Good old Steve is heading for a Microsoft exit soon. The outgoing CEO will leave the company in the coming months, as soon as a successor is found. And the man who has spent the last 13 years leading the technology titan has plenty to share on his tenure.
Steve Ballmer not only has more time to talk about his time at the company, but he is also rather candid in reflecting upon the decisions has had to make as the head of the software titan.
You may recall that he already admitted not so long ago that Windows Vista was his biggest regret, but the man now calls it his single biggest mistake.
In a new interview, Ballmer spoke in elaborate detail on what effects this had:
“When I look at it and I say, okay, what’s the thing that I did that I feel — that I regret the most, not just in my CEOship but my whole time here, it’s absolutely ‘Longhorn becomes Vista.’ That was the single biggest mistake I made.
Why? Not only because the product wasn’t a great product, but remember it took us five or six years to ship it. Then we had to sort of fix it. That was what I might call Windows 7.”
Ballmer goes on to label this as not just something that went wrong in execution, but a technical strategy mistake. He and other senior executives were aware that Windows Vista was going to fail, but they tried to address and fix all issues as quickly as they could.
The full interview is an excellent read, so hit up the link above to get some firsthand insight.
