Was he? I struggle to see it even in hindsight, and definitely his moves were bunch of FU to common users. Maybe in some specific area you care about, but not their core products like windows and office

Not really. He killed the QA department immediately and consciously put MS onto the "slide into mediocrity" path.

Even with some of the Microsoft <3 Open Source, I do miss the Steve Balmer era in regards to Windows development experience.

Executive compensation corrupts, chief executive compensation corrupts absolutely.

yeah very effective, he fired 90% of our Windows Store team (reviewing the apps) in the first year to replace people with automation, I survived up to the last round of firing after which they kept ~20 employees out of original ~200