Comment on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
merc@sh.itjust.works 9 hours agoFuck you they were. They wanted to sell you a computer so that you’d install Office. They never wanted you to do whatever you wanted with it. They intentionally changed internal APIs to break third party software that they didn’t want people using. This is also the era where they were constantly spreading FUD about Linux, convincing people that merely using Linux meant you were legally liable for patent infringement, etc.
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Truth. I had a friend who worked at MS (not in Redmond) back in the early 90s post-IPO when Ballmer was CEO and when most of the people working there were temps so MS could avoid the legal repercussions of the toxic workplace culture they’d built and get around paying benefits or overtime, and even then Ballmer was the most personally repugnant trailer trash CEO imaginable. People put up with it because it was Microsoft and endless fountains of cash, but he was an even worse CEO than he was a human being, and that’s quite a low bar to limbo under but he managed.