Steve Ballmer Talks At Oxford University

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by Suril Amin 

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Steve Ballmer joined his old college friend Dean Peter Tufano at the Saïd Business School for a question and answer session.  This is among Steve Ballmer’s first public appearances since Satya Nadella was named CEO of Microsoft and Ballmer officially retired.

The relatively informal question and answer session deals very little with the future of Microsoft and mostly discusses higher level business inquiries such as innovation, failure, and management.  Personally I really miss Steve Ballmer, nobody had the energy & passion he had for the company and it’s quite apparent after watching this q&a session.

(Talk starts at around 5:30)

A few choice quotes from the talk that were tweeted by a senior Verge reporter:

  1. Ballmer answers question on what he’d want on his grave stone once he’s dead. “He was a great father and a great husband.”
  2. Ballmer says the number one best thing about being rich is “I can play just about any golf course I want on the planet.”
  3. “I own 4 percent of Microsoft, I care a lot about my child and my investment.” – Steve Ballmer
  4. “I am not an engineer. I have never written a line of production code in my life.” – Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO.
Ballmer also talked about regretting not being a having a bigger presence in the mobile market, but stated Microsoft would not give up.  He also said that the toughest decisions he had to make always came down to firing or hiring someone. Ballmer also discussed about the importance of “price” and having a clear business strategy along with understanding  accounting and & financing.
Near the end of the talk Ballmer stated over the past month he has spent much time golfing and has not yet decided what his future retirement plans are.

More about the topics: Oxford, Steve Ballmer

Suril Amin

Suril Amin Shield

Journalist

Suril is a scientist, journalist and obsessive Microsoft observer. He holds an advanced degree in Biotechnology with minors in Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology.