It's hard for me to imagine myself working at a company where CEO looks, talks and walks like Ballmer. I just can't stand the idea of a sleazy car salesman being my boss. In fact I just can't stand the idea of having a boss who's never wrote a line of code.
Its not Steve Ballmer's fault. Microsoft just has an outdated business model/infrastructure. Their business model is Enterprise software development and sales, which is a problematic model due to many reasons (slow development, piracy, open source alternatives, etc). Microsoft's approach to competition (throwing money to develop copies of other company's products) was devastating to many Enterprise level companies during that era. However, in the era of the web that approach to competition fails miserably, and its not something I'd expect the older generation (which wasn't weaned on the web) to understand. What Microsoft needs is not a new CEO - its a new business directive that combines Enterprise level software with web-based initiatives in a startup mindset. Basically, they should create a Y-combinator for themselves with the ability to "buy out" whatever people make.
Of course, I think Microsoft should have given up software development long ago and just turned into an investment firm with the money they accrued. That would have saved web developers a lot of headaches.
I'm sure you could come up with a list of should-have-dones in hindsight for every company out there. Given enough time, I'm sure the same could be said for Google (couldn't they have prevented the facebook fiasco?). Besides, didn't MS just report great numbers.
Update: True, Jerry Yang of Yahoo is clueless. But as I mentioned yesterday, Yahoo is going out of business because their infrastructure can't compete with Google.
Huh? I like it when Mr. Nobody calls the founder of a huge company "clueless". Obviously, Yang is a stopgap CEO after Semel. Yahoo still has more pageviews than google (IIRC) so I think it's infrastructure is doing okay.
That said, their advertising system is effed up...
