Steve Ballmer and his time at Microsoft

Ballmer was born in Detroit in 1956 and after going through Harvard graduating magna cum laude in applied mathematics and economics, he went on to work at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Three years later he ended up joining the Redmond giant, where he worked for more than thirty years until he decided to retire

Ballmer was signed by Microsoft on June 11, 1980and became the company's 30th employee and the first Business Manager hired by Bill Gates.

Ballmer at Microsoft

The salary initially offered to him was $50,000 as well as a percentage of the company, in particular, Ballmer received shares worth 8% of the company. Currently after regular sales operations Steve Ballmer holds 4% of Microsoft on the Stock Market

For the next 20 years, Ballmer headed various divisions of Microsoft including Operations, Operating System Development, and Sales and Support. In February 1992, Steve Ballmer took over as Executive Vice President of Sales and Support.

Two years later he served as President of Microsoft, until February 2001, while leading the development of .NET. In January 2000 Ballmer was officially named Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ballmer as a successor to Bill Gates who passed into the background in the company.

In 2009, and for the first time since Bill Gates stepped down as CEO of the company, Ballmer gave the keynote opening at the CES fair.

After that we have seen how the Xbox division has taken a lot of strength in the company and how they have taken a big step in thesmartphones segment with Windows Phone 7 - 8, since its unpopular Windows Mobile 6.5, its first steps in the growing segment tabletwith your Microsoft Surface Pro and Surface RT.

Ballmer's pace in figures

Under Ballmer's tenure, the company's profits went from 25,000 million to 70,000 million, to which must be added a net increase in income of 215% .

Ballmer Leveraged successful divisions like Windows and Office, but also created new lines of business like data centers (6.6 billion profits in 2011) or the Xbox entertainment division (8.9 billion profits).

As a company leader, Ballmer has outperformed other technology CEOs such as Jack Welch or IBM's Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.

One of the reasons for these good results has been product diversification that has helped cushion the decline in the PC business. In these years we have seen how Microsoft has recovered from the small step backwards with Vista and we already know how Windows 7 and the most current and recent Windows 8 are taking the reins of the segment.

The company's entry into tablet territory with its Microsoft Surface has been one of the most criticized decisions due to poor sales figures, however Windows Phone seems to be gaining strength in the sector and even more so if we stop to see how in South America it is the second mobile operating system according to popularity and users.

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