Steven Anthony "Steve" Ballmer (born March 24, 1956) is an American
business magnateA business magnate, sometimes referred to as a capitalist, czar, mogul, tycoon, baron, oligarch, or industrialist, is an informal term used to refer to an entrepreneur who has reached prominence and derived a notable amount of wealth from a particular industry .-Etymology:The word magnate itself...
. He is the chief executive officer of
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, having held that post since January 2000. , his personal wealth is estimated at US$13.9
billion1,000,000,000 is the natural number following 999,999,999 and preceding 1,000,000,001.In scientific notation, it is written as 109....
, ranking number 19 on the
Forbes 400The Forbes 400 or 400 Richest Americans is a list published by Forbes Magazine magazine of the wealthiest 400 Americans, ranked by net worth. The list is published annually in September, and 2010 marks the 29th issue. The 400 was started by Malcom Forbes in 1982 and treats those in the list like...
.
Early life
Ballmer was born in Detroit,
MichiganMichigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
to a
Swiss AmericanSwiss Americans are Americans of Swiss descent.There are several ethno-linguistic subgroups among Swiss Americans, including Swiss German-speaking, Swiss French-speaking, and Swiss Italian-speaking....
father and a Jewish American mother. He grew up in the affluent community of
Farmington HillsFarmington Hills is a community in southeastern Michigan. It is the largest city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Its population was 79,740 at the 2010 census...
, Michigan. In 1973, he attended college prep and engineering classes at
Lawrence Technological UniversityLawrence Technological University, also known as Lawrence Tech or simply LTU, is a private university located in Southfield, Michigan. The school offers undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs in engineering, science, mathematics, architecture, graphic design, and business...
and graduated from
Detroit Country Day SchoolDetroit Country Day School is a private, secular school located in four campuses in Oakland County, Michigan, north of Detroit. The administrative offices, facility services, safety and security services, and the upper school are located in a campus in Beverly Hills, along with the middle school...
, a private
college preparatory schoolA university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school is a secondary school, usually private, designed to prepare students for a college or university education...
in
Beverly HillsBeverly Hills is a village in Southfield Township, Oakland County of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is a suburb of Detroit. As of the 2010 census, the population was 10,267.-Geography:...
, Michigan and now sits on its
board of directorsA board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
. In 1977, he graduated
magna cum laude from
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
with a
A.B.A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in
mathematicsMathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and
economicsEconomics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
.
At college, Ballmer managed the football team, worked on
The Harvard CrimsonThe Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper of Harvard University, was founded in 1873. It is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates...
newspaper as well as the
Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore
Bill GatesWilliam Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
. He then worked for two years as an assistant product manager at
Procter & GambleProcter & Gamble is a Fortune 500 American multinational corporation headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactures a wide range of consumer goods....
, where he shared an office with
Jeffrey R. ImmeltJeffrey Robert "Jeff" Immelt is an American business executive. He is currently the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the U.S.-based conglomerate General Electric. He was selected by GE's Board of Directors in 2000 to replace Jack Welch following his retirement...
, who later became CEO of
General ElectricGeneral Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
. In 1980, he dropped out of the
Stanford Graduate School of BusinessThe Stanford Graduate School of Business is one of the professional schools of Stanford University, in Stanford, California and is broadly regarded as one of the best business schools in the world.The Stanford GSB offers a general management Master of Business Administration degree, the Sloan...
to join Microsoft.
Microsoft
Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980, and became Microsoft's 30th employee, the first business manager hired by Gates.
He was initially offered a salary of $50,000 as well as a percentage of ownership of the company. When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8 percent of the company. During the subsequent 20 years, Ballmer headed several Microsoft divisions, including operations, operating systems development, and sales and support. In January 2000, he was officially named Chief Executive Officer. As CEO, Ballmer handled company finances, however Gates still retained control of the "technological vision". He served as President of Microsoft from July 1998 to February 2001, having previously served as Executive Vice President, Sales and Support since February 1992. Ballmer led Microsoft's development of the
.NET FrameworkThe .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
.
In 2003, Ballmer sold 8.3% of his shareholdings, leaving him with a 4% stake in the company. The same year, Ballmer replaced Microsoft's employee stock options program.
In 2009, and for the first time ever since
Bill GatesWilliam Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
left
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
as full-time chairman, he made the opening keynote at
CESThe International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
.
Ballmer has also served as Director of
AccentureAccenture plc is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the largest consulting firm in the world and is a Fortune Global 500 company. As of September 2011, the company had more than 236,000 employees across...
Ltd. as well as a General Partner of Accenture SCA since October 2001.
Professional conduct
Ballmer is known for his energetic and exuberant persona, which is meant to motivate employees and partners. His flamboyant stage appearances at Microsoft events are widely circulated on the Internet as
viral videoA viral video is one that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email...
s. One widely circulated video, captured at a developers' conference, features a perspiring Ballmer chanting the word "
developersA software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...
".
Bill Gates steps down
The
Wall Street Journal has reported that there was tension surrounding the 2000 transition of authority from
Bill GatesWilliam Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
to Ballmer. Things became so bitter that, on one occasion, Gates stormed out of a meeting in a huff after a shouting match in which Ballmer jumped to the defense of several colleagues, according to an individual present at the time. After the exchange, Ballmer seemed "remorseful", the person said. Once Gates leaves, "I'm not going to need him for anything. That's the principle," Ballmer said. "Use him, yes, need him, no."
Apple
Speaking at a conference in NYC in 2009, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer criticized Apple's pricing, saying; 'Now I think the tide has turned back the other direction (against Apple),' Ballmer said. 'The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment — same piece of hardware — paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be.' Subsequently, Apple's U.S. unit growth for Q4 2010 was 23.7% year-over-year, well ahead of the overall U.S. industry trend of a 6.6% decline (Gartner's Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q10)
Free and open source software
He has referred to the
free softwareFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
Linux kernelThe Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
as a "cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." Ballmer used the notion of
"viral" licensing termsViral license is a pejorative term used to describe a copyright license that allows derivative works only when licensed identically to the original. Licenses of this form include several common open source licenses, such as the GNU General Public License and the Creative Commons ShareAlike licenses...
to express his concern over the fact that the
GNU General Public LicenseThe GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
(GPL) employed by such software requires that all derivative software be under the GPL or a compatible license.
Google
In 2005,
Mark LucovskyMark Lucovsky is an American software developer who worked for Microsoft and who is now employed by VMware as Vice President of Engineering in charge of Cloud Foundry...
alleged in a sworn statement to a Washington state court that Ballmer became enraged upon hearing that Lucovsky was about to leave Microsoft for
GoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, picked up his chair, and threw it across his office. Referring to Google CEO Eric Schmidt (who previously worked for competitors Sun and Novell), Ballmer vowed to "kill Google" in an expletive-laden tirade then resumed trying to persuade Lucovsky to stay at Microsoft. Ballmer has described characterizations of the incident as a
"gross exaggeration of what actually took place".
During a Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco(2011) he said: "You don’t need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows phone and you do to use and Android phone…It is hard for me to be excited about the Android phones." But figures show Android growing at an exponential rate and Windows Phone 7 struggling to gain traction in the crowded smartphone market.
Sports
On March 6, 2008, Seattle's Mayor announced that a local ownership group involving Ballmer made a "game changing" commitment to invest $150 million in cash toward a $300 million renovation of Key Arena and were ready to purchase the
Seattle SuperSonicsThe Seattle SuperSonics were an American professional basketball team based in Seattle, Washington that played in the Pacific and Northwest Divisions of the National Basketball Association from 1967 until 2008. Following the 2007–08 season, the team relocated to Oklahoma City, and now plays as...
in order to keep them in the City of Seattle. However, this initiative failed, and the Sonics have since relocated to
Oklahoma CityOklahoma City is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma.Oklahoma City may also refer to:*Oklahoma City metropolitan area*Downtown Oklahoma City*Uptown Oklahoma City*Oklahoma City bombing*Oklahoma City National Memorial...
, now performing as
Oklahoma City ThunderThe Oklahoma City Thunder are a professional basketball franchise based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. They play in the Northwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association ; their home court is at Chesapeake Energy Arena....
.
Media portrayals
- Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft (2002), Fredric Alan Maxwell, ISBN 0-06-621014-3 (unauthorized biography)
- The 1999 docudrama
In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....
Pirates of Silicon ValleyPirates of Silicon Valley is a 1999 made-for-television film directed by Martyn Burke and based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. The film documents the impact on the development of the personal computer of the rivalry between...
features Ballmer as a major character; he is played by actor John DiMaggioJohn William DiMaggio is an American voice actor. A native of North Plainfield, New Jersey, he is known for his gruff, deep voice and New Jersey accent, which he uses to voice mainly villains and anti-heroes.-Filmography:...
.
Wealth
Ballmer was the second person after
Roberto GoizuetaRoberto Críspulo Goizueta was Chairman, Director, and Chief Executive Officer of The Coca-Cola Company from August 1980 until his death in October 1997....
to become a
billionaireA billionaire, in countries that use the short scale number naming system, is a person who has a net worth of at least one billion units of a given currency, usually the United States dollar, Euro, or Pound sterling. Forbes magazine updates a complete list of U.S. dollar billionaires around the...
in U.S. dollars based on
stock optionsAn employee stock option is a call option on the common stock of a company, issued as a form of non-cash compensation. Restrictions on the option attempt to align the holder's interest with those of the business shareholders. If the company's stock rises, holders of options generally experience a...
received as an employee of a
corporationA corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
in which he was neither a founder nor a relative of a founder. Ballmer is the 46th richest person in the world according to
ForbesForbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
, with an estimated wealth of $14.5 billion. While CEO of Microsoft in 2009, Ballmer earned a total compensation of $1,276,627 which included a base salary of $665,833 a cash bonus of $600,000, no stock or options, and other compensation of $10,794.
External links