Billionaire Steve Ballmer: Early Life, Career, The Clippers, and his Net Worth
" Computer science
is the operating system for all innovation."
Steve Ballmer
Steven Anthony
Ballmer is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA, former CEO
of Microsoft who led the company from 2000 to 2014. He has a net worth of US $64.63B (as of May 27, 2020) and is known for his audacious marketing skills.
The 63- year old is an American businessman and investor who ranks as No.7 on the Forbes 2020 World's Billionaires list.
Early Life and Education
Steven Anthony
Ballmer was born on March 24, 1956, to Beatrice Dworkin and Frederic Henry
Ballmer (Fritz Hans Ballmer). His father Fred was a swiss immigrant who was the
manager at the Ford motor company and predicted his son's Harvard affiliation.
As a child, Ballmer was usually shy even while in Hebrew school
From 1964 to
1967 Ballmer lived in Brussels, where he attended the International School of
Brussels.
In 1973, he
attended college prep and engineering classes at Lawrence Technological
University. He graduated valedictorian from Detroit Country Day School, a
private college preparatory school in Beverly Hills, Michigan, with a score of
800 on the mathematical section of the SAT becoming a National Merit Scholar
sitting on the school's board of directors.
In 1977, he
graduated magna cum laude with B.A in Mathematics and Economics from Harvard
University where he was a manager for the Crimson football team, a member of
the Fox Club, and also worked on the Harvard
Crimson newspaper and Advocate, living down the hall from fellow
sophomore Bill Gates.
In 1980 Steve
dropped out of the Stanford graduate school of business before finally
beginning his career at " P & G".
Career History
Procter and Gamble
In 1977
immediately after college, Ballmer joined Procter and gamble where he worked as
assistant product manager for a period of two years sharing office with Jeffrey
Immelt (now CEO of General Electric) before he left Stanford Graduate school of
business in 1980, to work as a business manager for his friend - Bill Gates,
who had dropped out of school to start Microsoft.
Microsoft
Starting as the
30th Microsoft's official employee and the Company's first business manager, on
June 11th, 1980 Ballmer received the offer of a salary worth $50,000 with about
8% ownership share of the company at incorporation in 1981. This share dropped
to 4% after he sold about 39.3 million Microsoft shares later on in 2003.
Ballmer held
various posts over a period of two
decades as Microsoft evolved into one of the most powerful and profitable
companies in American history. Ballmer headed departments such as the
operations, operating systems development, and sales and support.
In 1992, he
became Executive Vice President, sales and support where he led the development
of the .NET framework before he got
promoted to become president of Microsoft in July 1998, a position he held for
two years.
On January 13,
2000, he was officially announced CEO of the company and he became a major
deciding factor of the Microsoft brand. He addressed matters ranging from
company finances to daily operations, with Gates retaining control of the
"technological innovations" as chief software architect and as
chairman. Ballmer at this point as CEO required added detailed business
advantages in order to approve new products, to ensure that product innovations
are not just an appeal to trends but also a profitable business venture.
One of his
first call as CEO was the resolution of the government and states lawsuit
against Microsoft which could have gone longer if not for his intervention.
In 2005, he
recruited B. Kevin Turner from Wal-Mart, to lead the company's sales,
marketing, and services group while instilling process and discipline in the
company's operations and salesforce.
Bill Gates
stepped down as chief software architect in 2006, he relinquished daily
activities while staying on as chairman, giving Ballmer volition to make major
management changes at Microsoft. These changes include:
-"A
dramatic shift away from the company's PC-first heritage"
-Replacement of
most major division heads in order to break down the bulky departmental
divisions into smaller and specialized fronts and this was reported on
Businessweek that the company "arguably now has the best product lineup in
its history".
- Driving
Microsoft's connected computing strategy, with procurements such as Skype
- Ballmer built
half a dozen new businesses such as the data centers division, the Xbox
entertainment, and devices division (worth $8.9 billion) which served as a
deterrent to Sony PlayStation and other gaming consoles seeking to undermine
Windows. He built an enterprise worth $20 billion, consisting of new products
and services such as Exchange, Windows Server, SQL Server, etc. each of which
initially faced an uphill battle for acceptance but emerged dominant in all
their categories.
His lack of
focus on developing the Windows Mobile Market in the early 2000s left Microsoft in a distant third in the
current smartphone market and this was criticized.
A report made
May 2012 Forbes magazine column quotes Adam Hartung describing Ballmer as
"the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company", saying
he had "steered Microsoft out of some of the fastest-growing and most
lucrative tech markets (mobile music, headsets, and tablets)".
This problem
faced him up against an already competitive hardware market, on June 19, 2012,
Ballmer revealed Microsoft's first-ever computer device, a tablet called
Microsoft Surface at an event held in Hollywood, Los Angeles. His last major
acquisition for Microsoft as CEO was the purchase of Nokia's mobile phone
division in September 2013.
In August 2013
Ballmer announced his retirement, after losing billions of dollars in
acquisitions on the Surface tablet. He was later succeeded by Satya Nadella in
February 2014.
Personal Life
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