Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft [Hardcover]

Fredric Alan Maxwell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2002

Steve Ballmer has been with Bill Gates from the beginning when the bespectacled computer geek convinced him to drop out of Stanford Business School. The grandson of a Russian Czarist soldier and the son of a Swiss immigrant father, Ballmer is the Microsoft wizard's main man - the only American to become, by 40, a decabillionaire while working for someone else. He is a man known for his ruthless negotiating tactics and a management style that has earned him the nickname "The Em-Balmer". In this revealing biography - based on in-depth study and interviews with Microsoft insiders - Fredric Alan Maxwell provides fascinating new insights into the longstanding "marriage" between this odd couple of Ballmer and Gates. Maxwell also tells the full story of a man so shamelessly arrogant that he told reporters "to heck with Janet Reno", so intense and aggressive that he ripped his vocal cords by talking too loudly. Eye opening and thorough, BAD BOY BALLMER is a shocking look at one of the masterminds of the technological age.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen may be the most well-known rulers of the huge computer empire, but this latest offering attempts to show that the company's current CEO, the colorful and bombastic Steve Ballmer, an early Microsoft employee and friend of Gates's from their days at Harvard, is in fact the company's muscle. Unfortunately, this "biography" is little more than a re-hashing of Microsoft's already well-documented ruthless business practices, staggering financial success and endless legal travails. Seattle-based writer and researcher Maxwell, once profiled in the New Yorker for his research skills, does succeed in assembling an array of secondary sources into a concise edition of the Microsoft saga. But as a biography of Ballmer, the book falls woefully short. Readers learn that Ballmer was born in an affluent Detroit suburb, is of Jewish heritage, was a classic overachiever who worked his way into Harvard, dropped out of Stanford Business School and was briefly employed as a brand manager for Procter & Gamble. But beyond a few examples of Ballmer's frighteningly enthusiastic style he once ripped his vocal chords while giving a particularly forceful speech there's very little about Ballmer's true impact on Microsoft, or of Microsoft's impact on Ballmer. In his introduction, Maxwell gushes that Ballmer's is the "incredible story of tremendous ambition, genius, and charisma, of intense drive and merit, of insatiable greed and blatant arrogance." But there is in fact so little Ballmer and so much Microsoft in this book, it is a stretch to call this effort a biography.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Bill Gates has been profiled endlessly, his partnership with Paul Allen and the origins of Microsoft having attained the status of legend. Less has been written about his go-to guy, best friend, and the current CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer. Maxwell initially had Ballmer's cooperation on this unauthorized biography, but then he backed down, so personal access was limited. Maxwell casts Ballmer as a maniacal, driven, and very capable manager, so willing to do anything for Gates that his ruthless management style earned him the nickname "The Em-balmer." Comparing him to John Belushi's character in Animal House, Maxwell recounts how, in his enthusiasm for Microsoft, Ballmer ripped his vocal cords screaming, "Windows, Windows, Windows!" and once told reporters, "To hell with Janet Reno." The book ultimately focuses on the Microsoft antitrust case and how the arrogant and immature attitude at the top fostered its predatory monopolistic practices and kept up a public relations and courtroom policy of "deny, decry and delay." The most compelling bits surface unexpectedly, however, in the personal history of the Ballmer family. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (September 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066210143
• ISBN-13: 978-0066210148
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,259,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Fredric Alan Maxwell was born in Detroit, Michigan on June 17, 1954. He is a Vietnam-era US Navy vet who served two years on the Chief of Naval Operations personal staff -- Admirals Zumwalt and Holloway -- before continuing his formal education at Albion College and the universities of Michigan, Georgetown and Stanford. A library activist, his work has widely appeared including pieces in Newsweek, Harper's and The New York Times magazine. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon and can be reached at fredricalanmaxwell [at] gmail.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ballmer's Got Balls, October 6, 2002

By 

TwainAgain (Redmond) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft (Hardcover)

The book does a disservice to those who want to understand Ballmer or Microsoft. To start off, the cover photo of the book I bought appears to have been reversed: Ballmer's wedding ring is on his right hand in the picture, and the inimitable Ballmer sizing-up countenance has the smiling side of his face and the rational side of his face reversed. (Note that the photo I'm describing here differs from the photo shown in the Amazon promo). I mention this, because Maxwell seems to have reversed the reality of Microsoft and Ballmer in a lot of ways throughout the book.

To start off, Maxwell pushes a Nazi leit motif throughout the book. This makes as much sense as comparing opera to dog food. Playing hardball with competitors differs in kind from killing people. Maxwell's comparison is insulting, silly, and more to the point, tone deaf.

Maxwell gets a lot of the historical Microsoft background right from a variety of sources, although misspelling Bellevue repeatedly gnaws.

What's most lacking are any interviews with principals. Where are Maritz, Letwin, Cutler, Silverberg, Murray, Snyder, Glaser, Maples, Yee, Brodie, Simonyi, Klunder (to name a dozen of about a couple of hundred) when you need them? Instead, we get a lot of rehashed stuff from media sources that is either histrionic, hysterical, or hissy. What is presented is largely P.R.-and-news-account factual, but glosses over the reality of the guy, and gets details wrong about various incidents and doesn't corroborate some facts. For example, the balls-in-the-office incident occurred, but it was bouncy balls and not nerf balls. Still, I've got to admit that in many ways the book is well researched, particularly the Detroit years.

Ballmer is a brilliant businessman and a brilliant leader, but he pushes people and his company sometimes to the extreme, like a race car driver who can push his car too hard, or an over-zealous parent who may expect and demand too much from a child. Nevertheless, Ballmer's ability to discipline the company, its people, his direct reports, the business model, Bill, customers, and himself is a huge lesson for anyone who chooses to observe. I was looking for the details of this discipline, and the logic and rationale of the Ballmer mind in Maxwell's account, but never found them.

Ballmer once famously said "Don't use reason, when force will do," which I'm sure Maxwell would've turned into a Nazi screed. The message here isn't that we we should literally kill the opposition, but that when making certain decisions--for example personnel decisions or strategic decisions--if you have the power, exercise it. Don't waste your time futzing around trying to convince people you're right if you're going to make a decision anyway.

Ballmer also once said "I'm not financially driven," which seems at first glance to be one of those "If they say it isn't the money, it's the money," sort of statements. But the point here was that he cares first about the long-term life of the company and not about short-term financial results. This has been a truism that started with Gates from day one.

There's also the implication throughout that Microsoft does lousy software and has gained its position unethically. This is one of those amorphous condemnations--if you've grown up trying to make decent software for millions and millions of people--that tends to grate. Microsoft has spent enormous resources in testing, developing quality-control programs, and developing customer service and feedback sysems, all of them fully backed by Steve Ballmer. Ballmer understood that these "touchy-feely" characteristics could be quanitified and fully incorporated into the business model. Windows and Office have succeeded because of many of these quality initiatives and not in spite of them.

Doing quality software is hard. Microsoft's sales have been hard earned, with many competitors whose companies and products have lost battles and wars to what ultimately became the Microsoft monopoly. Placing bounds on that monopoly is appropriate. Punishing people for their success is sour grapes. Maxwell fails to distinguish between the two.

My main point here would be that Maxwell doesn't bring out that Ballmer's emotions are extreme and extraordinarily useful to the company. They mirror and embody the importance and impact of the actions of an enormous software company. Similarly, his mathematical and business brilliance occurs in real time. He prefers informed action to analysis.

He's a salesman who knows his customers, who knows his numbers, who knows his strategy, who knows his goals, and who knows his principles. His methods are at times raw, brutal, unfiltered, extreme. Some people are scared of him and operate in fear of him. But that's not his intent. His intent is to convey the seriousness, the impact, the passion, and emotion that's inherent in the life of the business.

Occassionally, legal disputes arise from the behaviors of the company. Gates onces said, not quite in these words, "I get sued every day, so I don't sit around all day worrying about getting sued." Microsoft has hundreds of lawyers who vet the thousands of contracts and deals they do every year. Obeying and living within the law is not a trivial thing for a large international company with thousands of employees. Maxwell may argue that Microsoft operates as if its above the law, but the rich history of thousands of mutually beneficial contracts with customers, employees and vendors is significant evidence that there's another side to the Microsoft legal story.

There would be a lot to learn from a study of Steve Ballmer and how he thinks, and why he does what he does, and what his guiding principles are. A lot of people inside and outside could benefit from such a book. Unfortunately, this book ain't it.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars BH Maxwell, March 14, 2003

By 

andy (UT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft (Hardcover)

Is this a vanity publication?
Of course, only Mr. Maxwell would give this book 5 stars! (not to mention complain in his own review about bad reviews- that's the price of a bad book- bad reviews)

I really tried to get my money back- being a poorly written book wasn't reason enough for a refund... So I threw this book in the garbage.

PLEASE
DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!!

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I want my money back, December 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft (Hardcover)

I was looking forward to read the book since the subject matter is very interesting to me. Sadly, the author (Fredric Alan Maxwell ) sounded way too bitter and way too biased.

After reading the book I had these questions: Did the author proof read his book? The author did not even know how to spell Bellevue, WA in his book. Did he just do a search on the Internet and selected what appealed to him? Why is the author very bitter?

My suggestion to the author:
- Try to present facts and have the reader come up with the conclusion wither Steve Ballmer is a 'Bad Boy' or not!!!
- Try to sound a little less bitter. That would sell more books!!!

If you just want anti Microsoft material, just read it off the net and don't waste your money on the book!!! I feel I wasted my time and money on this book :-(