a way to make another personal computer operating system and give their former company a run for the money.”

– Fredric Maxwell

“The good boy Ballmer, his higher self, was the nearly perfect student and supportive classmate who won full-ride scholarships to prep school, Harvard, and then Stanford. He was the beloved but awkward valedictorian of his class. He was the devoted son who made sure his father of relatively modest means received over a million dollars worth of stock in Microsoft’s 1986 IPO. He’s also the unpretentious, well-grounded corporate cheerleader who will do cartwheels on stage to prove a point, even if that means shouting out Microsoft’s ‘Win-doze! Win-doze! Win-doze!’ so loudly that he ripped his vocal chords. He is known for making his employees want to dig deeply into themselves and bring out their absolute best, if not for themselves then for him. But, of course, there’s also the bad boy Ballmer, the earthier level of his soul. It was this Ballmer who announced impending software release dates fully aware some couldn’t happen until years later, a business practice he knew IBM had been forced to stop, a move coldly calculated to stifle Microsoft customers’ interest in competing products. Ballmer proclaimed there was a ‘Chinese Wall’ between Microsoft’s operating system monopoly and applications division when no such thing existed. There’s the General Sherman war-is-hell Ballmer, who carried out the pilferage of competitor’s products with a so-sue-us attitude, which many of the judges and juries forced to referee the conflicts would find Microsoft guilty of. And there’s the dark side of Ballmer, who ominously thundered at a client who’d signed up with rival Netscape, ‘You’re either with us or against us, and you’re the enemy now!’. Ballmer is vast. Ballmer contains multitudes.”

– Fredric Maxwell

1.

Steven Anthony Ballmer, the future CEO of Microsoft, was born in March 1956. His father, Fred Ballmer, was a Swiss immigrant who worked for the Ford Motor Company. Before moving to the United States, Fred Ballmer had worked for a short time as an interpreter at the International Military Tribunal held at Nuremberg. Steve’s mother Beatrice Dworkin was born in Detroit, the child of Russian immigrants who had come to the United States and found work in the auto industry.

To advance his career at Ford, Fred Ballmer took his young family to Belgium for three years. While there, Steven learned to speak perfect French before his family moved back to Michigan. The Ballmers were a very close-knit family.

“My dad liked to ask questions and think things through completely. I remember my dad, when I was a kid, explaining to me how domestic international sales corporations worked. It’s a tax thing the U.S. Government probably never should have done, but once they did it, Ford had to drive a truck through it. But it was so complicated. I never to this day could understand how my dad just went through all the details, saw all of the opportunities. Neither of my parents ever went to college, but I can remember my dad just assuming I would.”

– Steve Ballmer