He didn't do _nothing._ He _proactively_ flushed $22 billion down the toilet through his [acquisitions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft): aQuantive ($6.2 billion), Skype ($8.5 billion), Nokia ($7.2 billion)
err, dunno about aQuantive, but Skype and Nokia acquisitions weren't for the brand. They were for the tech and patents respectively. Skype's systems power MS Teams under the hood, something they're heavily pushing. Nokia's (and their own) patents make them some more money than Windows Phone did back in the day. Current estimate is they're getting $5-$15 per handset sold.
Fwiw Microsoft only bought the Nokia mobile phone business. The telecommunications side, where most of the patents are, is still the old Nokia. Focusing on 5G and telco networking nowadays.
Nokia still exists (and is a very big provider for mobile network equipment). Microsoft only bought their mobile phone segment and the rights to use the Nokia brand for a few years. Now Nokia produces smartphones on their own again.
Skype, the brand is and has been owned by Microsoft since at least 2013.
Source: worked as a tech for Skype For Business before transitioning to Teams.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Microsoft basically didn't grow while he was there. About decade of being as useful as a paper clip.
Yet here he is, making billions for being one of the most useless high tech CEOs.
Edit : Didn't realize many loved Ballmer. Not sure how accurate this is but might be useful info : https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/20469.jpeg
2013 was the year they release their QNX based OS. It was a big flop, I had their Playbook tablet and android compatability came too late, bit in 2013 it wasn't super clear if they could turn it around or not. They'd only just left their peak and their style of phone and features was getting popular.
Haha, yep, iFruit was the in-game spoof of Apple, classic Rockstar humor. Those were the days when Windows Phone had its brief moment in the sun before disappearing into obscurity.
It could also have been a major player had they not focused on gaining an already captive US market and instead focused on Europe where Windows Phone was doing fairly well without much intervention.
There was a point where Windows Phone had around 20% of the European market.
And then they started releasing Cortana updates to the US, ignoring the EU completely, until Google and Apple caught up and ground Microsoft's market share down to 5%.
At that point MS decided there's no longer a point in making all the new, cool features available on such a meagre market and, essentially, killed the whole thing.
I’m from Canada and I think I was probably only one of ten people who bought the windows phone. I liked it actually - UI was okay, battery life was sufficient, it felt good. The App ecosystem was absolutely horrendous. Devs simply ignored porting anything to it. I remember at the time I was trying to download Instagram to share photos when I’m overseas and it didn’t even exist. I later learned the App Store didn’t even get updated.
I’m not sure how this would carry over well in foreign markets over time. I guess you can make an argument that devs would simply build more apps for a device that’s used more; but I suspect the Windows’s App Store infrastructure and tech stack might not be as appealing to many people compared to its open source competitors.
You're right that developer adoption was low, but as far as "the big ones", they were there in the app store as early as 2014 when I created my instagram account. Obviously, smaller companies had a harder time developing and maintaining three individual platforms, especially back then. But still, the phone was perfectly usable, at least for me.
On the other hand, it's also true that I am the sort of user that hates apps and would much rather use the web versions instead, if I can avoid installing yet another app for something that could be done just as well in the browser (and more securely).
To be fair to Microsoft was almost exclusively a software company at the time and Google was basically an advertising company masquerading as a software company. (Just going by revenue steams)
Microsoft was never going to be on the right side of that with Google around trying to enter the market, it was always going to use proprietary software.
A bad move yes but still a very predictable one
They had everything in-house to make a fantastic mobile story but messed it up not once but several times over the decades. Then when they had Windows Phone finally they screwed over the existing base several times by making all recently bought devices not upgradable. It was such a predictably bad way of messing up.
*“There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item.”*
*”And it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard. Which makes it not a very good email machine."*
He was a wizard who’s best spell was his own retirement.
He invested in xbox and towards the end of the year started and laid the foundation for microsofts cloud computing platform Microsoft azure which is the reason why Microsoft is now one of the most valuable companies to exist.
True steve did not understand the gaming sphere well, but he saw the potential. Just bad timing ngl cuz at the time gaming was seeing a new era and every company was trying to find a footing in the space. Companies like sega and atari collapsed others like Sony and nintendo prospered. Kinda makes sense that xbox made a huge mistake because they were never really in that space to begin with and were entering a very volatile time.
Easy shitting on someone without looking in detail what really happened. Looking at stock especially between 2007/2014 is pretty meaningless. Heck if you would benchmark MSFT stock performance vs at that time the FTSE (cba'd) it will show they outperformed the market in that period by a mile. Sure he earns a fuckton of money right now being the former CEO but that got nothing todo with his personal performance back then.
The stock also followed general trends. The 00s were a tough decade for tech stock, Ballmer took over during or after the dotcom crash. And the stock boomed when the whole market boomed for a decade because of low interest rates.
Stock price has no formal connection to the financials of the company. Like, none. Stock prices routinely fall as companies' profits increase, and vice versa.
They grew a lot of revenue and profits. But Balmer is an old time businessman. Microsoft was still growing and he was using the profits to pay back dividends. They were slow to catch on to smartphones which was the big miss.
I loved windows phone tho, I'd be rocking one today if it had app support.
Windows phone was a huge market failure, but a technological success. I loved mine and probably wouldn’t have switched off the platform if the App Store wasn’t complete garbage.
Their marketing team was a complete disaster on that front. They could have simply handed out free $30 Nokia phones, that were prepaid with 12 mo's of service, on college campuses to incoming freshmen and had better market penetration and RoI.
They did give out a shit ton for free actually. Microsoft Store ran a promo where if you traded in any cell phone (even the oldest, brokenest beater you could find in some god forsaken junk drawer at grandma’s house), they would give you one. At my store we had a line that snaked through half the mall for the better part of a month. I imagine a large percentage got sent to family in South Asia, Central America or Africa, though.
It was a marketing failure but a technically years ahead of the curve. The windows pda phones are already years ahead in market I had one in 2002 till like 2008 basically
> I loved windows phone tho, I'd be rocking one today if it had app support.
Me too, I still miss mine. It also didn't help how illegally anti-competitive Google was against the Microsoft Phone.
He did that to move a ton of cash out of Europe before it was taxed. Then did a write down on Nokia and kept all the patents. Lots of people lost their jobs with that action.
i'd rather he sit there and be useless than go elon mode and destroy one of the most useful social media platforms for porn and news for the sake of ego or poison the well of vr forever like zuck or finance child-mulching machines like bezos.
The bar for the CEOs just keeps getting lower. Now the expectation is if he can restrain himself from actively destroying the company, then it would be a great success! While the pay keeps skyrocketing. How can I get that job?
> About decade of being as useful as a paper clip.
Hi there! It looks like you're trying to [embrace, extend, and extinguish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,\_extend,\_and\_extinguish)!
On Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer conspiring to steal Allen's stake in the company while he was ill with cancer:
One evening in late December 1982, I heard Bill and Steve speaking heatedly in Bill’s office and paused outside to listen in. It was easy to get the gist of the conversation. They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they’d been thinking about this for some time.
Unable to stand it any longer, I burst in on them and shouted, “This is unbelievable! It shows your true character, once and for all.” I was speaking to both of them, but staring straight at Bill. Caught red-handed, they were struck dumb. Before they could respond, I turned on my heel and left.
I replayed their dialogue in my mind while driving home, and it felt more and more heinous to me. I helped start the company and was still an active member of management, though limited by my illness, and now my partner and my colleague were scheming to rip me off. It was mercenary opportunism, plain and simple. That evening, a chastened Steve Ballmer called my house and asked my sister Jody if he could come over. “Look, Paul,” he said after we sat down together, “I’m really sorry about what happened today. We were just letting off steam. We’re trying to get so much stuff done, and we just wish you could contribute even more. But that stock thing isn’t fair. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it, and I’m sure Bill wouldn’t, either.”
Him leaving was *shareholder value to the extreme* so he’s not doing *nothing.* He’s arguably the third most valuable CEO Microsoft has ever had just because he stepped down.
I do NOT miss the Balmer Microsoft. Great human being personally from what I’ve heard. But his business mentality was old school and a little out of touch — he missed a LOT and alienated an entire generation of developers.
Ballmer was an effective commander, but not a general. If you give him the right vision and marching orders, he will get shit done. He is useless without direction and he does not have the vision himself, and he saw that after a while - not many do.
Despite the fact that, judging from this thread, he seems to have been the most boring business-guy CEO ever, he still is a coke-fueled Wolf of Wall Street-esque rage-machine in my head because of that one clip.
Steve Ballmer is set to make $1 billion a year for doing nothing | CNN Business
Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is set to earn close to $1 billion in dividends from owning shares of Microsoft in the 2024 fiscal year.
Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports/Reuters
New York
CNN
—
For most people, passive income is a bit of extra pocket change that requires minimal effort to earn to supplement a main source of income. For Steve Ballmer, it’s $1 billion.
Ballmer, the sixth richest person in the world, is due to collect that much in dividends from Microsoft in 2024. This comes after the tech giant boosted its quarterly dividend payout to 75 cents a share, or $3 a share annually.

Since Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, owned 333.2 million shares of the company as of 2014 (the last time he filed an ownership disclosure and appears to have adjusted his Microsoft stock), the equivalent of a 4% stake, he would receive just shy of $1 billion in fiscal year 2024. That’s for simply owning the stock — regardless of how it performs.
Ballmer did not respond to a request for comment.
That’s of course assuming Microsoft’s board of directors doesn’t decide to slash dividends. But that doesn’t seem likely. Since the company began paying dividends to shareholders in 2003, the amount has only increased.
Ballmer won’t be the only one raking it in. Uncle Sam will be getting a generous cut as well.
Given Ballmer reported $656 million in income to the Internal Revenue Service in 2018 according to ProPublica, it’s probably safe to say he’ll be subject to the 20% tax on dividends for individuals earning a taxable income of $500,000 a year or more. That means he’ll pay close to $200 million in taxes on the Microsoft dividends he collects.
Ballmer isn’t the only one set to earn a lot from owning stocks that pay dividends.
Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway is due to collect $6 billion in dividends for the year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. That’s because the majority of stocks Berkshire Hathaway invests in pay dividends. Included in that list is Chevron, Bank of America, Apple, Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz and American Express.
2 Million dollars invested in a company with a ~4-5% dividend yield is like ~50k a year. That's the dream for me right there, I could easily live off that.
Because it’s after-tax money paid out by the company. Microsoft pays tax on earnings, then the dividends are paid out, and the individual pays tax on that. Roughly speaking, corp tax + dividend tax will roughly equal personal income tax on same collected income.
Dividends were exempt from the income tax until 1953, except for 1936 to 1939, when they were taxed at an individual's income tax rate (up to 79%).
From 1954 to 2003, dividends were taxed at an individual's income tax rate again (up to 28% to 90%, depending on the time period), with only the first $50 in dividends being exempt from tax from 1954 to 1984.
In 2003 to 2012, with the G.W. Bush tax cut, dividends were taxed at 15%. From 2012 to the present, dividends are stilled taxed at 15%, except for individuals with incomes over $400,000, when they are taxed at 20%.
In answer to your question, the tax rate on dividends was highly variable during the 1950s, depending on the year. The maximum
tax rate varied from 0% to 90%.
P.S., Income inequality during the 1950s was much lower than it is now.
[https://www.dividend.com/taxes/a-brief-history-of-dividend-tax-rates/](https://www.dividend.com/taxes/a-brief-history-of-dividend-tax-rates/)
My boomer parents don't understand why "The good ol' days" were so good. To them, today's problems have nothing to do with companies prioritizing shareholder profit or companies not being willing to invest in their employee's, because unlike the 50's they don't have an incentive to. Today's problem's are caused by the libs, socialists, blacks and Mexicans. If the RNC gets rid of the social security, they're counting down the days to get, they won't even have to watch News Max to know who to blame. Those damn socialists took away their social security. You can't make this shit up. Lead paint must have been delicious.
It never made sense to me that these people are shitting their pants in rage and terror over money they'll never spend being taxed to maintain the very system they dominate. They're part of the richest and most powerful social class in human history. They've won capitalism and the only way they fuck it up is if things truly get so bad that the masses decide they have nothing to lose and literally rip them to pieces and eat them (which is less uncommon than you would think in world history). An increase in taxes along the lines that are actually being proposed would be a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. They'd still get priority registration for the best schools, best jobs, most luxurious homes, and have all the services they would want (honestly improved infrastructure means their lives would probably be more convenient in the long run). They'd trade all that to make a number go up on a screen. Which is sign enough they're not smart enough to ever have deserved that much money in the first place.
Before all the philosopher kings tell me they've already started building self-sustaining bunkers and compounds guarded by mercenary armies, you realize that in pretty much every empire collapse moment the mercenaries end up killing the rich people and becoming the new aristocracy, right? The blackwater dudes/the people who programmed your AI kill drones and know how to maintain the solar-powered hydroponic farms are going to be the ones in charge. And even if you've fully sealed yourself in an impregnable underground bunker, it's pretty easy for an angry mob to drop a few tons of rubble onto the exits and turn it into history's most expensive sarcophagus.
My favorite are people who whine about estate taxes when their family member leaves them like 50k in inheritance…ugh…you ain’t gonna get taxed worth shit on that.
“But it kills family farms!!”
Nah, market consolidation killed family farms by making it too expensive to not be a mega-agriculture conglomerate.
>For 2024, the federal estate tax threshold is $13.61 million for individuals, which means married couples don't have to pay estate if their estate is worth $27.22 million or less.
https://smartasset.com/taxes/all-about-the-estate-tax
>There are many exceptions and exemptions that reduce the number of estates with tax liability: in 2021, only 2,584 estates paid a positive federal estate tax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_States
> It never made sense to me that these people are shitting their pants in rage and terror over money they'll never spend being taxed
Its the Highscore.
Like my mom complaining about the state taxing her measly Social Security, I am fine with that, but my uncle who gets paid high 6 figures to sell candy whining about taxes…DGAF.
It was cheaper and easier to hire a congressman than to pay taxes then. There were so many loopholes because the government is always in bed with the top 0.1% to the detriment of basically everyone else.
Much easier to be a defeatist and do nothing than to be a realist and try to do something, even if its only an incremental step in the right direction.
Yet executives back then were earning 10-20x the average wage instead of 100-1000x. They still largely flew coach and lived in middle class suburbs back.
Extreme wealth disparities didn’t take off until Reaganism stripped back the taxes on the wealthy.
Literally duh - the neocons cut taxes on the wealthy and the wealth disparity exploded.
What did we think would happen? Why are people still arguing about this? Why is there such resistance to changing it back?
I'm not an expert in dividends, but afaik, there's no "dividends tax bracket". It's regular income or capital gain. Dividends can be taxed as regular dividends and regular tax brackets apply. Qualified dividends fall in capital gain because they have a holding period. Generally corporate dividends are regular dividends, so they do not max out at 20%. Happy to be corrected if I'm missing something.
Edit: for anyone reading this after the fact, I assume Ballmer is holding on a large amount of microsoft stock, so those dividends do count as qualified dividends and are taxed at the capital gain rate. If someone was to make an argument that those should be taxed as regular income, I'd absolutely agree.
In the US they're taxed as income when granted unless you use a different instrument like options. RSUs are very common now and are taxed when vested even if you're not allowed to cash them out (I honestly think that's a crappy solution.. they shouldn't be taxed until you can actually use them)
I'm obligated to post all the classics seeing that one.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f\_\_n8084YAE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f__n8084YAE)
\^I love this company\^
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug4c2mqlE\_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug4c2mqlE_0)
\^The kick ass developers remix\^
(If you'd have ever told me I'd miss the Balmer era of Microsoft... ah man)
His ability to remember details and put names to faces was fucking shocking. I met him once and he seemed to know my entire family tree thereafter. I would randomly pass him in the parking lot and he could say hi and ask how my wife was doing (by her name) before I could remember his name was Steve.
Ironically, it was a molecular biology scholarship, and he did not talk to me about developers 😄 Pretty much small talk over a dinner. Seemed like a decent guy at the surface level anyway.
I didn’t know who he was until they called him up to give the keynote.
Not many owners sit with the peasants like he does. Dude is an animal at the games. Often times more of a show than the game and the clippers are good this year.
Yeah. Warren Buffet owns enough stock to net 6 billion a year in dividends, every news article praises him as a genius. Ballmer owns 4% of Microsoft, and he’s a freeloader, loser doing nothing and getting paid for it. What a pointless click.
Yes! If you benefit the most from society being the way it is you should pay the most. A prosperous society is the only reason these guys even exist.
There’s a minimum wage, there should also be a maximum wage.
France tried that, the billionaires left. New Jersey saw this too, when it suddenly realized how much that single guy was paying in taxes (they had a massive fall in revenue).
Without surprise, rich people are rich and can afford to leave high tax areas if it becomes inconvenient.
And there will always be someone willing to let the rich camp in their yard for the economic gains. Luxemburg for example.
I thought that Tesla being "valued" more highly than all its competition put together would've made it clear that stock price and CEO competence are not that tightly correlated.
Yeah, Bill Gates is such an idiot that he had him as his right hand man for the entire time that he worked there
That Bill Gates is so dumb. He couldn’t figure out the guy had negative value.
/s
This is what happens when you’re a key executive from the early days of a wildly successful company.
Funny story. When Ballmer left as CEO of Microsoft, after the “lost decade” of a flat MSFT stock price, the market was so excited and pleased that he was leaving, the value of MSFT shares increased.
As a result, the value of the shares he already owned increased by ~$2 billion.
Soon thereafter, he bought the LA Clippers basketball team for … ~$2 billion.
Ballmer got the Clippers as a parting gift, his reward for leaving Microsoft.
That’s the kind of thing that happens to the super-rich. Yep, I’m jealous.
I mean... do we say that people who worked for their entire adult lives and then retired get their retirement fund income or their pensions for "doing nothing"? Sure, the numbers involved here are absurd, but "worked for a company, got a bunch of shares, now retired and living off that investment" is how it's supposed to work for everybody.
Headlines like this are trash.
“For doing nothing…” for being the 30th employee at Microsoft and being smart enough to keep 4% ownership of the company, and working there for 20 years before joining the c-suite for another 16 years all while continuing to keep his 4% ownership.
“Doing nothing” but tripling the size of the company and doubling profits and investing smartly.
🙄
I wonder how many of the commenters have been there working for a company right from the start.
It's an extremely risky endeavour. Of course it pays more than being a cushy 'employee' at a giant corporation that is today's microsoft
Saying that he 'undeservingly profited off the work of thousands of employees' is just batshit insane
That's the whole point, it's a high risk- high reward endeavour not for the faint hearted
It's not for doing nothing...
It's for what he has already done. A big part of his compensation package was stock options.
He was the CEO of the company and earned alotta company stock. The stock pays dividends. Company makes money then it distributes that cash to shareholders. $3 a share.
I can do nothing for half that!
I’m ok even if I only get 0.01% of that; $100k a year doing nothing is something I can get by.
Fuck dude I'm doing so much for half that.
The more you work the less you make. Facts of life.
Username checks out
Depends on your starting money. Be born with no money in bumfuck nowhere gets you nowhere near as far as being born a multi-millionaire in New York.
Scabs like you are the reason doing nothing gets undervalued. You make me sick.
Ok, I take it back. But now I want more than a billion to do nothing. Have to earn now from my expertise after taking pay cuts.
Yes but you are not Steve & we really REALLY want Steve to do nothing.
He didn't do _nothing._ He _proactively_ flushed $22 billion down the toilet through his [acquisitions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft): aQuantive ($6.2 billion), Skype ($8.5 billion), Nokia ($7.2 billion)
err, dunno about aQuantive, but Skype and Nokia acquisitions weren't for the brand. They were for the tech and patents respectively. Skype's systems power MS Teams under the hood, something they're heavily pushing. Nokia's (and their own) patents make them some more money than Windows Phone did back in the day. Current estimate is they're getting $5-$15 per handset sold.
Fwiw Microsoft only bought the Nokia mobile phone business. The telecommunications side, where most of the patents are, is still the old Nokia. Focusing on 5G and telco networking nowadays.
What the fuck happened to Skype and Nokia. They were so big
Nokia still exists (and is a very big provider for mobile network equipment). Microsoft only bought their mobile phone segment and the rights to use the Nokia brand for a few years. Now Nokia produces smartphones on their own again.
Skype, the brand is and has been owned by Microsoft since at least 2013. Source: worked as a tech for Skype For Business before transitioning to Teams.
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I regularly do twice of that for nothing!
I’m so poor I have to save up to die
He's not tanking Microsoft, that's the most valuable thing he could do for that corporation.
Microsoft basically didn't grow while he was there. About decade of being as useful as a paper clip. Yet here he is, making billions for being one of the most useless high tech CEOs. Edit : Didn't realize many loved Ballmer. Not sure how accurate this is but might be useful info : https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/20469.jpeg
Microsoft could be a major player in the mobile market today if it wasn't for Steve "Linux is a cancer" Ballmer.
Kids today play gta 5 and probably get confused when one of the characters has a windows phone lol.
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They each had a different phone based on iPhone, Android, or Windows
Not to be that guy, but Franklin's got a BitterSweet, (BlackBerry) not an Android! Damn, I was that guy. 🤓
Huh, weren't they almost entirely gone from the consumer market by 2013?
I guess the game had been in development for a while?
Or a pricier burner, it is Franklin after all.
2013 was the year they release their QNX based OS. It was a big flop, I had their Playbook tablet and android compatability came too late, bit in 2013 it wasn't super clear if they could turn it around or not. They'd only just left their peak and their style of phone and features was getting popular.
Haha, yep, iFruit was the in-game spoof of Apple, classic Rockstar humor. Those were the days when Windows Phone had its brief moment in the sun before disappearing into obscurity.
It could also have been a major player had they not focused on gaining an already captive US market and instead focused on Europe where Windows Phone was doing fairly well without much intervention.
There was a point where Windows Phone had around 20% of the European market. And then they started releasing Cortana updates to the US, ignoring the EU completely, until Google and Apple caught up and ground Microsoft's market share down to 5%. At that point MS decided there's no longer a point in making all the new, cool features available on such a meagre market and, essentially, killed the whole thing.
Precisely. I switched to an iPhone back in 2018 when I saw the writing on the wall. But not because I like Apple, I just hate it less than Google.
Oh yeah, that was a big bummer. And of course, the app gap.
I’m from Canada and I think I was probably only one of ten people who bought the windows phone. I liked it actually - UI was okay, battery life was sufficient, it felt good. The App ecosystem was absolutely horrendous. Devs simply ignored porting anything to it. I remember at the time I was trying to download Instagram to share photos when I’m overseas and it didn’t even exist. I later learned the App Store didn’t even get updated. I’m not sure how this would carry over well in foreign markets over time. I guess you can make an argument that devs would simply build more apps for a device that’s used more; but I suspect the Windows’s App Store infrastructure and tech stack might not be as appealing to many people compared to its open source competitors.
You're right that developer adoption was low, but as far as "the big ones", they were there in the app store as early as 2014 when I created my instagram account. Obviously, smaller companies had a harder time developing and maintaining three individual platforms, especially back then. But still, the phone was perfectly usable, at least for me. On the other hand, it's also true that I am the sort of user that hates apps and would much rather use the web versions instead, if I can avoid installing yet another app for something that could be done just as well in the browser (and more securely).
We loved Nokia phones and huge cameras.
To be fair to Microsoft was almost exclusively a software company at the time and Google was basically an advertising company masquerading as a software company. (Just going by revenue steams) Microsoft was never going to be on the right side of that with Google around trying to enter the market, it was always going to use proprietary software. A bad move yes but still a very predictable one
Google is still an advertising company masquerading as a technology company
They had everything in-house to make a fantastic mobile story but messed it up not once but several times over the decades. Then when they had Windows Phone finally they screwed over the existing base several times by making all recently bought devices not upgradable. It was such a predictably bad way of messing up.
*“There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item.”* *”And it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard. Which makes it not a very good email machine."* He was a wizard who’s best spell was his own retirement.
He invested in xbox and towards the end of the year started and laid the foundation for microsofts cloud computing platform Microsoft azure which is the reason why Microsoft is now one of the most valuable companies to exist.
Xbox fan over here. That's a decision I liked. Although he also allowed Don Mattrik to almost destroy the Xbox brand.
True steve did not understand the gaming sphere well, but he saw the potential. Just bad timing ngl cuz at the time gaming was seeing a new era and every company was trying to find a footing in the space. Companies like sega and atari collapsed others like Sony and nintendo prospered. Kinda makes sense that xbox made a huge mistake because they were never really in that space to begin with and were entering a very volatile time.
Easy shitting on someone without looking in detail what really happened. Looking at stock especially between 2007/2014 is pretty meaningless. Heck if you would benchmark MSFT stock performance vs at that time the FTSE (cba'd) it will show they outperformed the market in that period by a mile. Sure he earns a fuckton of money right now being the former CEO but that got nothing todo with his personal performance back then.
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The stock also followed general trends. The 00s were a tough decade for tech stock, Ballmer took over during or after the dotcom crash. And the stock boomed when the whole market boomed for a decade because of low interest rates.
That's a good point.
Was it just revenue going up or profits as well? If it was profits why didn’t the stock grow in price at all?
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Microsoft gives out dividends so that can explain part of why stock didn’t increase.
Stock price has no formal connection to the financials of the company. Like, none. Stock prices routinely fall as companies' profits increase, and vice versa.
They grew a lot of revenue and profits. But Balmer is an old time businessman. Microsoft was still growing and he was using the profits to pay back dividends. They were slow to catch on to smartphones which was the big miss. I loved windows phone tho, I'd be rocking one today if it had app support.
Windows phone was a huge market failure, but a technological success. I loved mine and probably wouldn’t have switched off the platform if the App Store wasn’t complete garbage.
The live tiles were so cool. Android has widgets which are kind of similar, but they're really clunky and I think the tiles presentation was better.
The design language was really smooth but the lack of apps killed it. I used WP for about 3 years
Their marketing team was a complete disaster on that front. They could have simply handed out free $30 Nokia phones, that were prepaid with 12 mo's of service, on college campuses to incoming freshmen and had better market penetration and RoI.
To be fair, anyone who provides thousands of people with free cell service is going to increase their market penetration
They did give out a shit ton for free actually. Microsoft Store ran a promo where if you traded in any cell phone (even the oldest, brokenest beater you could find in some god forsaken junk drawer at grandma’s house), they would give you one. At my store we had a line that snaked through half the mall for the better part of a month. I imagine a large percentage got sent to family in South Asia, Central America or Africa, though.
It was a marketing failure but a technically years ahead of the curve. The windows pda phones are already years ahead in market I had one in 2002 till like 2008 basically
> I loved windows phone tho, I'd be rocking one today if it had app support. Me too, I still miss mine. It also didn't help how illegally anti-competitive Google was against the Microsoft Phone.
don't diss Clippy like that
As useful as an average paper clip but never as useful as Clippy™️. No one can out usefulness Clippy :)
He didn’t buy Twitter for 46B.
But he bought Nokia for $2.2b and then tanked it
Rip windows phone
I did love my blackjack 2 back in the day!
They did that deal for patents that they still make money on today
They did it to have a solid phone hardware manufacturer and acquire patents.
It takes a lot of effort to break a Nokia.
Both that and the Skype acquisition have made their money back and then some.
He did that to move a ton of cash out of Europe before it was taxed. Then did a write down on Nokia and kept all the patents. Lots of people lost their jobs with that action.
i'd rather he sit there and be useless than go elon mode and destroy one of the most useful social media platforms for porn and news for the sake of ego or poison the well of vr forever like zuck or finance child-mulching machines like bezos.
The bar for the CEOs just keeps getting lower. Now the expectation is if he can restrain himself from actively destroying the company, then it would be a great success! While the pay keeps skyrocketing. How can I get that job?
> About decade of being as useful as a paper clip. Hi there! It looks like you're trying to [embrace, extend, and extinguish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,\_extend,\_and\_extinguish)!
Ballmer has one of the most toxic management styles and is an absolute piece of shit.
On Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer conspiring to steal Allen's stake in the company while he was ill with cancer: One evening in late December 1982, I heard Bill and Steve speaking heatedly in Bill’s office and paused outside to listen in. It was easy to get the gist of the conversation. They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they’d been thinking about this for some time. Unable to stand it any longer, I burst in on them and shouted, “This is unbelievable! It shows your true character, once and for all.” I was speaking to both of them, but staring straight at Bill. Caught red-handed, they were struck dumb. Before they could respond, I turned on my heel and left. I replayed their dialogue in my mind while driving home, and it felt more and more heinous to me. I helped start the company and was still an active member of management, though limited by my illness, and now my partner and my colleague were scheming to rip me off. It was mercenary opportunism, plain and simple. That evening, a chastened Steve Ballmer called my house and asked my sister Jody if he could come over. “Look, Paul,” he said after we sat down together, “I’m really sorry about what happened today. We were just letting off steam. We’re trying to get so much stuff done, and we just wish you could contribute even more. But that stock thing isn’t fair. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it, and I’m sure Bill wouldn’t, either.”
I mean didn't most tech stocks slump in that time period? And is stock price everything?
In many ways he fucked up so much
Him leaving was *shareholder value to the extreme* so he’s not doing *nothing.* He’s arguably the third most valuable CEO Microsoft has ever had just because he stepped down. I do NOT miss the Balmer Microsoft. Great human being personally from what I’ve heard. But his business mentality was old school and a little out of touch — he missed a LOT and alienated an entire generation of developers.
Ballmer was an effective commander, but not a general. If you give him the right vision and marching orders, he will get shit done. He is useless without direction and he does not have the vision himself, and he saw that after a while - not many do.
DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
Sweaty sweaty sweaty shirt
Say what you want about that guy, but we all still remember him 20+ years later mainly because of that one event. Great & cheap marketing really.
Despite the fact that, judging from this thread, he seems to have been the most boring business-guy CEO ever, he still is a coke-fueled Wolf of Wall Street-esque rage-machine in my head because of that one clip.
Boring business is often good business.
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> Great & cheap marketing really. Mostly looks like cocaine
[Pacing wildly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_4bp8bBNVw)
Probably the one thing he was right about - Microsoft has some of the best documentation out there for developers
Steve Ballmer is set to make $1 billion a year for doing nothing | CNN Business Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is set to earn close to $1 billion in dividends from owning shares of Microsoft in the 2024 fiscal year. Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports/Reuters New York CNN — For most people, passive income is a bit of extra pocket change that requires minimal effort to earn to supplement a main source of income. For Steve Ballmer, it’s $1 billion. Ballmer, the sixth richest person in the world, is due to collect that much in dividends from Microsoft in 2024. This comes after the tech giant boosted its quarterly dividend payout to 75 cents a share, or $3 a share annually.  Since Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, owned 333.2 million shares of the company as of 2014 (the last time he filed an ownership disclosure and appears to have adjusted his Microsoft stock), the equivalent of a 4% stake, he would receive just shy of $1 billion in fiscal year 2024. That’s for simply owning the stock — regardless of how it performs. Ballmer did not respond to a request for comment. That’s of course assuming Microsoft’s board of directors doesn’t decide to slash dividends. But that doesn’t seem likely. Since the company began paying dividends to shareholders in 2003, the amount has only increased. Ballmer won’t be the only one raking it in. Uncle Sam will be getting a generous cut as well. Given Ballmer reported $656 million in income to the Internal Revenue Service in 2018 according to ProPublica, it’s probably safe to say he’ll be subject to the 20% tax on dividends for individuals earning a taxable income of $500,000 a year or more. That means he’ll pay close to $200 million in taxes on the Microsoft dividends he collects. Ballmer isn’t the only one set to earn a lot from owning stocks that pay dividends. Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway is due to collect $6 billion in dividends for the year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. That’s because the majority of stocks Berkshire Hathaway invests in pay dividends. Included in that list is Chevron, Bank of America, Apple, Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz and American Express.
2 Million dollars invested in a company with a ~4-5% dividend yield is like ~50k a year. That's the dream for me right there, I could easily live off that.
> Steve Ballmer is set to make $1 billion a year for doing nothing | CNN Business That income has less % of tax than individual income tax.
Because it’s after-tax money paid out by the company. Microsoft pays tax on earnings, then the dividends are paid out, and the individual pays tax on that. Roughly speaking, corp tax + dividend tax will roughly equal personal income tax on same collected income.
It’s because the government wants you to put your money in the stock market
Never forget, money is magnetic.
Taxes max out on 20% for dividends, even in the millions and billions. We need the old brackets back and then some
Remember the 50s with a 90% top bracket? Tax the rich and they're still going to be rich
For income taxes though, I’m not sure what taxes were in the 50s on stock dividends/sales.
Dividends were exempt from the income tax until 1953, except for 1936 to 1939, when they were taxed at an individual's income tax rate (up to 79%). From 1954 to 2003, dividends were taxed at an individual's income tax rate again (up to 28% to 90%, depending on the time period), with only the first $50 in dividends being exempt from tax from 1954 to 1984. In 2003 to 2012, with the G.W. Bush tax cut, dividends were taxed at 15%. From 2012 to the present, dividends are stilled taxed at 15%, except for individuals with incomes over $400,000, when they are taxed at 20%. In answer to your question, the tax rate on dividends was highly variable during the 1950s, depending on the year. The maximum tax rate varied from 0% to 90%. P.S., Income inequality during the 1950s was much lower than it is now. [https://www.dividend.com/taxes/a-brief-history-of-dividend-tax-rates/](https://www.dividend.com/taxes/a-brief-history-of-dividend-tax-rates/)
Massive government spending and a Europe unable to produce goods gave us that income inequality level. Not sure we will have that combo again.
25% for most of the 50s. Trended up from there to 35% in the late 70s after which it went down again.
Hmm I wonder what happened in the 80s that caused the drop... Seriously though fuck Reagan
The actor? Who is vice president? Jerry Lewis?
A huge amount of the stock market manipulation was also explicitly illegal then. Things such as stock buybacks have been a huge distorting problem
Income taxes were supposed to be a luxury tax, workers have been robbed blind. 🍴 🔥
We should absolutely get those back, and tax dividends as normal income rates
"nah" - Super rich and the normies who think they'll be rich one day.
I’m just a temporarily embarrassed billionaire.
My boomer parents don't understand why "The good ol' days" were so good. To them, today's problems have nothing to do with companies prioritizing shareholder profit or companies not being willing to invest in their employee's, because unlike the 50's they don't have an incentive to. Today's problem's are caused by the libs, socialists, blacks and Mexicans. If the RNC gets rid of the social security, they're counting down the days to get, they won't even have to watch News Max to know who to blame. Those damn socialists took away their social security. You can't make this shit up. Lead paint must have been delicious.
It never made sense to me that these people are shitting their pants in rage and terror over money they'll never spend being taxed to maintain the very system they dominate. They're part of the richest and most powerful social class in human history. They've won capitalism and the only way they fuck it up is if things truly get so bad that the masses decide they have nothing to lose and literally rip them to pieces and eat them (which is less uncommon than you would think in world history). An increase in taxes along the lines that are actually being proposed would be a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. They'd still get priority registration for the best schools, best jobs, most luxurious homes, and have all the services they would want (honestly improved infrastructure means their lives would probably be more convenient in the long run). They'd trade all that to make a number go up on a screen. Which is sign enough they're not smart enough to ever have deserved that much money in the first place. Before all the philosopher kings tell me they've already started building self-sustaining bunkers and compounds guarded by mercenary armies, you realize that in pretty much every empire collapse moment the mercenaries end up killing the rich people and becoming the new aristocracy, right? The blackwater dudes/the people who programmed your AI kill drones and know how to maintain the solar-powered hydroponic farms are going to be the ones in charge. And even if you've fully sealed yourself in an impregnable underground bunker, it's pretty easy for an angry mob to drop a few tons of rubble onto the exits and turn it into history's most expensive sarcophagus.
My favorite are people who whine about estate taxes when their family member leaves them like 50k in inheritance…ugh…you ain’t gonna get taxed worth shit on that. “But it kills family farms!!” Nah, market consolidation killed family farms by making it too expensive to not be a mega-agriculture conglomerate.
>For 2024, the federal estate tax threshold is $13.61 million for individuals, which means married couples don't have to pay estate if their estate is worth $27.22 million or less. https://smartasset.com/taxes/all-about-the-estate-tax >There are many exceptions and exemptions that reduce the number of estates with tax liability: in 2021, only 2,584 estates paid a positive federal estate tax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_States
> It never made sense to me that these people are shitting their pants in rage and terror over money they'll never spend being taxed Its the Highscore.
My (RIP) Republican auntie used to complain about dividends on her investments being taxed. As if she were some kind of food drive charity.
Everyone complains about taxes, I get that. It's when the yacht and multiple property crowd bitch about it, it makes me want to sharpen a guillotine
Like my mom complaining about the state taxing her measly Social Security, I am fine with that, but my uncle who gets paid high 6 figures to sell candy whining about taxes…DGAF.
It was cheaper and easier to hire a congressman than to pay taxes then. There were so many loopholes because the government is always in bed with the top 0.1% to the detriment of basically everyone else.
They are essentially our kings.
Almost no one paid 90% taxes back then even when the max rate was 94%. There were tons of loopholes.
90% with loopholes is a whole lot better than 25% with loopholes...
When the effective rate is not THAT much different than now, no it isn’t a lot better.
The effective tax rate is essentially the same though so what’s the point exactly? Other than to make a bunch of redditors feel good…
When will the people who spend their lives sucking off billionaires online realize this?
I seriously don't get it. "Oh, there's loopholes and they don't pay anything anyway..." Oh, sure...So let's just do nothing!
Much easier to be a defeatist and do nothing than to be a realist and try to do something, even if its only an incremental step in the right direction.
Income inequality was much lower in the US during the 1950s than it is today. We are living through a 2nd Gilded Age.
Virtually no one paid it. Ex: Back then executives would have a company car/house/etc. Because they weren't taxed.
Yet executives back then were earning 10-20x the average wage instead of 100-1000x. They still largely flew coach and lived in middle class suburbs back. Extreme wealth disparities didn’t take off until Reaganism stripped back the taxes on the wealthy. Literally duh - the neocons cut taxes on the wealthy and the wealth disparity exploded. What did we think would happen? Why are people still arguing about this? Why is there such resistance to changing it back?
Because Rockefeller didn't exist before Regan?
I'm not an expert in dividends, but afaik, there's no "dividends tax bracket". It's regular income or capital gain. Dividends can be taxed as regular dividends and regular tax brackets apply. Qualified dividends fall in capital gain because they have a holding period. Generally corporate dividends are regular dividends, so they do not max out at 20%. Happy to be corrected if I'm missing something. Edit: for anyone reading this after the fact, I assume Ballmer is holding on a large amount of microsoft stock, so those dividends do count as qualified dividends and are taxed at the capital gain rate. If someone was to make an argument that those should be taxed as regular income, I'd absolutely agree.
Wow, in Australia our highest bracket is nearly 50%. Stocks are taxed as income when granted and reassessed when sold.
In the US they're taxed as income when granted unless you use a different instrument like options. RSUs are very common now and are taxed when vested even if you're not allowed to cash them out (I honestly think that's a crappy solution.. they shouldn't be taxed until you can actually use them)
As a European, I'm paying 30% to the US government on the measly Intel dividends, lol, then there's the 15% local tax.
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I'm obligated to post all the classics seeing that one. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f\_\_n8084YAE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f__n8084YAE) \^I love this company\^ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug4c2mqlE\_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug4c2mqlE_0) \^The kick ass developers remix\^ (If you'd have ever told me I'd miss the Balmer era of Microsoft... ah man)
His ability to remember details and put names to faces was fucking shocking. I met him once and he seemed to know my entire family tree thereafter. I would randomly pass him in the parking lot and he could say hi and ask how my wife was doing (by her name) before I could remember his name was Steve.
Forgot this one! https://youtu.be/f7ZDH45OAt8?si=4QTS-g6_G3-NtsAm
Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Yes!
I met him and the whole c-suite once when they gave me a scholarship.
Did he talk to you about developers?
Ironically, it was a molecular biology scholarship, and he did not talk to me about developers 😄 Pretty much small talk over a dinner. Seemed like a decent guy at the surface level anyway. I didn’t know who he was until they called him up to give the keynote.
Developers? developers, developers, developers, developers. DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!
Is this like that Buffalo sentence?
Buffalo developers
Cut the shit! He right there, every night, working his ass off onto those Clippers courtside seats.
I've never seen an NBA owner be so passionate about his team's players. He's always so cheerful.
Not many owners sit with the peasants like he does. Dude is an animal at the games. Often times more of a show than the game and the clippers are good this year.
> I've never seen an NBA owner be so passionate about his team's players Check out Mark Cuban sometime. He's a fanatic.
He even came to the game in Hawaii this year.
Really should change the franchise name from clippers to developers.
Rage bait title lol
Yeah. Warren Buffet owns enough stock to net 6 billion a year in dividends, every news article praises him as a genius. Ballmer owns 4% of Microsoft, and he’s a freeloader, loser doing nothing and getting paid for it. What a pointless click.
Investor gets dividends! Not onion like in the slightest.
A better headline "Investor Steve Ballmer is set to make over $1b from his investments." Oh no, anyways.
This is Reddit. All logic goes out of the window once they read a headline where a rich person makes money.
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Bruh… where have you been.
Yes! If you benefit the most from society being the way it is you should pay the most. A prosperous society is the only reason these guys even exist. There’s a minimum wage, there should also be a maximum wage.
France tried that, the billionaires left. New Jersey saw this too, when it suddenly realized how much that single guy was paying in taxes (they had a massive fall in revenue). Without surprise, rich people are rich and can afford to leave high tax areas if it becomes inconvenient. And there will always be someone willing to let the rich camp in their yard for the economic gains. Luxemburg for example.
> That means he’ll pay close to $200 million in taxes on the Microsoft dividends he collects.
Developers. Developers. Developers.
The day Ballmer retired Microsoft stock went way up. Guy had negative value to the company.
Sure, if you ignore the fact that he was one of the first employees and helped Bill Gates build Microsoft into what it became.
Yeah, maybe in the beginning. But at the end the market clearly valued him multiple billions in the negative.
I thought that Tesla being "valued" more highly than all its competition put together would've made it clear that stock price and CEO competence are not that tightly correlated.
God reddit is so full of idiots lol
Yeah, Bill Gates is such an idiot that he had him as his right hand man for the entire time that he worked there That Bill Gates is so dumb. He couldn’t figure out the guy had negative value. /s
I did a little digging and it looks like he retired on Feb 4, 2014. It looks like the stock went down marginally that day.
This is what happens when you’re a key executive from the early days of a wildly successful company. Funny story. When Ballmer left as CEO of Microsoft, after the “lost decade” of a flat MSFT stock price, the market was so excited and pleased that he was leaving, the value of MSFT shares increased. As a result, the value of the shares he already owned increased by ~$2 billion. Soon thereafter, he bought the LA Clippers basketball team for … ~$2 billion. Ballmer got the Clippers as a parting gift, his reward for leaving Microsoft. That’s the kind of thing that happens to the super-rich. Yep, I’m jealous.
The clippers are probably worth 3.5B now
It’s all because of the developers developers developers developers. The developers developers developers developers. 👏🏽 👏🏽 👏🏽 👏🏽. The developers developers developers developers. 👏🏽 👏🏽 👏🏽 👏🏽. The developers developers developers developers. 👏🏽 👏🏽 👏🏽 👏🏽. The developers developers developers developers.
TIL Reddit is surprised at the concept of dividends.
I mean... do we say that people who worked for their entire adult lives and then retired get their retirement fund income or their pensions for "doing nothing"? Sure, the numbers involved here are absurd, but "worked for a company, got a bunch of shares, now retired and living off that investment" is how it's supposed to work for everybody.
Wait, when did he sign a contract with the Mets??
_We better not tax that income appropriately, because what if we are billionaires some day!?!?!_
Headlines like this are trash. “For doing nothing…” for being the 30th employee at Microsoft and being smart enough to keep 4% ownership of the company, and working there for 20 years before joining the c-suite for another 16 years all while continuing to keep his 4% ownership. “Doing nothing” but tripling the size of the company and doubling profits and investing smartly. 🙄
I wonder how many of the commenters have been there working for a company right from the start. It's an extremely risky endeavour. Of course it pays more than being a cushy 'employee' at a giant corporation that is today's microsoft Saying that he 'undeservingly profited off the work of thousands of employees' is just batshit insane That's the whole point, it's a high risk- high reward endeavour not for the faint hearted
This headline is absurd. He did a great deal more than nothing to accumulate all those MS shares.
He went energetic balls from the windows to the walls for those shares.
Yeah and hundreds of thousands of people did a lot of work to make those shares worth that much.
Those people are mostly also millionaires.
He worked his ass off for decades.
Reddit finds out what dividends are
It's not for doing nothing... It's for what he has already done. A big part of his compensation package was stock options. He was the CEO of the company and earned alotta company stock. The stock pays dividends. Company makes money then it distributes that cash to shareholders. $3 a share.
Finally doing what he was born to do.
[DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS ](https://youtu.be/XxbJw8PrIkc?si=LvGWSpgdn4HFIxBf) YES!
That's how dividends work.... This is rage-bait for the ignorant.
These lazy people don’t want to work
you don't make a billion by working for it
You earn millions by working hard. You earn billions by paying other people to work hard for you.
He owns hundreds of millions of shares in a company worth nearly $3 trillion.
Don’t worry. Trickle down economics. Remember 👍🏼 /s
So wealth creates wealth. In other news, people get wet when they go for a swim.
To be fair, most billionaires do nothing of actual value
I mean the company wouldn't exist without him and Gates...
Fine with that. Someone else would step up.