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Steve Ballmer

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Steve Anthony Ballmer
Born (1956-03-24) March 24, 1956 (age 68)
United States Detroit, Michigan
Occupation(s)CEO, Microsoft
WebsiteStaff Bio at microsoft.com

Steven Anthony Ballmer (born March 24, 1956) is an American businessman and has been the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation since January 2000.[1]

Ballmer is the second person after Roberto Goizueta to become a billionaire in U.S. dollars based on stock options received as an employee of a corporation in which he was neither a founder nor a relative of a founder. In Forbes 2008 World's Richest People ranking, Ballmer was ranked the 43rd richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $15 billion.

Family

On October 2, 2006, Ballmer was awarded honorary citizenship of Lausen, Switzerland. His father, Frederick Ballmer, who emigrated to the US at the age of 23 as "Hans Friedrich Balmer", was a citizen of the same municipality.[2] His father worked as a manager at Ford Motor Co.

Ballmer married Connie Snyder, who worked in Microsoft's public relations agency, and has three children. His wife is the aunt of former major league baseball player Ben Petrick.

Pre-Microsoft

Steve Ballmer was born March 24, 1956 and grew up near Detroit, Michigan.

In 1973, he graduated from Detroit Country Day School, a high school, and now sits on its board of directors.[3]

In 1977, he graduated from Harvard University [4]with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics. While in college, Ballmer managed the football team, worked on the Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates.

He then worked for two years as an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble, where he shared an office with Jeffrey R. Immelt, the future CEO of General Electric.[citation needed]

In 1980, he dropped out from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.[citation needed]

Microsoft career

Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980, and later succeeded Bill Gates as CEO.[5]

Ballmer is currently the longest-serving employee of Microsoft after Gates[citation needed] and has headed several divisions within Microsoft including "Operating Systems Development", "Operations", and "Sales and Support".

In July 1998, he was promoted to president.[citation needed]

In January 2000, he was officially named chief executive officer.[1] As CEO Ballmer handles company finances, however Gates still retains control of the "technological vision".

In 2003, Ballmer sold 8.3% of his shareholdings, leaving him with a 4% stake in the company.[citation needed] The same year, Ballmer replaced Microsoft's employee stock options program, which had been instrumental in making early employees millionaires.[6]

Public persona

Viral videos

Footage featuring Ballmer's flamboyant stage appearances at Microsoft events have been widely circulated on the Internet, becoming what are known as "viral videos". The most famous of these is commonly titled "Dance Monkeyboy", it features Ballmer dancing and hopping around while verbally screeching and screaming erratically on a stage for about 45 seconds after being introduced at a Microsoft employee convention. Another video, captured at a developers' conference just days later[citation needed], featured a visibly sweat-drenched Ballmer chanting and shouting the word "developers" fourteen times in front of a gathering of Microsoft associates.

On competition

Linux

Ballmer is also known as a vocal critic of competing companies and their products. He has referred to the free Linux software system as a "[…] cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."[7] and earlier described it as having "[…] characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it."[8]

Lucovsky / Google

In 2005, Mark Lucovsky alleged in a sworn statement to a Washington state court that Ballmer became highly enraged upon hearing that Lucovsky was about to leave Microsoft for Google, 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 allegedly said, "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google," then resumed trying to persuade Lucovsky to stay at Microsoft.[9][10] Ballmer has described this as a "gross exaggeration of what actually took place."

Media Portrayals

  • Bad Boy Ballmer : The Man Who Rules Microsoft (2002), Fredric Alan Maxwell, ISBN 0-06-621014-3 (unauthorized biography)
  • The 1999 docudrama Pirates of Silicon Valley features Ballmer as a major character; he is played by actor John Di Maggio.
  • Michael Maccoby qualified him as a "productive obsessive" and the one keeping Microsoft's "show on the road" so Bill Gates could think about the big picture.[11]

Notes

  1. ^ a b "Steve Ballmer: Chief Executive Officer". Microsoft. March 1, 2005. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ Galli, Hans (2007-10-05). "Die Zukunft von PC und Internet" (PDF). Der Bund (in German). Der Bund. Retrieved 2007-10-12. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  3. ^ "Board of Trustees of Detroit County Day School". Retrieved November 14, 2007.
  4. ^ "Microsoft's Ballmer Makes His Pitch". Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  5. ^ "Information for Students: Key Events In Microsoft History" (doc). Microsoft Visitor Center Student Information. Retrieved 1 October. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ Fried, Ina (2003-07-08). "Microsoft to award stock, nix options". CNet. Retrieved 2006-12-03.
  7. ^ Wilcox, Joe (June 18, 2001). "Why Microsoft is wary of open source". CNet. Retrieved 2007-01-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ Lea, Graham (31 July, 2000). "MS' Ballmer: Linux is communism". The Register. Retrieved 2007-01-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ John Battelle (September 2, 2005). "Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google"". John Battelle's Searchblog. Retrieved 2008-01-06.
  10. ^ "Microsoft CEO: 'I'm going to f---ing kill Google'". Sydney Morning Herald. September 3, 2005. Retrieved 2007-02-01. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ Maccoby, Michael. "Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons". Harvard Business Review (January-February 2000): pp. 76. Bill Gates can think about the future from the stratosphere because Steve Ballmer, a tough obsessive president, keeps the show on the road. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
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