Ballmer didn’t join Microsoft until 1980, four years after the software company was founded.
become employee No. 30, with the hazily defined title of “business manager.”
agreed to pay Ballmer not just an annual base salary of about $50,000 but also 10% of all the profit growth he could generate.
didn’t make sense for Microsoft to keep operating as a private partnership, with Gates owning 64% and Allen holding the other 36%. Marquardt wanted Microsoft to reorganize as a corporation with wider stock ownership
Before long, Ballmer and Marquardt presented Microsoft’s founders with a proposed new capital structure. Gates and Allen would keep 84% of the company. Ballmer would get about 8%, in return for canceling his profit-sharing clause. All other employees would split the final 8%.