Customer Reviews

Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

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!!

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 :-(

When the name Microsoft is brought up, Bill Gates comes to mind, but few realize how important Steve Ballmer is to Microsoft's success. Ballmer is the current CEO, and he makes things happen at Microsoft. He has passion and truly loves his work. The author writes that the Ballmer's truly extraordinary accomplishment is putting up with Bill Gates because Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen could not. Gates and Ballmer took the company from 30 to 50,000 employees. They make a perfect combination because Gates is the tech guy and Ballmer is the business guy. This book is a great story of a man that has always been in the shadow of Bill Gates.

Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

In general, I got the feeling that there wasnt a huge amount of research done for the book. I felt that the writer basically did a Lexus Nexus search, and took out what he wanted to find.

I am neither for or against Microsoft - just didnt get that much out of the book. A few facts here and there were pretty interesting, but overall, I felt the book was really skimming the surface on many things.

This is a slickly written, but ultimately empty book. The tone is more than a little paranoid. Mr. Ballmer is a businessman, successful and associated with Bill Gates. Therefore, there must be something evil about him. But what that is never gets stated. He curses, he knows Bill Gates. These are the principal charges leveled against him. The glib writing style can make you forget, for a while, that little is actually being said, and none of it is new. But, like most fluff, it doesn't stay with you once you're done.

The materials on Microsoft Corporation and Bill Gates were written many times, in the past 10 years. Steve Ballmer lives in the shadow of Bill Gates. He befriended Bill, works for Bill and makes Billions $$$ from the Microsoft stocks. Had him work for Proctor and Gamble, he would be just another so-so manager. What makes it bad? The fact he is Jewish, tall and cursing all the time, is not enough to make him a BAD boy. I believe "BAD BOY" is just a marketing tool to sell the books.

I found this book moderately entertaining, but was really troubled by the author's lack of fact-checking. He claims to live in Seattle and be familiar with the area, and yet he misspelled 'Bellevue' WA at least three times in the book -- ouch! Second, he refers to IE as an 'Internet search engine' instead of a browser -- huh? Third, he claims Microsoft put into place a requirement that contractors take off 'a month' after one year of contracting due to the class action suit against them. In fact, it's 90 days -- not 30 days. (As anyone who has ever contracted can tell you, 90 days is a much more damaging amount of time because it's highly unlikely your original contract will be available after that period of time.)

Lack of attention to details such as this suggest he didn't really dig deep to understand his subject matter -- and make one wonder what other facts he misrepresented throughout the book.

These are minor points, but so glaring as to call into question the author's thoroughness. That, coupled with the lazy way he simply quoted from previously published works by others indicate this is simply a polemic discourse on Microsoft. The author comes across as biased and influenced by gossip and innuendo. I got the feeling there was little real 'research' that went into this -- it reads a lot like what one might find in a British tabloid. He simply looked for quotes that would support his presumptions.

Since this is an 'unauthorized' biography with nary a true encounter with its subject matter, it's pretty difficult to take much of what the author says seriously. The entire book is skewed from his desire to prove Ballmer and Microsoft are evil.

Having said that, I will add that it is an entertaining read -- just as those tacky British tabloids are entertaining to read. Not a lot of substance, plenty of gossip and quickly forgettable. I would caution anyone who reads it not to accept everything the author says at face value.

The author tries desperately and repeatedly to connect Ballmer with the nazis. The author's obvious dislike of and bias against Steve, and his assumptions that every negative rumor about Ballmer is true, speaks very poorly of his scholarship and any historical value this book might have had.

This book is a complete disappointment. The author has an interesting subject but provides little authentic insight on Steve Ballmer and instead fills the pages with irrelevant material and personal observations. As an example, in one chapter he lists the voting statistics for the 2000 presidential election, spends 4 pages describing a conference that he attended (that had nothing to do with Microsoft) and reports on an interview with the manager of the Seattle Sunglass Hut. He also makes a number of obvious mistakes, for example he describes Microsoft's Internet Explorer as a "search engine", so it is hard to trust the facts that he does present. The author's style is easy and engaging, and at first glance the book looks interesting, but unfortunately under that veneer there is little of real substance.