alt Hacker NewsI’m a big, big fan of acquired podcast, listened to every single of their episodes.
But I remember their entire Microsoft episodes felt like a lengthy defense of Steve Ballmer. There were too many instances of “here’s why this bad decision of Steve made sense given the circumstances” or “ here is how people underestimate the contribution of Steve on this good decision.” They were all well argued points, of course, but so numerous that I found myself wondering if the hosts does not have a relationship with Steve.
The existence of this interview does not help with that suspicion.
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I think the big thing was Steve did make a lot of great decisions, some of the best the company could at that time in those respective fields but completely missed on everything that Apple did. Portable media players, smart phones and tablets and those are the three huge misses and that is really were it counted.
The old three envelope joke.
You become CEO and there are three envelopes on your office desk, a note says "Every time there is an issue you open them in order and do what is inside". First envelope says "Blame your predecessor.". The second says "Blame yourself". The third says "Prepare three envelopes".
This is the problem with podcasts, but also modern media, in general. You have to play softball or be ideologically homogeneous to get access. Anything else has a negative k for a variety of reasons.
I haven't listened to all their MSFT coverage but it's possible they genuinely feel Ballmer's gotten a worse rap than he deserves and they're trying to contextualize some of the decisions and circumstances.
Yes, but as sibling comment says there's that thing about softball.
I think Ballmer was better than how he was perceived. So I did expect some justification, etc in their MS episodes. But these points seemed, to use your word, numerous. I think they must have done this because in preparation for those MS episodes, they did talk to Ballmer, and expected him to listen to the episodes. Comparatively their Bernard Arnault, LVMH games take on episodes like LVMH, Hermes seemed somewhat balanced.