Looks like Gates has announced his plans to retire from the Day to Day activity over at Microsoft, between now and 2008.
Will this have any impact on the Company? The stock? The area? Doesn’t sound like good timing for this announcement to me, right after the “no more towels” fiasco. Your thoughts/opinions?
Well he’s not retiring, just stepping down from his day to day activity, going from full time to part time so he can work full time at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Will it have an impact on the company? It probably won’t as much as outsiders would think. Gates himself has said, “The world has had a tendency to focus a disproportionate amount of attention on me,” and “In reality, Microsoft has had an unbelievably strong breadth and depth of talent.” I think the rank and file employee at Microsoft still holds Bill in very high regard and will miss him. However, I don’t think the company is going change much in the near term because of Bill’s pending retirement.
Frankly, I’m more concerned about Scoblizer departure this past week than with Gates becoming a part time employee. Ever since Ballmer took over the CEO role in 2000, Gates has focused more his foundation and less focused on the company he co-founded. I hope Ray Ozzie can fill Bill’s big shoes…
As for the stock, I think nobody on Wall Street will give the company any love until Windows Vista ships or Google trips, which is unfortunate. There are a lot of things the company is doing right (Vista not withstanding) and I think the stock is undervalued. Oh well, time will tell if the Microsoft of 2016 will resemble a Dilbert strip or not.
As for the area, I don’t see much effect on property values. I don’t
forsee Bill moving away from his current home (and if he did, it wouldn’t sell very quickly). More importantly, Microsoft is still hiring so I think the demand for housing on the eastside is going to continue.
As for the towels, I thought they came back recently. Regardless, I hope Microsoft will fare better with Bill leaving, than Apple did when Steve Jobs left the first time.
Didn’t Bill turn over the company to Steve Balmer a long time ago? I think this might just be an official announcement about what he has already been up to for the last 3 or 4 years now. By the way, we’d love some of Bill’s business down here in Orange County. We have plenty of great Real Estate, and some of it, only Bill and his friends can afford.
The bigger story is that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Balmer is expected to step down. The guy who might take his place has origins at Wal-Mart. If I know anything about Wal-Mart is they like efficiency so I wouldn’t be suprised to see layoffs and other “efficiency measures” in the near future at Microsoft. This will be good for the company in the long-term but maybe bad for some individuals in the short-term.
Well he’s not retiring, just stepping down from his day to day activity, going from full time to part time so he can work full time at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
5 years down the road ahead of Microsoft is still setup for big spending to catch up with Google.
Will it have an impact on the company? It probably won’t as much as outsiders would think. Gates himself has said, “The world has had a tendency to focus a disproportionate amount of attention on me,” and “In reality, Microsoft has had an unbelievably strong breadth and depth of talent.” I think the rank and file employee at Microsoft still holds Bill in very high regard and will miss him. However, I don’t think the company is going change much in the near term because of Bill’s pending retirement.
Frankly, I’m more concerned about Scoblizer departure this past week than with Gates becoming a part time employee. Ever since Ballmer took over the CEO role in 2000, Gates has focused more his foundation and less focused on the company he co-founded. I hope Ray Ozzie can fill Bill’s big shoes…
As for the stock, I think nobody on Wall Street will give the company any love until Windows Vista ships or Google trips, which is unfortunate. There are a lot of things the company is doing right (Vista not withstanding) and I think the stock is undervalued. Oh well, time will tell if the Microsoft of 2016 will resemble a Dilbert strip or not.
As for the area, I don’t see much effect on property values. I don’t
forsee Bill moving away from his current home (and if he did, it wouldn’t sell very quickly). More importantly, Microsoft is still hiring so I think the demand for housing on the eastside is going to continue.
As for the towels, I thought they came back recently. Regardless, I hope Microsoft will fare better with Bill leaving, than Apple did when Steve Jobs left the first time.
Didn’t Bill turn over the company to Steve Balmer a long time ago? I think this might just be an official announcement about what he has already been up to for the last 3 or 4 years now. By the way, we’d love some of Bill’s business down here in Orange County. We have plenty of great Real Estate, and some of it, only Bill and his friends can afford.
The bigger story is that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Balmer is expected to step down. The guy who might take his place has origins at Wal-Mart. If I know anything about Wal-Mart is they like efficiency so I wouldn’t be suprised to see layoffs and other “efficiency measures” in the near future at Microsoft. This will be good for the company in the long-term but maybe bad for some individuals in the short-term.
He has earned enough to support his great-grandchildren and their great-grandchildren and so on….