Steve Ballmer must be getting a little bit tired of being the target of so many people who think he needs to leave his CEO post at Microsoft. CNBC called him the second worse CEO in 2012. On Monday, financial consultant Adam Hartung claimed Ballmer was one of the main reasons why Microsoft was, in his humble but misguided opinion, going to implode in the next few years.
The latest person to attack Ballmer is Joachim Kempin, who worked at Microsoft between 1983 and 2002. Reuters reports that Kempin has written a tell-all book, 'Resolve and Fortitude: Microsoft's "secret power broker" breaks his silence'.
Kempin rose in the ranks at Microsoft to become the head of Windows software sales to OEM PC makers. However, he left after the contracts he helped to form with those PC makers were used in part by the US government in its antitrust investigation of the company.
Kempin says that Ballmer has found a way to drive anyone in the company away who Ballmer saw as a threat to his leadership. He stated, "When you work that directly with Ballmer and Ballmer believes 'maybe this guy could someday take over from me', my God, you will have less air to breathe, that's what it comes down to."
He feels that Ballmer should step down from CEO and become its chief operating officer, adding, "I respect that guy (Ballmer), but there are some limitations in what he can and can't do and maybe he hasn't realized them himself."
So who should be Microsoft's new CEO? Kempin doesn't have a specific name but does feel he or she should be relatively young, "maybe 35-40 years old" that better understands the mobile phone and Facebook generation. Microsoft has yet to comment on Kempin's books and his statements. For his part, Kempin claims that he has sent copies of his book to both Ballmer and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
Source: Reuters | Image via Microsoft
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