Former Microsoft boss' favourite interview question

[cguy]

The discussion is about Ballmer, not Microsoft.
He made his $$ off MS... I'm saying he wasn't as much the driving force for that success as you give him credit for as a CEO.

I'm not saying he hasn't been personally successful. I'm saying he's not the guy I would go to for advice on interviewing or hiring people.

Yes, and Ballmer was upper management of a company that started up in 1980 and was worth hundreds of billions of dollars two decades later. It's reasonable to assume he had some level of professional competence when it came to hiring.

It's certainly not guaranteed that he's some sort of hiring guru because of this, but when people have had this sort of success, it's best to give some credence to their opinion, and if you don't agree with it, then perhaps give a critical response to the person who explained the typical progression of the question, as opposed to "My opinion. Lolz.", or whatever.

 

[cguy]

Actually I will concede that he was possibly successful as a hiring manager if that was one of his primary roles when Gates was head...
It seems it may have been.

Certainly his money was made under Gates and Nadella thanks to his 8% (under Gates) and 4% (under Nadella) stocks...
His own tenure as CEO was the worst for the company. But then perhaps as a middle to upper manager he was in his element.

That said, I still don't agree with this example of interview question, at least not if you've laid out a bit of your logic. It's too open to interpretation.

Besides, if he thinks answering yes to the gamble is a failure, well it seems he made a few of those poor gambles while at the helm.

EVP and President are hardly middle management. You also seem to have a fairly simplistic understanding of importance of the role of the CEO relative to exogenous factors.

Answering yes is a failure, given what is laid out. It’s really not very open ended at all. It doesn’t mean you won’t necessarily get the job - there are other questions, and more importantly, if you end up reversing your decision on the follow up “prove it” question by showing otherwise, you’d likely get full credit (certainly more than someone who said “no”, and couldn’t prove it).

 

[cguy]

No that is upper management, but he was not hired in either capacity.

Not sure what the level he was hired at matters... The stock price went up nearly 15x during his tenure of this position though. Point being that one really has to look at the average performance of the company over a long time, and look at the make up the long term leaders during that time. Poor stock performance over even long spans doesn’t necessarily mean poor leadership. Exogenous factors (like breakthroughs in search, or maturation of free *nix ecosystems) dominate the short to medium term.

 

[backstreetboy]

The discussion is about Ballmer, not Microsoft.
He made his $$ off MS... I'm saying he wasn't as much the driving force for that success as you give him credit for as a CEO.

I'm not saying he hasn't been personally successful. I'm saying he's not the guy I would go to for advice on interviewing or hiring people.

He was right with that interview though. Apple dropped the price of the iPhone by $200 just two months after it launched and it was a terrible business phone because it didn't work with Exchange ActiveSync.

 

[itareanlnotani]

He was right with that interview though. Apple dropped the price of the iPhone by $200 just two months after it launched and it was a terrible business phone because it didn't work with Exchange ActiveSync.

I was initially sceptical of the iphone until a friend bought one a few days after release, and started sending long messages to me (which was a change from his usual cryptic short messages). He wasn't that computer literate, and if he could use it, then I needed to check it out.

Was a world of difference from the then ubiquitous motorola or nokia's, and literally a game changer.
I bought one almost immediately after checking out my friends. It was that much of a difference.
Heck I still have mine, it works occasionally as an mp3 player at parties.