| Ka-pi96 said: Makes Ballmer sound pretty good  |
Having been CEO of Microsoft for many years I am certain that behind closed doors he's friggin excellent at what he does and probably not a whiney prick who just wants to blame people and fire them for every mistake. It's just his public / on stage persona that is so cringingly polarising.
But also even though $1.15Bn is a lot of money in anyone's language, with MS's total revenue and profitability it is really just a blip, albeit a biggish one but a blip nonetheless, in the accounts. It's not like $1.15Bn would require Steve to go to the board and say "you know that important project we've been working on? Well we have to pull funding for a year to cover the costs of a fuck up with the Xbox 360 and it's RRoD." No, that $1.15Bn was pulled out of cash in hand.
Also Xbox failings would never have harmed share price, because at that time Xbox was seen by the share market as a money pit and hearing of a $1.15Bn fix it job for a design / engineering fault would just cause an eye-roll by the sharemarket, a momentary pause to consider whether this affects MS's core business, quick realisation the answer is no, and carry on.
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."
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