Slashdot Mirror
The Microsoft Millionaires Come of Age
iseff writes "The NYTimes is running a story about the ways in which Microsoft millionaires are putting their money to use. According to the story, there is somewhere around 10,000 Microsoft made millionaires spending money on various pet projects. For example, former programmer Chris Peters bought the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association), while Stephanie DeVaan founded a political action committee and Rich Tong founded Ignition Partners, a VC firm."
Can't we talk about Google instead?
That is just obscenely absurd for one company.
http://www.google.com/search?q=bill+gates+53+milli on+house
And bill bought all these
fuvoo: watch something
The most admirable way Microsoft is giving back: allowing us all to us the digits 1 and 0 royalty-free: http://www.huumor.com/joke_1118
Chris Peters bought the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association), while Stephanie DeVaan founded a political action committee and Rich Tong founded Ignition Partners, a VC firm
Those were the ones that I felt spent their money foolishly. Personally, I planned to make my money really make a difference, so I invested it in RAMBUS's RDRam, SCO's OpenLinux, and those great people at Maui eXtreem that brought us CherryOS, to just name a few. I also have some money in some really rather secret business, but I can tell you this much... apparently a prince somehow somewhere is being locked captive in a sewer ditch, twelve KM outside of Falusia, Iraq, but he managed to get to a terminal somehow, find me, and ask for some assistance. I stand to make millions by helping this individual simply move his money to a safe place. Now that is smart business.
Soon I will be on TV telling Donald Trump, "YOURE FIRED..... NIGGA!"
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
There is around?
It's time for some of the "special ones" responsible for posting the material to step aside. This is getting more than silly.
It's time to clean house and boot the idiots.
It's not fair to those who submit the stories, only to have some moron with special privileges " edit " (mangle) them to make them grammatically incorrect - mostly, because they don't know what they are doing. I have an authoring background worthy of doing this and I'm certain there are others as well.
It's time to put them out to pasture, but not to stud. We don't need those genes to continue.
The same reason some of us would do our jobs for free, as we either enjoy them enough or think they are important enough.
For example, former programmer Chris Peters bought the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association)... If you can't beat them... just redefine the value of "splits".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Tried shopping for a house in New York City? Being a millionaire used to mean you were rich. Now it just means you are middle class with some savings.
2. People spend money.
3. Fascination!
I thought "and Rich Tong founded Ignition Partners" said Tong founded Ignorance Partners at first, that would have been interesting news.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
Apparently you don't understand what it means to charge too much.
Charging too much puts you in the poorhouse. Charging what the market is willing to bear makes you wealthy.
It sounds to me as if they are charging correctly. Now, if you want to argue that they have monopolist tactics and such, well, you could build an argument, but to say that charging too much made them wealthy merely shows that you are arguing that MS should be some sort of charitable organization.
I don't think that I would ever go to any company VP (and I know a few) and tell them "You know, we make too much money around here, lets lower prices."
FTA:
As Mr. Sage put it, "It's like a little bit of Bill Gates came with us when we left."
*holds vomit in*
Microsoft gives a crapload of money to different causes though. In fact I think they're number one when it comes to philanthropy. For example, if an employee donates to a charity the company will give twice that.
Especially with the liberal area the Microsoft headquarters is in, it's almost a given that they give tons of money to "disadvantaged" groups.
"What I don't get is why these people still work."
...not really hurting for cash. There are limits to how much money you can spend in a day, you know?
:)
Most of us sign on to Microsoft because we *want* to work for Microsoft.
Although I'm not one of these millionaire people, I know a couple, and they come to work every day because they love their jobs.
"Bill can never 'cash out' so he is not really worth that much."
Um.
He's, uh...
Well...
Plus, he worked his ass off to build the company. Why would he want to "cash out" of that? It's obvious that his interest in the company goes well beyond the dough.
"If I had several million I would not work and live comfortably on some tropical beach for thr rest of my life."
And that, my friend, is probably why you don't have $10 million
The few wealthy people I know are all workaholics.
Unless they inherited the stuff. God, those people are annoying.
- Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
...buying themselves a new soul?
how nobody spends their money in ways that could help others. Microsoft alone could solve the world's hunger problems. They could cure all the curable diseases. They could save the 33,000 kids that are dying every day because they're hungry.
Okay, okay, we all know MS doesn't give a flying piece of bird crap about people, no matter who they are. But still, it's really sick to see some of the things on which they spend their money...
Bill Gates has personally spent more on charity than everyone who reads slashdot combined. He spent $28 billion endowing his foundation, and they do a lot of good work in, for example, third world health issues.
Whatever Bill Gates' flaws, and he has a lot, he has been very generous with his money.
NY Times Obit, A.D.P
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
Bill Gates has a hobby business on the side, by the way. It consists of buying up the rights to all the best pictures in the world.
You are actually a moron. Microsoft does not have enough money to do any one of the things you stated individually let alone all together. First of all there is already enough food on this planet. Its a matter of distribution. Devising cures for diseases requires hundreds of billions of dollars, something MS doesn't have.
;-)
Lets just admit that we're not all that good at economics and thats why we're not all rich.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Right you are. That is one of the biggest problems facing open source right now.
You get a handful of well-educated people arguing for an idea. Then you get a mob of people who just want to bitch at something... Bill Gates is just their target.
If you want to bitch about something, target on it, make sure it's the truth, and then try to correct it (instead of mindlessly bitching).
Honestly, do you think that MS was able to rise to such a strong position without a lot of help from a lot of entities? You know that IBM did a lot of soul searching about the time that Windows 95 and OS2 were floating around. The American public has to be swayed. Offer a cheaper computer, with Linux, OpenOffice, and so forth... do you really think that the question "is it compatible?" is coming out of the mouth of a person who really fully grasps the ramifications of that statement?
Wake up, the people who want to drive us into a police state certainly aren't smart enough to keep capitalism alive. You're going to need another approach, and spreading lies on a message board won't help.
Mod the parent way the hell up.
Read it. Its not news. It is a liberal "Ra! Ra!", lets all feel good about being liberal story...but news it is not.
Phredd - "I have found people tend to take you far less seriously once you start waving your genitals at them..."
For what it's worth, I've used my time and money to start up a new company. I don't want to sit around all day long and do nothing. While I really enjoyed working for Microsoft, I have to realize that that chapter in my life is closed and that there are so many other cool things that can be done.
But these are people with a million in liquefiable assets. If you're a property millionaire (like me) you can only realise that money by refinancing your home (bad idea, interest rates are on the up) or selling (err, where would I live, the median price here is $1.2m ?) The M'soft employees can realise a million dollars in real money, that still makes them very wealthy by most standards.
Your way to angry for your own good, you act like Gates/MS has bombed 3rd world countries claiming they have WMD...all he has done that people complain about is release an imperfect OS, nobody is forcing you to buy it you know. I think the amount of money that man has given to charities absolves him from anything he has done. None of his buisness practices really hurt anyone, true some companies go out of buisness but its just that...BUISNESS. When Gates starts murdering inocent people then your little argument will have some weight, until then just shut up and go use Linux.
Remember the old bus mouse that Microsoft sold? It was their very first mouse, and it needed a hardware interface on an ISA card. I reverse-engineered that driver, and made my own hardware interface for the S-100 bus which could talk to that mouse. Along the way, I noticed a secret string in the driver that said "Chris Peters rules OK!". That was back in 1984 or thereabouts. I'm glad to see that Chris has done well for himself.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Remember kids, economics is not a zero-sum game. This is how wealth is created.
Love MSFT or hate it, this is what "makes America great".
My first computer cost $2500 - if I had bought MSFT at that time, and sold it at the peak, I'd be a MSFT millionaire too (just not as an employee).
Yup, hard work, good luck, and the lack of brutal warlords means anyone in the US can make millions - but it takes years and years of hard work, don't forget that part.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
$75,000 under $100,000 - 8,903,894 returns
, ,id=96981,00.html
$100,000 under $200,000 - 8,469,199
$200,000 under $500,000 - 2,018,372
$500,000 under $1,000,000 - 355,617
$1,000,000 under $1,500,000 - 85,479
$1,500,000 under $2,000,000 - 36,492
$2,000,000 under $5,000,000 - 52,157
$5,000,000 under $10,000,000 - 12,266
$10,000,000 or more - 6,836
21% of the tax returns pay roughly 55.9% of the Federal Income Tax, the 6836 at the top, pay 3% of the Federal Income Tax
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0
Did anyone read the piece of propaganda? Only the online NY Times site (not in my Sunday NY Times) has the following:
"Julie Bick is a former Microsoft employee and the author of "The Microsoft Edge." (Pocket Books, 1999). The people she interviewed for this article include some friends and former co-workers."
Yeesh. Talk about product placement and corporate tail wagging the dog...
A defense contractor in Antarctica is a bad idea. Get Raytheon OUT of Antarctica.
If you believe that Microsoft is a legitimate business earning a fair profit for its products, then his donations to charity are a wonderful example of philanthropy. OTOH if you believe that Microsoft gouges consumers by leveraging its monopoly OS position to stifle competition and keep software prices artificially inflated, then the $25 billion he's donated to charity probably would've done more good if left in the hands of the people who were overchargd. It'd be like a shop charging $5 per bottle of water for firefighters after 9/11, then donating the excess proceeds to charity. Yeah they donated a ton of money, but the firefighters were robbed of money that could've been put to other (better from a market standpoint) uses. A more accurate assessment would be that the firefighters were coerced into unwillingly making a donation to charity. Course we can argue forever about which view is correct; and in truth both views may be partially correct.
I don't understand why this is a problem. A "company" has goals. They figured out, as a company, how to achieve those goals. The people rewarded are the owners, and sometimes the employees. If the employees didn't get the cash, it'd have just gone to the owners. This should be perceived as a great thing!
The wealth of the company, and their employees is a testiment to the fine job they did, as measured by the votes of their customers, in the form of money spent.
Any comments that this is obscene is pure jealousy.
FTA:
As Mr. Sage put it, "It's like a little bit of Bill Gates came with us when we left."
So that's how they climbed up the corporate ladder. Good advice I suppose, if your boss is into that kind of thing.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Hunger is a problem of distribution and politics. Remeber the famine in ethiopia in the 80's? How about the irish potatoe famine? How about the famine in the unkraine a few decades back? During all those crisis those countries continued to export food. The problem isn't just moving food there, it's making sure those people recieve the food. Other agencies like local war lords, corrupt governments, and bandits will always try to control the flow of essential goods because that is how they maintain power. If you want to stop hunger, simply buying enough food isn't enough. You need to transport it like the above posts says, as well as defend it, then find a means to avoid stampedes/riots when it's delivered. None of this is cheap. 100 billion wouldn't do it. Ask the US government how much it costs to wage that kind of war in one countr, your basically asking MS to do it in 100 more countries.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
But by 2002, she was itching to do more, so she put her wealth to work in support of abortion rights and helped to found a political action committee called Washington Women for Choice.
Although Republicans are usually pro-business, if it becomes common knowledge that Microsoft employees are dumping money into "abortion rights" groups, that could make the current administration's position on antitrust a lot less friendly towards Microsoft.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Unfortunately, the original article has disappeared into the aether, but there's an archive.org copy of what happened to the Original Microsoft 11 here:w ww.abqtrib.com/archives/business00/041200_microsof t.shtml
http://web.archive.org/web/20040202201554/http://
Any comments that this is obscene is pure jealousy.
I am jealous of the money they have. I do not make a lot of money, like a lot of people, and would really love to be at least a little better off. It is not the money itself that is obscene, but the way in which it was made. You state that their richness is a sign of the 'fine job they did'...
I disagree. It may be like that with some consumers, but they have systematically rigged it so they cannot be toppled and you are required to purchase their products with every computer you buy. In a business sense, that is a 'job well done', but if thats what it takes to be rich, I'll pass.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
No, actually it makes less sense the more you think about it. Sales tax
...Doesn't account for the difference in impact money has depending on how wealthy you are. A low-income family that has to buy a beater car for $2,000 is probably already fucked because of the money they'll spend fixing it, and you say $300 is "practically nothing"? Where I grew up, $300 was *a lot of money*. I would say $22,500 is a lot closer to "practically nothing" for someone who has the kind of money that they can throw it away buying a cock on wheels.
...Makes no economic sense whatsoever. Sales tax hurts consumption. Basic economic theory... price goes up, consumption goes down. Progressive income tax, on the other hand (continuously progressive, none of this bracket shit) doesn't really nerf incentive to do anything. No one says, "oh fuck it, this job only pays $3,000 more than the alternative instead of $5,000 more, I don't want to make more money unless I keep all of it." As long as making more money never costs you as much as the gain, there's incentive to do it, and someone will.
Now please give me a good rationale for abolishing inheritance tax. It seems pretty goddamned obvious that in a system where it "takes money to make money", it's a slippery slope into very centralized control of the vast majority of wealth (can you see any parallels in America today?). Why should rich kids get a free ride just because they were born to rich parents? They're already going to have all the advantages associated with growing up wealthy (better nutrition, better schools... Kurt Vonnegut would describe it as them being taught at an early age to sip from the money river). Honestly, I wouldn't lose much sleep if Joe Billionaire could only make his son into Joey Millionaire. Boo hoo, he can't buy two beach houses and fifty cars.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack