Can Ballmer Still Lead Microsoft (MSFT) Without Employee Support?

Steve Ballmer may have lost Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT).

According to sources Tuesday, a meeting at Microsoft last Friday was the worst one in the 10 years since Bill Gates stepped down as CEO. The news comes from a blog post with many comments from Microsoft employees.

While the authenticity of these employees can not be confirmed (as many posts were authored by "Anonymous"), the thread was concerning either way.

After carefully scouring the comments section, we've picked out a few gems:

• "It is the most depressing time per my 10 years at MS, actually. Everyone is either leaving or planing to leave. Everyone is selling stocks. The review results this year looks opposite to the actual work."
  
  
• "What a mess, thanks HR, thanks Execs. Why can't you figure out a system that gets people genuinely working together, grow the strong/potentials while weeding out the weak/wasters, the current approach obviously less than optimal given recent FYs attrition rate, sales erosion and stock price."
  
  
• "What a sad spectacle. While SteveB was yacking away, people were leaving in droves. Back in the good old days when BillG spoke, EVERYONE listened."
  
  
• "When in doubt, always trust in Steve. After all, just look at his record:
  • "Vista will be great"
    
  • "We'll catch Google in search within a year"
    
  • "iPhone won't get any significant share"
    
  • "iPad is a toy"
    
  • "MS isn't being disrupted"
    
  • "We love our strategy"
• "Steve, you've lost the support of your employees - when will you realize that you're holding this once great company back?"
  
  
• "...And that should be the final nail in his coffin from the board's perspective. Losing the support of Wall St, which happened more than half a decade ago, shouldn't have been ignored. But a CEO can still perform their daily duties without that, as he and a few others have. But a CEO who has lost the support of his employees can't function period."
  
  
• "Yep, pretty sad to see all the seats empty out while SteveB was talking... hopefully he gets the hint and bows out in the Win8 timeframe."
  
  
• "Great demos and pretty good overall. Only thing is the last part, windows, cannot lose. Sounds a bit defensive from our CEO."
  
  
• "SteveB did one of the smartest things I've ever seen him do as CEO today: He delegated responsibility by paying someone else to jump around like an a**hole during his entrance instead of doing it all by himself. Now if only he'd do the same with his regular day job..."
  
  
• "finally, SB stopped his monkey dance ..."

One of the better comments unrelated to Ballmer directly: "It's only cannibalization if a species is eating its own species; human eating human, dog eating dog, for example. When a cheetah eats a water buffalo, it is not cannibalizing, it's just eating."

With the recent oustings of Yahoo!'s (Nasdaq: YHOO) former CEO Carol Bartz and Hewlett-Packard's (NYSE: HPQ) Leo Apotheker, and given the woeful state of Microsoft employees... could Ballmer be that far behind?

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