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Steve Ballmer Bio, Founder of Microsoft

Steve Ballmer, born March 24, 1956, grew up in the Detroit area and graduated from Harvard with a double major in mathematics and economics. At Harvard, he lived in the same dorm as Bill Gates, who dropped out to start the Microsoft software company in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Microsoft's origins are surrounded by a chain of dropouts: Paul Allen dropped out of school to take a job as a programmer; Allen encouraged Gates to drop out to start Microsoft; and when Microsoft expanded while contracting with IBM to produce the operating system for its new PCs, Gates hired Ballmer -- causing Ballmer to drop out of Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

Ballmer eventually became Microsoft's Chief Executive Officer, overseeing company finances and infrastructure while Gates continued to oversee product- and vision-related decisions. With Allen's retirement, Ballmer and Gates are the longest-serving employees, and if Ballmer is the less well known of the two, he has nevertheless made a name for himself. A vocal opponent of Microsoft's competitors, he has condemned open-source software such as Linux, comparing it to cancer and communism, and has expressed hyperbolic derision for other technology companies and major-name products, like Apple's iPhone, which he has predicted will be a major flop.

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