Re: Apple's Development Process?

I'll say it: Ballmer should be replaced.

Unless Bill leaves the board, they won't feel like they have the power to
replace him, but that's probably just fine because I don't believe that
they'd choose a replacement that would truly shake things up, so publicly
whining about it seems pretty pointless right now. If you can stagnate a
company for 12 years, you've pretty much got free reign to keep doing so
until it actually starts to affect the bottom line (i.e., Windows and/or
Office will have to go into massive decline first). For the time being,
everybody treats the stock as what it really is: a fairly predictable
time-release bonus program, not an investment program that will turn you
into a bazillionaire. Hell, even the high-ups don't have to hold their
stock for a long time to get rich; they just get a much larger bucket full
of free money. At the high levels, your bottom line comes primarily from
stock rather than salary, because they want to use stock as a way to reward
the best performers (despite the wealth of literature that talks about how
monetized incentives are a huge demotivator for your work force, especially
those that don't end up consistently in the top tier).

Anyway, Ballmer is my manager's manager's manager's manager's manager's
manager's manager's manager (I think I got that count right). It's not like
I interact with him on a daily basis, so I don't care _that_ much. :-p

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Steve Richter <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>  no one in the microsoft orbit appears willing to say that Ballmer and
> other top execs are doing a bad job and should be replaced.  Maybe Ballmer
> and Bill Gates control enough of the stock that is does not matter what
> anyone else says.
>