There was a Steve Ballmer AMA on Reddit yesterday that largely went unreported.
- We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of ’77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything!
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2m7cmt/
were_steve_ballmer_harvard_college_class_of_77/
I was busy all yesterday so could only read the thread after the fact. Here’s some questions that were answered:
- Steve- what financial metrics/valuation did you use to value the Clippers? Anything more than I want it at any price?
- Were you involved with the decision to make .NET open source? What were the motivations behind the change in strategy?
- Steve – What do you think is the most common frustration that CEO’s of large companies face that the average person is unaware of?
- What is something that surprised you being the CEO of Microsoft?
- Steve, First off, thanks for coming to Harvard and meeting with a bunch of different groups (I was lucky enough to see you three times: in CS 50, in your meeting with the Sports Statistics group last night, and earlier today in Allston). Just some questions:
1) What are you thinking before you go out and give a talk in front of a bunch of people? You’re always so hyped up and energetic throughout, and I’ve always wanted to know what’s going on through your mind (if anything at all).
2) I know a good amount of people that compare you to Mark Cuban. What’s your take on this comparison?
3) What do you think of basketball’s player efficiency rating?
4) Do you know Chris Paul’s twin brother Cliff?
5) Why didn’t you pick my name in the raffle for the Xbox Ones? - Steve – if you could play H-O-R-S-E against any 3 people in the world, who would you play against?
- How important do you think are MOOCs (or MOOCs providers like EDX) to the future of CS education and making the world better, since more than 99.9% of people can’t go to Harvard? As a personal example, I am, for now, still intellectually unable to go to Harvard (or MIT), but after completing Introduction to CS from MIT part 1, part 2 and (almost) finishing CS50 (from Harvard), I changed in my local university from Electric Engineering to CS. Unfortunately they still have the old thinking like "you put an input and get a specific output" from programs, but, hey, better than engineering.
- What are elements of Harvard student culture that you like and dislike?
- To Steve, what advice would you give a young entrepreneur. I want to give my friend some advice but why not ask the best?
- Do you prefer SCRUM or another type of SW development?
- Moores law. How long do you think it will last (and/or be relevant)? What will be the biggest benefit of more available computing power in the next ~10 years or so? And where will it be utilized (home/data centers/cloud/science/skynet)?
kurtsh
