How Steve Ballmer got his job

In a bit of investigative reporting that no one will care about, The Wall Street Journal has discovered that a series of disputes between Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates eight years ago caused a changing of the guard at the company. The paper writes that "The conflict between the two men paralyzed business-strategy decisions that the company still wrestles with today. Board members stepped in to try to mediate a truce."

The piece in the Journal is a nice human interest story, but that it would be the top story at the paper is a bit odd. That is until the reader considers that the cult of personality is still alive and well in American business. Chiefs like Lee Iaccoca and Jack Welch have written best-selling books. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) customers and shareholders worship Steve Jobs.

All of that, to a large extent, takes the eye off of the ball. The people who run large companies, even those that are fabulously successful, are only doing the jobs that the investing public expects of them. Even if they are founders. Gates and Jobs decided to take their companies public. After that, the only reasonable question is whether they made shareholders money.

In many ways, the transition from Gates to Ballmer has been a failure. Eight years ago, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) traded at $53. Now its stands at under $28. Gates may have turned the CEO job over to Ballmer, but neither has done the stockholders any favors.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.