Photograph by Jeff Minton
They had his dining room waiting. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive and one of the richest men in the world, often eats privately at a Bellevue (Wash.) steakhouse whose name remains, at the behest of his security guards, a secret. Ballmer uses the room to break bread with prospective partners, employees, and, on one frigid Northwestern evening in November, a reporter. Although the room has enough space to host a small bar mitzvah, on this particular night, there’s only one table, graced with four meticulously presented settings and located center-floor, surrounded by empty space. It’s here that Ballmer, 55 and worth about $14 billion, wages a twin battle on the reigning conventional wisdom that discounts Microsoft’s role in the new digital landscape—and on a pork chop and accompanying wedge salad.
“Four years ago, you know, I can remember statistically when we would have looked far more like the overdog in everything,” he says. “Now we’ve got battles where we’re big and strong and powerful, and we’ve got battles where other guys are moving, and it’s fun to work both from the front of the pack and from the back of the pack sometimes. They’re different kinds of competition, but they both drive you, push you.”
For many, the lasting impression of Ballmer is the sweaty, breathless, booming clown seen in countless YouTube clips, such as the “monkey boy” dance from a decade ago. He plays the cheerleader in public appearances in an apparent effort to prove that no one can top his love of Microsoft—and he succeeds cringingly well. Six feet tall and stocky, Ballmer has an enthusiasm that makes him even larger. You get the sense he could beat you up. And yet the man in his private dining room, dipping bits of iceberg lettuce into a ramekin of blue cheese dressing, is an altogether different character. He asks about your family and moves deftly between sports, politics, and business. He listens to your replies. He never swears. At times he pushes his chair back and puts his elbows on his knees; other times he leans deep into the table. In an industry dominated by eccentric introverts, Ballmer is out of place in that he’s pretty normal.
“The fact of the matter is that the new guy will never quite look exactly like the visionary founder no matter how hard they try,” Ballmer says, when asked about the criticism that he lacks Bill Gates’s visionary profile. He asks the waiter to hold the sweet cream from his berries because, he volunteers, he has a weigh-in with his trainer at 5:30 in the morning. “I know what I want for Microsoft,” he says. “Whatever anybody wants to say or do, I’ve said for myself, I want to do more.”
If there’s anything unsettling about Ballmer, it’s his powers of fact retention. Maybe the third iced tea is kicking in, but at one point, Ballmer recites in descending order the exact market capitalization figures of all technology companies valued at more than $20 billion. Then he slices down to $10 billion. And then $5 billion. “Now, do you want to include Chinese companies?” he asks. He poses strategy questions about companies, hears your retort, then instantly counters with his own. About Microsoft, he’s quietly confident—as if he no longer has to convince you that Microsoft has a plan and is executing on it. While Ballmer has been CEO of Microsoft for 12 years, there’s a strong case to be made that his imprint on the company has only now become clearly visible.
“People might have missed this fact, but I got a new job three and a half years ago,” Ballmer says, referring to Gates’s retirement from day-to-day activities at Microsoft. In the subsequent period, Ballmer has replaced almost every major division head at Microsoft and overseen a dramatic shift away from the company’s PC-first heritage. He ordered the product groups to work together instead of operating as talent-hoarding fiefdoms. As a result, Microsoft arguably now has the best product lineup in its history.
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