You need to provide some evidence of your positions otherwise I suggest it might just be more propagating narrative than anything reflecting what's really happening, which is again my overall point.

First off - opinions on HN don't matter at all.

Even the opinions of tech tastemakers often don't matter.

The vast majority of people in tech know nothing or care nothing of the personal disposition of Ballmer, Satya or Gates.

As you suggest 'perception matters' on some levels, but it's often not fundamental.

I'm doubtful at all that there was any material dissonance or embrace of MS technologies due to Ballmer v. Satya's approach.

Ballmer was by any reasonable measure, massively successful in growing MS developer mind share.

C# / .Net can only be described as a phenomenal success and this was mostly 'Ballmer era'.

Typescript, MS new daring web contribution was started under Ballmer, and it's also been important in terms of developing mind share.

MS VS Code was technically started under Ballmer, though it's possible he may have never supported it's release.

I think the failure of IE during the Ballmer era is a bad stain, but they were up against a good product as well (Chrome).

As for Satya - what products or initiatives has he launched that has improved MS position among developers? I think we can give him some credit for VS Code, what else?

Open Sourcing Chakra? That hasn't done much. Switching over to Edge/Chrome ... hasn't changed much.

Now let's consider the 'stock market attribution' issue.

" The stock market is by definition the best long term evaluator of a CEO "

So in early 2008, the majority of 'stock market' indicies would put most large bank CEO's in the 'good camp' but as it turns out they were completely wrong? Stock markets are often wrong.

What's at issue here is mostly market perceptions and macro fundamentals, not the assessment of CEOs.

In the early 2000's, P/E ratios in tech were not good, in 2009 obviously they crashed. Since then, we've seen increasing levels of liquidity from the Fed 'crazy market' valuations across the board. This has little to do with MS specifically.

Also in the 2000's MS had competitors in G and FB, investors were concerned about long term viability, keeping MSFT multiple specifically down a little. They thought Windows and Office were going to die. But this lack of foresight by analysts was wrong in retrospect wasn't it?

Windows is not dying.

Office is not dying esp. now that they are subscription + web.

The cloud is a big new business for MS, so are many of their other products.

In summary, almost everything Microsoft is today, is due to Gates and Ballmer. Were p/e ratios have been reasonable in perfect hindsight, the stock price would have reflected that and then some.

Satya has benefitted tremendously from the massive money making engine that Gates and Ballmer made, and it remains to be seen exactly what he will do that will make MS a fundamentally greater company.

I believe that Satya was the right choice for the right time, but that ultimately he will not be transformative on the level of either Gates or Ballmer. I don't think Satya is going to take MS into vast new lines of business, re-shaping what they are etc.. Instead - Satya will be guiding growth through a maturing of MS.