End of the Ballmer Era at Microsoft
By Leo Notenboom
Leo Notenboom offers his thoughts about the end of the Steve Ballmer (the person who brought Leo to MSFT) era.–PC Pitstop
The end of an era. I share some of my thoughts on Steve Ballmer’s impending departure from Microsoft, and why it’s the right thing and the right time to shake things up.
I’m fairly certain that much will be written today about Steve Ballmer’s decision to retire from Microsoft within the next year.
I don’t normally post about so-called “breaking news,” but in this case, I want to throw my two cents in as well.
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Steve’s the guy that ultimately hired me into Microsoft back in 1983. To say that I’m grateful for that little turn of events would be an understatement, as you might expect.
Steve’s a great guy. You probably know him in part for his “cheerleader” approach at assorted Microsoft events, but that’s just one aspect of a very gregarious and approachable personality. In the early days, unlike most of the techy geeks around him (i.e. me), he simply knew everyone by name. That’s hard enough in a 360-person company (as it was when I started), but he was still going strong when it crossed into the thousands.
We only interacted personally perhaps four or five times mostly in those early years1, but I’m fairly certain that were we to cross paths today after not seeing me for over a decade, he’d still quickly throw a “Hi Leo!” my way. That’s just the kind of person he is.
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This excerpt appears with permission from Leo Notenboom.
