Steven Anthony Ballmer (born March 24, 1956) is an American businessman and the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation since January 2000. Ballmer is the first person ever to become a billionaire (in U.S. dollars) based on stock options received as an employee in a corporation of which neither he nor a relative was the founder. In its 2006 "World's Richest People" ranking, Forbes magazine ranked Ballmer as the 24th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $13.6 billion.

Early life and education

Ballmer was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father, Frederick Ballmer, was a Swiss immigrant; his mother, Beatrice Dworkin, was Jewish[citation needed]. Ballmer grew up with his younger sister in Farmington Hills near Detroit, where his father worked as a manager at Ford Motor Company.

During his studies at the Detroit Country Day School, Ballmer was the manager of the school's basketball team. In 1973, he graduated from school with a grade point average of 4.0 and was the valedictorian of his class. He scored a perfect 800 on the math SAT and competed in math tournaments. Ballmer won a scholarship to Harvard College. During his freshman year he developed a close friendship with his dormmate, Bill Gates, a friendship that continued even after Gates dropped out of Harvard to start his own software company, Microsoft. At Harvard, Ballmer was the advertising manager for both The Harvard Crimson and The Harvard Advocate. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in applied mathematics and economics in 1977.

Career

After graduation, Ballmer worked for two years at Procter & Gamble as an assistant product manager before joining Stanford Graduate School of Business to get a Master of Business Administration degree. He dropped out of Stanford a year later when Gates invited him to work at Microsoft. Ballmer became Microsoft's 24th employee on June 11, 1980, the first business manager hired by Gates. He was initially offered a salary of $50,000 as well as a percentage of ownership of the company. When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8 % of the company.

Ballmer has headed several divisions within Microsoft, including Operating Systems Development, Operations, and Sales and Support. In July 1998, he was promoted to president, and on January 13, 2000, he was named chief executive officer when Gates stepped down from that position.

While Gates retains control of technological vision, Ballmer handles company finances. In 2003, Ballmer sold 8.3 % of his shareholdings, leaving him with a 4 % stake in the company. The same year, Ballmer ended the Microsoft stock-options program[citation needed], a program he himself was instrumental in setting up in the early 1990s which made so many of its employees millionaires.

Ballmer is currently the longest-serving employee of Microsoft. Ballmer married Connie Snyder (a Microsoft employee) in 1990 and has three sons.

Personality and criticism

Steve Ballmer is known to be passionate in expressing his enthusiasm. Once, his vocal cords required surgery after he screamed "Windows, Windows, Windows" continuously at a meeting in Japan in 1991[1]. When Microsoft celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2000, Ballmer popped out of the anniversary cake to surprise the audience. His wild screaming and dancing on stage at an employees convention was caught on a widely-circulated video known as "Dance Monkeyboy." A few days later at a developers' conference, a sweat-soaked Ballmer repeatedly chanted "developers" at least 14 times in front of the bemused gathering ( video).

Ballmer has claimed that the most common format of music on iPods is "stolen". He advocates digital rights management and has said that "DRM is the future."

Ballmer is reputed to have a sometimes violent temper. Mark Lucovsky has claimed that Ballmer became violently enraged on hearing that Lucovsky was about to leave Microsoft for Google, Ballmer threw a violent and destructive rage, throwing a chair across the room and saying, according to Lucovsky: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again … I'm going to fucking kill Google." Shortly after, he resumed trying to persuade Lucovsky to stay at Microsoft. Ballmer has described Lucovsky's account of the incident as a "gross exaggeration of what actually took place." [2] [3]

In an interview with Fortune magazine (March 29, 2006) [4], Ballmer described how business and family life intersected. When asked if he used an iPod, he said, "No, I do not. Nor do my children.... I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod."

• Corporate biography
• "Monkey Boy" video
• "Dance Monkeyboy" video on Google Videos
• Monkey video re-mix/combo (QuickTime .mov file)
• Japanese music video based on "Developers, developers, developers." featuring a Domo-kunQuickTime .mov file) (
• Steve Ballmer in a self-parody "ad" for Windows 1.0 (Macromedia Flash video)
• Forbes World's Richest People listing