Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the best move he made after stepping down from the tech giant in 2014 was emotionally detaching from the company — though he admits it wasn’t easy and took nearly a year to fully let go.
In an interview on the “Acquired” podcast published Monday, Ballmer opened up about the emotional challenge of walking away from the company he helped build over three decades.
“It was my baby,” said Balmer, who replaced cofounder Bill Gates as CEO in 2000 and led the company until 2014. “I was there so early, and I hired basically everybody.”
Ballmer, known for his now-iconic, sweat-drenched “Developers! Developers! Developers!” chant at an early 2000s conference, said he initially tried to stay involved, not operationally but as an ultra-engaged investor.
He said he read everything, attended conferences and even went to a shareholder meeting where, by his own account, he was “kind of a dick.”
“I was too emotionally attached,” he said. “You can’t control anything anymore, so it’s hard. You don’t want to stay quite that emotionally attached because it’s like, ‘Oh, I got to get back in and fix everything.'”
Over the next year, Ballmer said he slowly worked on letting go. But his emotional attachment deepened when he and his wife, philanthropist Connie Snyder, began ramping up their philanthropy, eventually prompting him to consider selling all his Microsoft stocks.
“It was nothing to do with money,” he said. “My only thought process was emotional detachment.”
But just before he could hit the sell button, he said a former Microsoft colleague working with him in finance stopped him.
“She said, ‘You can’t sell. This is going to be worth a lot more’,” he said. “And I said, ‘Look, my loyalty trumps my emotional attachment,” and he held on to his stocks.
Now, Ballmer said he’s found balance.
“I’m just going to be loyal and emotionally detached enough for this to be okay,” he said.
He said he no longer obsesses over the stock’s highs or lows and has peace of mind knowing the foundation his wife and he built is thriving regardless.
