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Bill Gates' Management Style
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun May 06, 2007 10:31 AM
from the behold-the-glorious-borg-icon dept.
from the behold-the-glorious-borg-icon dept.
replicant108 wrote in to give us Tom Evslin's fascinating account of working for Microsoft in the early 90s. "So you're in there presenting your product plan to billg, steveb, and mikemap. Billg typically has his eyes closed and he's rocking back and forth. He could be asleep; he could be thinking about something else; he could be listening intently to everything you're saying. The trouble is all are possible and you don't know which. Obviously, you have to present as if he were listening intently even though you know he isn't looking at the PowerPoint slides you spent so much time on.
At some point in your presentation billg will say "that's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft." He looks like he means it. However, since you knew he was going to say this, you can't really let it faze you. Moreover, you can't afford to look fazed; remember: he's a bully."
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News: The Fall Geek TV Lineup 318 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Wired has an article looking at this Fall's bumper crop of geek TV. McG, who directed the pilot for the show Chuck, opines that the appearance of nerd culture on network television is a long-overdue reflection of real life. From the article: 'Hollywood, he said, is playing catch-up with IT culture. "The classic shape of the computer geek is over when Bill Gates became the (richest), most aspirational, coolest guy in the world," he said. "He is the original thick-glasses, pocket-protector guy. Now who doesn't want to be like Bill Gates?"' They have reviews of the lengthy list of shows, for clues as to what to watch and what to miss."
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And that idea was... (Score:5, Funny)
"that's the dumbest fucking idea..." (Score:5, Funny)
But why greenlight them, bill?
Re:"that's the dumbest fucking idea..." (Score:5, Funny)
1. invent 'clippy'
2. "That's the dumbest fucking idea..."
3. ???
4. clippy get's accepted
That poor guy must have gone through some hell in #3 there.
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Re:"that's the dumbest fucking idea..." (Score:5, Funny)
via the MS Bob project anyway...
puts number 3 in a different light.
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Re:"that's the dumbest fucking idea..." (Score:5, Funny)
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I know I wouldn't last long (Score:5, Funny)
"that's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft."
And 'Clippy' was a great idea?
Re:I know I wouldn't last long (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I know I wouldn't last long (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I know I wouldn't last long (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, as coarse as his management style is/was, a key ingredient in its success may have been in the fact that he's a really smart guy who wants to be convinced of why your ideas are right, and while he's a tough customer, he can be convinced.
Now, there are a lot of boneheads on Planet Earth. Everybody has worked under a PHB who you have to practically subvert in order to keep your company afloat. But far more insidious are smart people who don't know how to argue or debate - or, if they do, replace actual discussion with fallacy. They use tactics such as circular arguments, attrition, argument from authority, ad-hominem attacks and stonewalling to prevent any actual reason from taking place. And usually, they're the most powerful person in the room, so your only option is to say, "Actually, sir, you haven't responded to any point I've made, and I think some outside factor is influencing your decision." Yippee.
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Stop cowering before managment... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Stop cowering before managment... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't just quietly leave, explain clearly why you are leaving. You like the job and the pay is fine, but there is too much internal bullshit to make the job worthwhile. When Billg says "That's the dumbest idea I've heard ..." respond by saying "You are wrong, it is an excellent idea. Your criticism is niether constructive, nor professional. I will be taking my ideas elsewhere." Then immediately leave the room, perhaps the building. So before you present your idea to Billg you should look for a new job.
That's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been on Slashdot.
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This explains a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about presentation. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe you should've spent less time on the PowerPoint slides and more time thinking about how your idea was going to (figuratively) grab Billg around the throat and shake him until he said, "That's the best idea I've ever heard since I've been here at Microsoft."
I mean, shit, do you really think you're going to impress the CEO of Microsoft with a PowerPoint presentation, of all things?
Re:It's all about presentation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you should've spent less time on the PowerPoint slides and more time thinking about how your idea was going to (figuratively) grab Billg around the throat and shake him until he said, "That's the best idea I've ever heard since I've been here at Microsoft."
I mean, shit, do you really think you're going to impress the CEO of Microsoft with a PowerPoint presentation, of all things?
In general, however, I don't know if this story is an example of 'billg' so much as it is an example of asshole bosses, of which there are legions.
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Re:It's all about presentation. (Score:5, Interesting)
It might also be that the idea wasn't any good after all...
Not all former MS employees hold a grudge. Joel Spolsky appears thoroughly impressed with his former boss: My First BillG Review [joelonsoftware.com]
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Poker (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, go see 'Pirates of Silicon Valley'. You'll enjoy it.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0168122/ [imdb.com]
reminds me of the stories about Henry K. (Score:5, Interesting)
"In that case", Kissinger would say, "I'll read it".
So he's copying from Steve Jobs too? (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
This is usually the problem within any organization - people with good ideas but bad presentation skills can either develop the ideas and ask forgiveness later or forget about the whole idea unless they can get the idea to someone that's a good presenter.
It will be far better management style to actually give constructive criticism, but that is also a lot harder.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Funny)
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MS in the early 90s (Score:5, Insightful)
billg: "That's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft."
Yep, sounds about right...
Joel on BillG (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Joel on BillG (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sounds like Law & Motion. (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, when dealing with judges, particularly when the witnesses or jury are out of the room, lawyers can face something that can be pretty similar to what was described here. So, ok, it's hard on the computer scientists, but welcome to what lawyers get to deal with all the time. It's an accepted practice.
Long and short of it--make sure your thinking is done BEFORE you present. Otherwise, as is to be expected, you're toast, whether the "toasting" is done by the CEO or a judge.
Ah the joys of alpha male management style (Score:5, Insightful)
Only, being naive and not realising this was just challenge #101, I left, joined a small company which just grew and grew, then left after a difference of opinion with the CEO, then joined a startup which just grew and grew. Interestingly, our CEO is able to motivate people without a single swearword.
It's nice for Microsoft that it is so big and all, but (as Scott Adams notes somewhere, I think) all the really smart people prefer to live in Switzerland as compared to the US, i.e. to live somewhere where even politics is truly local and individualism is valued versus somewhere where the driving forces in society are completely out of your control and individualism is just having a different alignment of ballpoints in the pocket protector.
It must have been really exciting and creative to work for Microsoft - once. Perhaps some of the pent up anger in the founders, if it is reported accurately, is simply because, even for them, it's no fun anymore.
The Story of Bob (Score:5, Funny)
billg: That's the dumbest-
melindaf: You want some tonight or not?
billg:
melindaf: How about we call it Bob.
Don't let me get in the way... (Score:5, Informative)
"I'm always right. This time I'm just even more right than usual." Torvalds, Linus (2005-07-14). Message to linux-kernel mailing list. Retrieved on 2006-08-28.
"If you still don't like it, that's ok: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do." Torvalds, Linus (1996-07-22). Post to comp.os.linux.advocacy newsgroup. Retrieved on 2006-08-28.
That's all, return to your ranting.
Re:Don't let me get in the way... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't comparable to what Gates is doing in the article. According to that Gates would tell everyone that their idea was "the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft." and didn't really mean it. He was saying it simply to make the presenter defend their idea, not saying "you're wrong and we're not going to do it that way". In both of the above quotes Linus is seems to be saying that he's right and that they will be doing it his way.
Linus could certainly be more tactful with how he worded those things, but I do note a distinct lack of cussing and (at the least) less drastic hyperbole. And how about some context to those quotes? On the second one at least I found you left off a bit before that that makes the whole thing much less worse than it sounds: "In short, at least give the penguin a fair viewing. If you still don't like it, that's ok: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do." I don't think it's unreasonable for Linus to be taking that attitude about the mascot that will define the OS that he created. He was apparently listening to input on it anyway, more than you can say for most people in that situation.
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another conversation (Score:5, Funny)
presenter: "this is madness!"
billg: "THIS IS MICROSOFT!!!" *looks at steveb and points to a chair*
The Actual Correct Response (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Read TFA. "That meant that I and the other product managers...". Not everyone has to walk into a meeting like this with billg and stand this trial by fire. If you're a product manager, you should be the ultimate champion of your product.
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Funny)
Like I was telling my daughter yesterday, the appropriate thing to do when you meet such a person is to drill them in the nose with your knuckles as hard as you can, unless they outweigh you by a significant margin, in which case you should hit them with a chair until they crumple to the ground.
This is how you deal with bullies.
You certainly don't turn yourself one after another into his bitch and make him rich as reward for his antisocial behavior.
I bet Bill wears an "Everything I needed to take over the world, I learned from the bully in kindergarten" T-shirt to bed as a nightie.
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Funny)
Forget it. The chair would get to within a foot of Bill's nose before being parried by Darth Balmer's lighting counterstrike. Bill would then begin a wide gaped laughing as their pair of you batter each other back and forth across the meeting room to a backdrop of animated powerpoint slides and starfield screensavers.
Two important facts stand against you
1) Balmer is not related to you
2) There are no impossibly deep shafts nearby.
Even if your friends managed to get the firewalls down, how are they going to get all the way into the heart of Redmond campus to save your fallen ass? You gave into your anger. Such is the reward of the dark side.
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not so sure about #1. He did suggest using a chair as a weapon...
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Interesting)
American society maybe. America definitely is a fear-driven society. But there are other ways to live. Unfortunately, many politicians in Europe now also choose to frighten and bully their people. No wonder terrorist threats are up.
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Interesting)
A particularly amusing anecdote was when the author was working on a clock application for Windows. He found the BASIC flood-fill routine to be buggy and quite poor, and set about to rewrite it. He then headed for Gates' office to tell him that he wanted to replace the existing flood-fill routine "because it was crap". (Or something to that effect.) Some of his coworkers tried to warn him off, but he headed straight in and showed off his work to Gates. After forcefully championing his work to Gates, Gates agreed to allow the fix. As he came out of Gates' office beaming, one of the coworkers said to him, "You know who wrote the original flood-fill routine, don't you?"
Yep, it was Gates. And the author had just told him that his code was crap to his face. Doh!
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Untouchable crap (Score:5, Interesting)
This parable illustrates how personal defects get in the way of quality. If the code is crap, the code is crap, no matter who wrote it. If politics or sensitive egos block improvements, quality suffers. Compare EgolessProgramming [c2.com].
This "my code is perfect" attitude is alive and well. A friend of mine started a new job recently and found that his boss:
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Re:Untouchable crap (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, did you even read the comment you were responding to?! It said that Gates ALLOWED THE FIX!! I mean, I don't think Bill Gates is some kind of role model or anything, but having someone come into your office to unwittingly call your own code "crap" to your face, and then going along with what that person says, is NOT a "personal defect" of any kind.
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Funny)
"And the soldier had just told him that torture was against Western values to his face. Doh!
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a distinct difference between expecting someone to champion their project and being a bully and abusing them verbally. Telling every person that their project idea is "the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft." is just being downright mean. Especially when you just glare at them coldly after they defend themselves (as the article points out).
And then you get people who'll imitate the behavior without the smarts to back it up, so it becomes nothing BUT abuse. (Middle management for example.) I think Bill's management technique explains a lot about Microsoft's behavior over the years and why they're so disliked in the technical community. In fact looking back at how MS acted during their two biggest trials (the US anti-trust and EU anti-trust) you can see this "bullying" all over the place. Acting like a bully when you're the defendant in court is not a good idea. It'll just piss the judge (and possibly the jury) off, and they're the ones passing judgment on you.
Besides, it's not like this technique has worked incredibly well for MS, especially in areas like security. MS has also put out some really lousy stuff over the years, like MS Bob, that were apparently "championed" all the way to release, then bombed. Maybe if Bill had developed a culture less focused on bullying they could have avoided some of those things, and saved money. When you force every one of your employees to defend their projects in such a manner then how many are going to be willing to listen when people point out problems with them? You can't have any second doubts if you have to defend your projects constantly, so people will stop listening to any criticism, leading to lower quality all around.
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I think this explains Microsoft's behavior in court
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a world of difference between telling everyone that their idea is "the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft." and testing potential hires on how they'd fine-tune a bubble sort. One's belittling and demeaning along with being untrue (and known to be untrue by the person saying it) most of the time. (You simply can't say this and it be true every time, also it's not just saying it's a bad idea, but the worst idea he's ever heard, making it much more difficult for the statement to be true.) The other one is seeing how creative someone is technically. In Google's case they're using this to judge the quality of potential employees before deciding whether to hire them or not. They're not alone in testing potential hires in such a manner, although they do seem to go above and beyond what most companies do.
As far as adapting, Google seems to adapt better than Microsoft, at least so far. MS tends to ignore certain markets/new directions until it's completely obvious they were wrong and missed the boat. (The infamous move to go after the Internet is one good example of this.) MS also seems to be better at following others than leading, for example in Internet search and online advertising most recently. This is not to say that MS isn't ever innovative (I think their Live service for Xbox has been innovative at least in some areas), but that that they seem to follow other's innovations more than they innovate themselves. Google has a big advantage for adapting because of their letting employees spend 20% of their time on personal projects. When those projects become useful they can be launched as a company project/product and more people assigned to them. That allows them to try out tons of different directions continually. Also they keep improving their products and do so at a quicker rate than MS does, although MS is more hampered with their traditional release cycle for products like Office and Windows. Gmail is a good example there, new features still get added even though it's no longer considered beta, and the product today is far more useful than it was at launch.
As far as Google Apps goes the whole point is that it's an online app, I wouldn't expect to see an offline component anytime soon. I do expect to see them offer servers that you can run on your local LAN/WAN with versions of Google Apps on them that'll address some of the concerns about losing access to the apps if your Internet connection goes down. You can get a local search appliance now, so I think it's just a matter of time. I suspect they've not worked out all the details yet on how they'll maintain those Apps Appliances and keep them updated and that's why they aren't offering them already.
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Re:Champoined Needed - Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:That Borg Icon (Score:5, Funny)
"And Bill Gates isn't even the CEO of Microsoft anymore. He is the chairman."
I thought steve ("I'll fucking bury them") is the "chair-man" ...
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Re:That Borg Icon (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Shock and awe (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people use this as a way to gauge the competency of the presenter.
Or he could just be an asshole.
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Re:I worked for Evslin - he's not all that (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all.
Many companies had unix-based email WAAY before Exchange even came out. Then when it did, some non-technical higher-up usually decides the company should 'upgrade' to Microsoft exchange.
I've been at several companies where exactly this happened and exactly the same result too: Before the upgrade, we had an email system that just worked, and never needed any maintenance. After we switched, we needed to hire a whole office of support staff to deal with the day-to-day issues of ongoing Exchange problems.
I'm always surprised how long its taken them to come round to moving back to Unix/Linux solutions, but they all did in the end.
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