Steve Ballmer

Former CEO of Microsoft

• Born: March 24, 1956
• Place of Birth: Detroit, Michigan

Primary Company/Organization: Microsoft

Introduction

As the chief executive officer (CEO) of software giant Microsoft Corporation from 2000 to 2014, Steve Ballmer is considered one of the more influential technology executives. Microsoft initially rose to prominence on the strength of its operating systems, MS-DOS and later Microsoft Windows. Microsoft has expanded its product line from operating systems to include a suite of office productivity software, Internet search engines, gaming devices, and other products. After Bill Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO at the end of 1999, Ballmer stepped into that role to lead Microsoft.

Early Life

Steven Anthony “Steve” Ballmer was born in 1956 and grew up in the community of Farmington Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Ballmer's father, Frederic Henry Ballmer, a Swiss immigrant, was a manager for the Ford Motor Company, while his mother, Beatrice Dworkin, was born into a family that owned a Detroit auto parts business. Ballmer attended Detroit County Day School (DCDS), a private, secular preparatory school located in Beverly Hills, Michigan, from which he graduated in 1973. While enrolled at DCDS, Ballmer was also enrolled in engineering classes at what was then known as the Lawrence Institute of Technology. Ballmer excelled in his studies, earned a perfect score of 800 on the mathematics portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), and enrolled as a freshman at Harvard University. Ballmer double-majored in mathematics and economics. He also worked as a writer and editor of The Harvard Crimson, the university's daily student-run newspaper. Ballmer also worked for The Harvard Advocate, a well-regarded literary journal, and served as the student manager of the Harvard varsity football team. During his sophomore year, Ballmer lived down the hall from his classmate and later business partner Bill Gates. Although the partygoing Ballmer was much more extroverted than Gates, the two became fast friends and sometimes studied together for classes and tests. Ballmer graduated with an AB degree in 1977, magna cum laude.

Immediately upon graduation from Harvard, Ballmer found employment at Procter & Gamble, where he worked as an assistant product manager. During the time that Ballmer worked for Procter & Gamble, he was officemates with Jeffrey R. Immelt, who later became chairman of the board and CEO of General Electric Company (GE). In 1979, Ballmer entered the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a professional school of Stanford University, although in 1980 he left without graduating to join Microsoft Corporation.

Life's Work

Although Ballmer enjoyed his time at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, when his old friend Gates approached him to join Microsoft, Ballmer agreed to join the then small company. Ballmer joined Microsoft as its first business manager for a salary of $50,000 per year, which was augmented by an ownership stake in the company. When Microsoft formally incorporated the year after Ballmer joined the company, this stake was translated into 8 percent of Microsoft's stock. When the company had its initial public offering of stock in 1986, this stake made Ballmer a multimillionaire before he had turned thirty.

Standing 6 feet, 5 inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds, Ballmer's imposing physical presence and exuberant, outgoing personality made him an immediate leader in Microsoft's operations. During the early 1980s, Ballmer was named to head several Microsoft divisions, including operating systems development, sales and support, and operations. Microsoft originally was established to sell software programs that used the Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) to program the Altair 8800 computer, an early microcomputer popular with hobbyists. In 1981, however, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) approached Microsoft to see if it would create an operating system for its machines that used an Intel Corporation 8086 central processing unit (CPU). IBM planned to use the 8086 CPU in its IBM personal computer (PC), but it had been unable to devise an operating system that would run its PCs. To remedy this problem, IBM turned to Microsoft to produce an operating system for the IBM PC. Microsoft purchased what was known as the “quick and dirty operating system” (QDOS) from Seattle Computer Products for $75,000 in an effort to meet this need. QDOS was also known as 86-DOS. QDOS/86-DOS was renamed MS-DOS (for Microsoft DOS) and offered for sale as part of the IBM PC beginning in 1982. MS-DOS was an improvement over previous operating systems and proved highly popular with consumers.

MS-DOS was licensed to IBM, which produced a version known as PC-DOS, as well as versions available from other vendors. Microsoft received a royalty on all versions of DOS produced, however, which was to prove very lucrative. When MS-DOS version 1.0 was released, the IBM PC, and thus Microsoft, had many competitors. These competitors included Apple Computer's Apple II, Commodore International's Commodore 64, and others. The IBM PC was very popular with businesses. As a result, many who had used the IBM PC at work chose an IBM PC, or a clone, for home use. This greatly increased Microsoft's share of the operating system market, as a copy of MS-DOS was included with each PC sold.

In the mid-1980s, IBM and Microsoft began to work jointly to devise an operating system to succeed MS-DOS. This operating system was known as Operating System/2 (OS/2). After several years of development, OS/2 version 1.0 was released in December 1987. This initial release of OS/2 operated only in text mode and lacked a graphical user interface (GUI). Despite this, OS/2 received strong reviews and achieved modest sales. OS/2 version 1.1, with a GUI, was released in October 1988. While engaged in developing OS/2 with IBM, Microsoft, under Ballmer's leadership, was also working on an operating system known as Windows.

Windows was a 16-bit operating system employing a GUI. Microsoft had first released it in 1985. Ballmer was promoted to head of Microsoft's systems software group in 1984. Windows became popular only upon the release of version 3.0 in May 1990. Windows 3.0 and later versions allowed icons to be dragged and dropped, better video and audio, and multitasking. Because Windows and MS-DOS were packaged with all PCs, while OS/2 was available only as a pricey stand-alone software package, the solo Microsoft project was much more successful than the partnership with IBM. Some accused Ballmer and Microsoft of engaging in the OS/2 project with IBM only to divert attention from the development of Windows. Nonetheless, Windows proved to be the operating system of choice for most global users, while OS/2 and other rivals were soon forgotten.

Under Ballmer's oversight, Microsoft also became the leader in office productivity software. Since the advent of microcomputer popularity in the mid-1980s, a variety of productivity programs had been used by office workers and others to assist them in their tasks. These productivity programs included word processors, which allowed for the production of textual documents, including drafting, editing, formatting, and printing. Popular word-processing programs for early PCs included WordStar, WordPerfect, Ami Pro, XyWrite, and others. Other popular productivity software included spreadsheets and presentation applications. Early leaders in the spreadsheet category included VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, and Borland's Quattro. Presentation software made it possible for almost anyone to create professional looking slides that included typesetting and graphics, originally in slide form but later as overheads and via LCD projectors. Popular presentation software programs included Harvard Graphics, Lotus Freelance Graphics, Adobe Persuasion, and Novell Presentations. Ballmer and Gates recognized the importance of word processors and other productivity software and set about to increase Microsoft's share of the market for these applications. The applications that led the market at this time—WordPerfect Corporation's WordPerfect and Lotus Development Corporation's Lotus 1-2-3—were well entrenched, but Microsoft developed its own word processor, Word, and its own spreadsheet program, Excel, to attempt to gain market share. Microsoft's aggressive pricing and continually upgraded product features began to chip away at the older products' dominance. When Microsoft was able to bring Windows-ready versions of its applications to market before its rivals, however, it was able to become the market leader for the first time. Some have suggested that WordPerfect's and Lotus's failure to have Windows versions of their products ready for market was in part based on Microsoft's failure to share necessary source code with its rivals.

Ballmer continued to play a leading role in Microsoft's operations, serving as executive vice president of sales and support as of 1992. After Gates's “Internet Tidal Wave” memo of May 1995, Microsoft began to develop and market products aggressively in order to take advantage of the market for browser software for Internet use. To that end, Microsoft created Internet Explorer, a web browser that became the market leader in the late 1990s, dethroning Netscape Navigator. To achieve this, it is estimated that Microsoft employed more than one thousand programmers at a time and spent more than $100 million per year to support the more technologically sophisticated features available on the Internet.

In 2000, Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft in favor of Ballmer, who had served as president since July 1998. Ballmer continued as president and CEO until February 2001, at which point he stepped down from that position. Ballmer was also responsible for the .NET Framework development, a software framework including a large library and language interoperability across several programming languages. He stayed at the helm of the company until 2014, when he retired as CEO and stepped down from the board of directors to focus on his new ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers. As of 2024, Forbes places Ballmer's net worth at $121.5 billion, making him the world's eighth richest person.

Personal Life

Ten years after he began working at Microsoft, Ballmer married Connie Snyder, a public relations executive who worked for Microsoft when the couple met. The couple had three sons.

Ballmer enjoys participating in several sports, including jogging, golf, and basketball. A lifelong Detroit Pistons fan, Ballmer was part of the group that attempted to purchase the Seattle SuperSonics before the National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise relocated to Oklahoma City. As someone who grew up near the heart of the United States' automobile industry, Ballmer has a preference for American cars, especially Lincolns.

Bibliography

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