MBA Profile: Steve Ballmer

When Steve Ballmer decided to drop out of Stanford's MBA program in order to follow his friend into the computer business, his father had a few choice words for him.

Steve Ballmer: Billionaire. College Dropout.
by Amelia Gray

Frederick Ballmer, who was not a high school graduate himself, didn’t hold back. “He said, ‘You’re an idiot, you’re insane, this is nuts,’” Ballmer remembers. “I was here a month and a half, and I decided that perhaps I had dropped out of Stanford Business School to be the bookkeeper of a 30-person company, and that didn’t seem to make much sense.”

Fortunately for both father and son, a few lucky things fell into place. First, Steve studied within the challenging MBA program long enough to gain some critical skills. Second, the friend who convinced him to leave school was Bill Gates, and the two ended up at the helm of a company that led a technological revolution.

Brave Beginnings

Ballmer and Gates became fast friends during their freshman year at Harvard. They were a high-energy pair, finishing each other’s sentences and making big plans for the future. When Gates dropped out of Harvard to start a business he would call Microsoft, Ballmer stayed behind to finish his degree. Before going for his MBA, he worked for two years as an assistant product manager at Proctor & Gamble.

When he entered Stanford’s MBA program, he put his high-energy personality to work, gaining business management skills that added to his previous management and educational experience. When Gates approached him with his business plan, Ballmer weighed his options and made the first of many gutsy decisions that have seen him through his career.

MBA Training Pays Off—Even Without the Degree

Working at the helm of an upstart company without a completing an MBA was only one of Ballmer’s worries. “Personnel changes? Major strategy changes? Loss of major customers? Reorganizations? Been there, done that,” he recalls. As Microsoft’s first business manager, Ballmer needed personnel skills, organizational acumen, financial training, and a working knowledge of the technology that would become his bread and butter.

One of his major strengths at Microsoft has been his ability to understand his employees. “Our company has to be a company that enables its people,” he recently told Business Week. MBA programs teach these interpersonal skills, and Ballmer took a risk that paid off when he parlayed his training to a real-world company without completing his degree. Ballmer, who today is worth $12.4 billion dollars, still employs a measured criticism of himself. “I never give myself perfect grades,” he says, when asked about his performance as CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world. “But if you take a look at all that, I think the CEO deserves a pretty good grade, too.”

About the Author

Amelia Gray is a teacher and freelance writer in San Marcos, TX. Amelia earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from Arizona State University.

Sources:

Steve Ballmer: Western Washington University Business Forum Transcript
“Mr. Surround-Sound,” by Janice Maloney for Time
Profile: Steve Ballmer
“Steve Ballmer Shrugs Off The Critics” for Business Week

Posted on February 13, 2007 at 10:33 AM

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