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Steven Anthony Ballmer (born March 24, 1956 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American businessman and has been the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation since January 2000. Ballmer is the first person to become a billionaire (in U.S. dollars) based on stock options received as an employee of a corporation in which he was neither a founder nor a relative of a 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 $15 billion.
Early life and education
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[3] and competed in math tournaments. Ballmer was then admitted 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. CareerAfter graduation, Ballmer worked for two years at Procter & Gamble as an assistant product manager before enrolling in Stanford Graduate School of Business to get a Master of Business Administration degree. He dropped out of Stanford a year later when Gates persuaded 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.
Ballmer is currently the longest-serving employee of Microsoft after Gates. Ballmer married Connie Snyder (a Microsoft employee) and has three children. He is the uncle of former major league baseball player Ben Petrick. Public personaBallmer's tendency to loudly and enthusiastically express himself is well known. A famous 1991 incident left his vocal cords requiring surgical repair after he screamed "Windows, Windows, Windows" continuously during a meeting in Japan.[5] With the advent of Internet video, such incidents have become increasingly infamous. Viral videosFootage featuring Ballmer during on-stage appearances at Microsoft events have been widely circulated on the internet, becoming what are known as "viral videos". The most famous of these is commonly titled "Dance Monkeyboy", and features Ballmer dancing around and screaming erratically on a stage for about 45 seconds after being introduced at an employee convention. Another video, captured at a developers' conference just days later, featured a sweat-soaked Ballmer chanting the word "developers", at least fifteen times, in front of the bemused gathering.[6] On competitionBallmer is also known as a vocal critic of competing companies and their products. He has referred to the free Linux software system as a "[…] cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."[7] and earlier described it as having "[…] characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it."[8] In 2004, he made headlines by claiming that the most common format of music on iPods is "stolen".[9] During an interview with Fortune magazine, he was asked whether he used an iPod, and replied, "No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children--in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod."[10] According to one former employee's headline-grabbing allegations, this competitive nature has manifested itself more violently. In 2005, Mark Lucovsky alleged in a sworn statement to a Washington state court that Ballmer became highly enraged upon hearing that Lucovsky was about to leave Microsoft for Google. Lucovsky said Ballmer threw a chair across the room and shouted: "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."[11]
Conflict with Linux developersSteve Ballmer has claimed that Linux violates Microsoft intellectual property[12]. While Novell has chosen to pay $40,000,000 in order to protect its distribution, SUSE, some developers within the linux community have reacted with anger to Ballmer's claims demanding that Microsoft Show us the code. Portrayals
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