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Ballmer Says Google's Growth Is 'Insane'
eldavojohn writes "Steve Ballmer spoke to the Seattle PI this week, commenting that Google's pace of employee growth is 'insane,' and the company has few successful businesses outside of Internet search and advertising. He referred to Google's non-search efforts as 'cute.' Google's current number of employees is nearly doubling each year. 'I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.' Mr. Ballmer went on complain that, in general, competition for good programmers has become an issue. Even 'hedge funds' are looking for skilled coders, making the HR fight between the two companies that much more challenging."
As I translate Steve's remarks:
ROaaarrrr!!!! We are finding ourselves *hoot hoot* having to spend more money to hire quality programmers *scratch*. *Beats Chest* Google BAD!
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Ok, joking aside, am I the only one who finds Balmer's complaint a bit hypocritical? It's true that Microsoft has incredible sums of cash. However, Windows and Office are pretty much the only things making Microsoft that cash. Nearly every other portion of the company either contributes very little to the bottom line, or actually loses Microsoft money. I imagine that's part of the reason why Microsoft keeps bundling extra software services with Windows: At least it raises the value of the software package. (In theory, anyway.)
That being said, I am going to (*gasp*) agree with him on one point. Having a bunch of programmers sitting around does not accomplish anything. They have to be in a full-on creative environment to do the truly impressive stuff. I think that the environment is slowly dissolving as Google loses it cohesion as a tight-knit company. They're growing incredibly fast, and I'm not sure they're really getting a good return on that growth. Obviously, only those inside the company can actually know that for sure, but it's not looking as good as it once did for those of us on the outside.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
. . . the "monkeyboy" tag?
Steve, your showing off your true traits and motivations again.
If you really felt this way, you'd sit back and wait for Google to implode, and then hire all the best ex-google-ites for well under what they're being paid now.
But you're making such a fuss about it...whining really.
Steve here's a hint for you, it's called competition. Look it up some time.
No Comment.
It is true. I took a job with an automated trading firm over Google. Partly I wanted to work for a smaller company. Google's dream 20% time looked like a myth when I actually interviewed there (none of my interviewers used their time because they had too much work to do on their normal projects). Also, there's something satisfying about directly measuring the success of your software in dollars. If it makes money, you run it.
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
google's growth says Ballmer is insane?
Novell agrees that google's growth is insane.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
The CEO of the largest software company in the world is Whining about some other Co's hiring rates?
I wonder if this is more telling about a potential waning of MicroSoft than anything else. Or is it that Balmer is still trying to step out of a shadow... Gates has had a number of exceptional sound bytes over the years.... Positive ones. Balmer, not so much.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
.... Jealousy
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Steve Ballmer's opinion may contain chairs!
Clicked pie.
This is coming from the guy who ran around a stage screaming and flapping his arms about.
Throwing more resources at a problem isn't always the best way to solve it. For crying out loud, if anyone should know that it's Ballmer.
A business I worked at several years ago did the same thing. Grew too fast and outpaced the market. Wound up running out of cash and having to lay off all those new hires. One guy was an employee for two weeks. I helped interview the guy, too.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Disclaimer: I worked for Microsoft
Google's approach to growth right now resembles something like a gold rush, assuming that they know where the gold really is. I dont think they do exactly, but are hedging their bets on a number of ideas. The search engine makes money, but Google knows that they will need to do more, and I hope the phone rumors are true, but even so, just gathering a lot of great programmers together under one unbrella does not guarantee innovation.
I think Microsoft proved that good programmers dont necessarily make great programs. Every one of Google's businesses are cases of doing someone else's idea better. Cant wait to see what is coming, but for the moment, I cant see the fault in Ballmer's logic.
Um, why is this news? "Insane" is hardly a quantifiable value. So Balmer doesn't understand Google's business plan. Maybe Google is just building a brain trust while looking for the next big thing. Balmer is also doing a pretty good job at mischaracterizing Google's effort by calling it "a bunch of programmers doing their own thing", as if they're working completely without direction. I repeat, why are Balmer's completely uninformative ravings about Google news?
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
...meet the 900 lb. Gorilla
Cute \Cute\ (k[=u]t), a. [An abbrev. of acute.]
1. Clever; sharp; shrewd; ingenious; cunning. [Colloq.]
[1913 Webster]
It doesn't sound like Mr. Balmer's been paying that close attention to the FOSS phenomenon. As far as I can tell a random bunch of people doing their own thing for the last 10-20 yrs have achieved just as much as traditional software business models, in some case more and in more profound & lasting ways.
First, Microsoft can treat its employees better if they are having trouble attracting the caliber of employees google hires. Or they can continue as they are doing now, and petition Congress for more H1-B visas. But if they do that, then it really is more about getting good programmers cheaply rather than attracting the highest caliber programmers at any cost.
Second, if Mr. Balmer is correct, and Google doesn't have a sound or sustainable business, then it really doesn't matter; in a few years Google will implode, and Microsoft can sweep up all the Google alumni it wants.
More music, fewer hits
Maybe nobody's ever proven that "a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value," but I once worked for a Fortune 500 company whose R&D department was a carefully selected collection of talented people doing what clueless managers told them to do, and that didn't seem to create much value, either.
In fact, the value that had been created in the past got destroyed, amazingly throughly and astonishing quickly.
If that's really the case, then there are going to be a lot of unemployed folks living in Mountain View once they start cleaning house. Honestly, though, it sounds like Microsoft can't keep up with competing for "best and brightest"...whatever that means, these days!
-50 DKP for lame post!
Developers! Developers! Developers!
Well, if anybody knows "insane", it's Ballmer.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I remember Bill Gates once saying that his worst fear for Microsoft was to become the next IBM - in other words, a big slow moving business with many levels of bureaucracy (this was some years ago and he was talking about the "old" IBM).
Well, it looks like Bills worst nightmare has come true, as evidenced by Ballmers comments. Google is now what Microsoft used to be - a lot of small teams working on their own projects without levels of bureaucracy interfering.
Google is not a random collection. You don't need to prove anything. Ballmer is not the authority on the matter. They are not all doing their own thing.
This is a CEO?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Wait till google gets into the operating system business, then youll hear some whining.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
"A bunch of people doing their own thing", as you put it, is how the FOSS movement was started and largely continues. Your (Microsoft's) SEC filings indicate that you view FOSS as your major competitive threat. So, how insane is it?
C|N>K
As much as I loath the garbageware generated by Ballmer's 70,000 minions (today is "fun with MS Word" day), he is correct that high growth is extremely hard to sustain.
If a company doubles in size every year, it means that half the employees have less than a year's experience before they need to hire the next layer of people. With so many fresh faces, its extremely hard to create a cohesive culture. And if you look at the labor it takes to find good employees (not just smart ones, but good ones), then you can see that either Google workers spend a large fraction of their time hiring (and not doing their jobs) or, if they do their actual jobs, then they are hiring sloppily. Inevitably, the A-level people are forced to hire B-level people and the B-level people are hiring C-level people.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Because that's what society is. You know, the capitalist individualistic one that he exploited to become rich?
Mostly random stuff.
...because Google rejected his application to work there as he could not solve the riddles...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
That's assuming, of course, that the developers at Google are sitting around doing nothing, which I doubt is the case. It's widely publicised that they are given time to themselves to work on pet projects, but these can and do directly benefit Google. I'd argue that this kind of environment is potentially a very creative environment - in my experience, people work best on things they are actually interested in on a personal level.
I know where you are coming from, and I agree in part - their massive growth rate is probably causing some problems, as it would anywhere. However, Ol' Steve just has a hard-on for Google and is spitting out the usual Microsoft FUD sound bytes. Personally, I haven't been able to take a word he says seriously since "that video". Which one I'm referring to, I'll leave up to you.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Microsoft's Xbox divisions posts a $289 loss in the second quarter.
= 22385
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid
He's just mad that they waited too long to try to just buy Google outright before they got big. Then he got even more upset when someone on his staff showed him the definition of "competition".
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.
If a million monkeys randomly typing away on a million typewriters will eventually write Shakespear, I imagine that thousands of PhD's, post-grads, and other well-educated monkeys engaged in semi-random but structured projects, working on high-powered workstations will be able to deliver as well.
There's even a proof!
The Infinite Monkey Theorem
Did he mean "throwing a chair" insane, or just "monkey dance" insane?
Ballmer's dismissal of Google's depth is interesting coming on the heels of the Slashdot post a couple of items down about a potential Google mobile phone. Is that 'cute'? Or could such a phone actually realize the kinds of service convergence people have been wishing for almost as long as flying cars? And probably be half the cost of the iPhone.
The question of the 20% time is very interesting. One of the innovations Enron touted was how its employees were free to work on whatever projects they wanted. Then it turned out Enron really was only good at trading energy, and not good enough at that. On the other hand, Google is delivering. Things like the phone will determine how deep they get. I think skeptical optimism is the stance to take.
On the hiring note, of course Google can't keep up its hiring practices forever. They'd run out of warm human bodies eventually. More broadly, I heard Chad Fowler last month note that as baby boomers retire, there won't be enough developers in the US to take the software jobs the boomers leave behind. Even tapping talent overseas and outsourcing like mad, there's likely to be tremendous demand. I liked the comment that someone in the gathering made to Fowler's observation: then let's hire fewer developers.
...that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value, in fact, it's the only thing that ever has. - With apologies to Margaret Mead
I'm just sayin'.
IBM is confident of it position as the dominant supplier to the Business market. Although it plans to supply microcomputers, using the Intel/Microsoft platform, it sees the bulk of the market continuing to use IBM mainframes, rather than the microcomputer toy. The home computer, while interesting, will continue to operate primarily as a terminal. IBM sees a time when the home computer will dial into a mainframe in which all applications and data will be safely and securely stored. IBM does not see the home user as having the technological skills to maintain or secure a home computer, and therefore dial in access will continue to dominate. IBM plans to be in the forefront of such dial in services, as the company that has the foresight to capitalize on such services will the company that controls the home market. By contrast, companies that arrive late to the party, will be left behind.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Does anyone actually care what Steve says?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
i'd give you a double-plus Insightful on that, but i ran out of moderation points..
When coming out of college and looking for a job, I had about 7 years worth of C experience. But particular companies wanted C++ experience. They weren't willing to take the risk, which is their prerogative. But it made be skeptical of claims of lack of quality programmers. It just might mean that there is no thing as a zero-risk hire. Or you may have to do more pre-screening.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Whenever any organizational structure begins experiencing more energy throughput than it can handle, it becomes a bit disorganized and chaotic. Wild and uncontrolled releases of energy erupt throughout the entire structure. During this period, one of two things happen. Either A) the entity becomes too disorganized and falls apart or b) the entity spontaneously achieves a higher level of organization which is capable of sustaining the higher level of energy throughput.
This is true of all biological systems, and it has been observed in higher organizational systems as well, including human psychology as well as human society. Businesses are no exception.
So Google is in a bit of a chaotic phase. It has resources streaming in and out at a wild pace, and it is growing rapidly. It is full of developmental efforts spiraling out in multiple directions simultaneously. All of this fits the pattern of high-level reorganization amid chaos. Is it risky? Of course. Might they crumble? Of course. However, this is not the only possible consequence. They could also settle into a strong business with innovative offerings and a very sustainable business model. We will just have to wait and see.
I personally like to picture Ballmer wide-eyed and frothing at the mouth when he speaks, wherever he speaks. In an elevator, at the dinner table, playing canasta. I think that image and the one of him flailing about on stage like a man possessed, when combined and held in the mind's eye, give an interesting image of what the Microsoft CEO is like. That image is of insanity. I liken him to a bully who just likes to talk shit because he can't find anything else to say. That's all he does. Apple's iPod makes him laugh, even as it manhandles the Zune. Linux-slminux, they're just filthy hippies and flunkies anyway. Google? Don't even get him started, they hire skilled people to do R&D on projects that haven't matured, what fools! And they still make money, don't they know anything about running a company?
Really, this man needs help.
lol cult
"...the company has few successful businesses outside of Internet search and advertising."
Microsoft, 1980, one successful business, compilers and programming languages.
Microsoft, 1990, one successful product, operating systems. Their language business has become part of the support for their OS business.
Microsoft, 2000, finally have a really *solid* operating system for the first time since they dumped Xenix, and a handful of secondary businesses leveraged off their OS business.
It took Microsoft over 20 years to get to the point where they were more than a one-product company, and they're really not good at all where they can't use their position in the OS market to give people a magician's choice of products.
If google has a few successful businesses outside of Internet Search they're doing better than Ballmer did over the same period in the company's life cycle.
Whatever, wish I had more time.
Ballmer needs to be calmer.
With Google sitting on a huge pile of cash, it only makes sense to get as many people as possible who can come up with something new and cool. What if only one in 10000 of those people will come up with the new bright idea that will start making major money for Google? Does it worth investment of extra $1 BILLION in the other 9999 people (considering that the average salary would be $100K)? Yes it does! Also, all those people are not just going to be "sitting there", but they will be helping Google's everyday needs. Ballmer is wrong.
If you consider the amount of time that it has taken Microsoft to reach a market cap of US$44 billion versus the time in which Google has gone to a market cap of US$10 billion, I'd say, on looks, Google is more bloated.
When you own the mindshare, you win. Ok, so it's possible for Google to tank if the management makes bad decisions. But the fact is that although their hiring process is surely not perfect, they'll statistically have a higher than average qualify of engineer. What pisses off Microsoft is that Google has sucked away all of the best talent. And Google also has a better environment for engineers to be creative in. Microsoft may be "evil", but they have some great individual engineers, and they need more if they're going to even just keep up. Microsoft's systems are so disorganized and tangled they NEED the brightest people just to survive.
Google is killing Microsoft by attrition. Brilliant!
"Keep feeding us more VC money and we'll keep feeding you more info on where to put the rest of your VC money when you come around for a demo."
Come on Google, just keep going.. Defeat them.. Be the richest. Hahahaha...
I am one of these people that have traditionally eagerly installed the latest and greatest in microsoft software when I get a new machine. This has held true for everything from DOS 3 to Windows XP. I have never chosen an older product over a newer one. There was always either a compelling reason to upgrade, or at the very least, the upgrade didn't cost you anything.
I got a new off lease IBM thinkpad with a blank HD a week ago, and even though I have copies of both Office 2007 and Windows Vista on DVD, I STILL installed Windows XP and Office 2003. The reason is that after actually trying both, I KNOW that I am actually MUCH better off with XP and Office 2003!
Yet every time I see a new Google product, without fail, I see myself thinking "wow, this really interesting and useful." (case and point, one of my friends was using Google's online spreadsheets to collaborate with me on a quick calculation last week, and it worked much more seamlessly than I could have ever imagined from an online app. Despite its relative simplicity, it far exceeded the capabilities of Excel for our purposes! I was REALLY impressed)
IMHO, Microsoft is feeling (and acting) threatened. They know that their inertia will only let them coast for a little while before some younger and more innovative company takes them down a peg or two.
If Google didn't matter, then Ballmer wouldn't be talking about them all the time.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Its hardly as if Ballmer, and Microsoft more generally, don't spread all kinds of FUD about FOSS in general and particular FOSS products in particular.
Its not that Ballmer doesn't understand FOSS, its that FOSS is a threat to Microsoft. Likewise with Google. Google products compete with Microsoft products, any image Google achieves as a leader in the tech field as an investment weakens Microsoft's ability to attract capital, and Google's image as an attractive place to work makes it more expensive for Microsoft to attact talent.
Spreading FUD about Google's viability is a way of fighting all three of those threats simultaneous, creating an impression of insecurity that, if people buy it, makes relying on Google products, investing in Google, or seeking employment at Google less attractive.
Mr. Ballmer,
I think you hide from yourself the true nature of your business. Your company makes a lot of money because of many, many adversarial practices like tricky, closed file formats, mixing program files and operating system files, and actually encouraging piracy of your products so that competitors cannot make money.
Your company has never, as far as I am aware, released an excellent product. Windows XP was terribly buggy and troublesome until Service Pack 2. You waste the time of millions of well-educated people. You deliberately manage your business in such a way that programmers are not allowed to finish their jobs. Programmers know how to make very secure software, but your software has had literally hundreds of thousands of expoits. A large part of the money you make comes from people buying new computers because their old computers have become infected. When you are told of an exploit, you often take many months to fix it, showing your true self and your true belief in how to live in the world by taking advantage. (Internet Explorer was 78% unpatched when I wrote this.)
I think you should not think of yourself as primarily a business man. You should think of yourself as primarily an abuser.
Michael Jennings
I've never used the words "insane" or "crazy" to mean something like "beyond all expectations" before.
Did you see that motorcyle stunt rider do a flip? It was *insane*!
That may not be what he meant, but it's easy to read the whole article that way (with a little bit of slang) and it make complete sense in the other direction from the dictionary definitions of the words.
Well I'm a PhD student in Computer Engineering at a highly ranked university. I don't claim to be "smart". However I work hard, I can hold my own when it comes to coding, and I have professional software engineering experience before I started grad. school.
Google contacted me for an interview (I never applied). My phone interview with Google grilled me on undergraduate algorithms like graph traversal. Thats pretty much it. Now my undergraduate degree is actually Electrical Engineering, but my graduate research has been mostly software development. I'll admit I didn't remember details on many algorithms (never actually took an algorithms class), but I'm sure I could code up Diikstra's Algorithm once I read it over from a textbook.
Needless to say I was quickly rejected from Google. Why they contacted me for an interview and then tested me on things I have little background on, I have no idea. The interviewer even admitted to me that he actually doesn't use any of this stuff in his day-to-day job.
Thus I'm skeptical when these companies claim that they can't find people. They may have a hard time finding people that fit the exact cookie cutter they are looking for.
It was Crazy Eddie. Where prices are INSANE!!!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
People made a lot of money in the gold rush.
Very few people did. And hardly any of the gold-diggers did. Do you know who really made out? The guys selling shovels/picks and food to the guys digging for gold. They made out and became rich.
Face it, the only two products that Microsoft really has are MS Windows and MS Office; all other Microsoft efforts are merely "cute".
I suppose the difference to Google is that Windows and Office are under siege and rapidly becoming obsolete.
I think their only real product is their mice.
I actually really like them - better than any others out there.
Their keyboards are OK too.
Huh. Maybe they DO only have two products!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
"(this was some years ago and he was talking about the "old" IBM)."
They're still the old IBM, just now with more patent troll profits and service contracts to milk, with fewer expensive R&D.
Not a good long term investment.
Good ideas: Yup, a group of smart people in one spot can definitely come up with some cool ideas.
Market success: A completely different animal.
Don't confuse the two. (I was in one start-up that had crazy, wonderful technology, and they tanked. Another startup had some of the worst crap I've ever seen, and they're still around, having IPO'd).
"We shall see" about Google. They've got a tough row to hoe once they're out of the search niche, and search is pretty much a fungible technology these days. Give them three bad quarters because something else on the net "got cool" and they'll start shedding engineers, it'll be like Netscape all over again. In the meantime they've got a heavy run-rate, keeping up with salaries and benefits (which aren't all that great, despite what you hear). You'd be surprised how quickly a company that has had nothing but success can burn through a few billion dollars.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
Seriously. Ballmer didn't speak with the Seattle Post Intelligence (which is what PI stands for in case you wanted to know), he spoke at Stanford to students. All of the comments made were during that speech. So in a rush to get a /. submission, this person very quickly filled in the blanks when they saw the headline.
As far as Ballmer, I don't know if he is the man to run MS anywhere, but into the ground. Ok, maybe that is a bit of a reach, but he does seems to act and speak more on emotion than on logical reasoning. This all strikes me as him speaking up on Google because they are one of the first companies to actually give them a run for their money out in the market. Not being the only top dog, he is lashing out now (and before many times).
IMHO, Ballmer should in some ways welcome this challenge. If MS is up to it, and there is no reason they shouldn't be, then they can use this as a way to truly innovate and improve their products, in ways that are really helpful for the consumer.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
Point: "I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value."
Counter-point: GOOG
if you are going to troll, try to at least sound half intelligent. it was john romero not carmack that did daikatana. and your regurgitation of the old 'linux doesn't support any hardware' is a bit old and outdated. linux supports more devices 'out of the box' than any other operating system out there. yes, that includes windows.
Watch Ballmer do the monkey dance and you decide. Yeah, yeah, I know. I've posted it before, but it's so much fun to watch.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
If you ignore the messenger and his obvious attempts to spin Google as "out of control," you still must admit that managing rapid growth is a tricky problem. Other companies (e.g., SGI) have not handled it well. Transmitting knowledge about the company and its products is harder when the people expected to do that have only been there a few months themselves.
I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.
Mr. Ballmer went on complain that, in general, competition for good programmers has become an issue.
Hunh. So what you're saying is that you don't respect the ability of information scientists to create wealth, and you're having a hard time getting them to come and work for you. Imagine that. What a baffling problem. I don't think Adam Smith and Dale Carnegie combined could find a solution to that conundrum.
How shall I put this? I know, "Less QQ, More PewPew."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The similarity is disturbing. ^_^
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
Ballmer SMASH!
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Google, when you go over to their HQ, does have the look and feel of an overexpanding dot-com. The offices are very nice. Conference rooms are very well equipped. The food is great. But that doesn't really mean much.
The only part of the business that makes money is AdWords; everything else is a lose. Which is a problem. There's only so much revenue available via click-through advertising, and too many players are going after that pot.
Google's next big push seems to as a paid "application service provider", but that has not, historically, been a very profitable business.
"So, how insane is it?"
It's not; it's politics.
Spinning something to your advantage isn't insane, it's part of business.
Taking money from your cash cow and throwing it at activities for their strategic importance rather than their immediate financial value is just insa... Ummm. Hold on.
Never mind.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I am perhaps more Microsoft pro than most people on this site; I believe they offer some great products, and, when you actually get to know the people that work there, you realise that in this day and age (and it hasn't always been this way), they're actually quite level-headed when it comes to working with the competition in general. Sure they could be better, but they could be a lot worse too in my opinion; having actually seen the real "face" of Microsoft.
Then, you get complete arseholes like Ballmer. He's the teeth of the company and that's it - does nothing constructive for IT in general other than force-feed customers MS only tech they don't want, bully the competition out of the market, and only bitch about the competition that's beating them left right & centre.
This dear friends is why the man must go. Microsoft can't be seen to be this childish; which I genuinely believe they are not. What a shame.
throw new NoSignatureException();
... Google has a very different business approach.
Microsoft is what I would call a 'classic' company with a bureaucracy, top-down decisions and promotions based on immediate success or failure of projects and it is believed in such model that you should squeeze everything you can (12 hours work for 8 hours pay, pushing 3 months projects to finish in 3 weeks) from your underlings. The problem is that the model doesn't scale very well, as soon as your top-down gets long (look at IBM), things start to get slow and more paperwork is generated to get the same job done. If you widen to scale, your set of underlings get so large so they are unmanageable, and since the overlords try to squeeze everything from the underlings, not or poorly managed underlings tend to squeeze as much out of the perks given by the overlords (Newton's law of physics apply in this model)
Google is a 'young' company. They have a young mindset, they are rebels, think the rules don't apply to them and base their business model on this. I don't know whether that is going to be successful. They change the way they do business with their underlings, the underlings are happier because they don't get squeezed as much. Also, a void is created/forced (20% of time) where the other business model would apply a positive action to work harder, and thus again, according to Newton, an opposite reaction is going to generate more revenue from those underlings because the underlings feel they owe it to their overlords (of course you always have rotting apples in the orchard). It's also psychologically proven that if you're happier and less stressed, you tend to get more work done in the same amount of time. Of course, if the model can stand time, hype and shareholders mindset over the next few years is yet to be proven.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
or begininging 20th century industrilist cmoplaining that the workers actually have some say in the market.
"'I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.'"
well, Edison did that to some degree, and his people produced a boat load of stuff.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ballmer's recipe to the "thousands of people working at random goes something like this":
1. Pick 900 senior folks, give them "partner" monikers and give them a million dollars each, just because they're so senior, they fart dust.
2. Allow 170 (and counting) VPs in a 70K company.
3. Hire a bunch of "Program Managers" who are supposed to write the specs, but since they don't know jack about problem domain (most of them don't even want to know anything about it) they write up lame excuses and developers end up back-filling. In the meanwhile PMs pat each other on the back, take the credit for developer's work and travel to Japan and Europe on company's dime. Oh, and they also "report status" to each other in endless meetings.
4. Never, ever produce a coherent, forward looking vision. Try to get the fingers in every pie in the industry, but don't give enough resources to the teams to succeed, just dangle a carrot and crack the whip.
5. Give people in the trenches sub-inflation raises and laughable amounts of stock.
<sarcasm>
Ballmer seems to know a thing or two about running a software business, don't you think? If that's not a recipe for success, then I don't know what is.
</sarcasm>
The same monkey that was going to fucking kill google and cannot get enough of the developers and has been bald since windows 1.0
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
It is fairly obvious from the quote, that either Ballmer is spot on in his criticism, or else Google is one to something really great, and Ballmer has a blind spot the size of an exploding Death Star hiding on the far side of the moon.
As seen here, Google does actually have a master plan, and it includes far more than what they are doing now. Note, if you will, that it seems that things really don't take off until they goes inter-stellar.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
DEVELOPERS?
All earned from MSFT stock. He wants to hire programmers,
he can always sell his stock back to MSFT for pennies, and
let MSFT use the stock to attrack programmers.
'I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value."
It doesn't sound like Mr. Balmer's been paying that close attention to the FOSS phenomenon.
Or capitalism.
A bunch of people doing their own thing? This is very much like a free market. At Google, it sounds like they're harnessing the power of the free market, and giving it just enough direction to satisfy management goals.
A bunch of people working through multiple levels of management to achieve management goals? This is very much like a centrally planned economy with a beurocracy. It's proven to be less efficient than the other system. Yes, you still need some management at a software company. The political analogy, like all analogies, breaks down at some point. MS is, however, much more of a centrally planned beurocracy than Google.
Reading about the way MS is run reminds me of the airlines before deregulation. The United States had many features of a centrally planned, socialist economy (and still does), but we never admit that because if we did, the CIA would have to overthrow the government (heheh... digress). At any rate, if I were Balmer, I'd consider airline deregulation as a way to transform and re-invigorate MS. Start by firing half your PMs and flattening the hierarchy a bit. At the very least, there should be less degrees of separation between you and your most distant employee than there are between that same employee and the President of the USA. The average is 6, right? I've heard that at MS, you have something like 11 degrees of separation! And it's not even a planet, it's just one company. Classic sign of a company hog-tied by management, procedure, beurocracy, inflexibility, etc. It's no wonder Google and a bunch of loosely affiliated coders (Linux community) are both out-coding MS.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Stock prices, while may be worth money, are nothing more than people's interest and trust the company. Look at what happened to Enron.
'I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.'
Yes Ballmer, I know...
A friend of mine use to work at Microsoft for years but quit after Ballmer arrived. He told me that he and a lot of talent was leaving Microsoft because Ballmer and other "bean counters" were destroying the company.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Everything google does is 'cute' in a way that is typically another means to deleiver ads.
Much like a good TV program charges more for ads. Google is creating a mediums using them as a source of revenue via ads.
It is all about ad $.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
... has few successful businesses outside of Windows and Office (and never had).
;-)
And I'm not referring to Google here.
From Merriam-Webster:
Innovative
Function:
adjective
Date:
1608
: characterized by, tending to, or introducing innovations
Innovation
Function:
noun
Date:
15th century
1 : the introduction of something new 2 : a new idea, method, or device
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
So much for the free market, then
i work in a school in avon ct 06001
try "what" > school
and "where" > 06001
and i get
school near 06001 [Alameda] (county), California, United States
that's off by 3,003 miles. I know that because Google Maps told me so.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
At Microsoft some VPs don't even have any reports. In fact a lot of the time it's not clear to anyone what they're for, what they do and what their accountabilities are.
I mean really, a man with Lake Michigan sized armpit sweat stains on his shirt running around and screaming "Developers, Developers, Developers!" and " AHHHHHH!!! I love this company" isn't exactly what most people would consider appetizing.
Google is like Sun was 10 years ago. Sun had great hardware and solid Solaris. It ran well and reliable. They used this simple strategy to grow. That is what Google has now. We need Google's and Sun's R&D. Sun has provided great new ideas that did not contribute to the bottom line. I hope Google continues creating a think tank environment. Good things can come from it. Ballmer is a complete idiot at this point. He is like the dude in "A Beautiful Mind" but not smart, just crazy.
Where is that monkey boy video again? I love how he pulls up lame and tries to play it off.
I think Ballmer overlooked intrapreneurship in Google. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrapreneur/
Slashdot = Sarcasm
Dear GeckoX,
How many pennies do you have in your bank account? Perhaps I could teach you a little about competition.
Steve
Your definition of 'value' is something lots of people can use. His definition is prefixed with a dollar sign. As such, you're both right.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Ballmer: Developers, DEVELOPERS, Developers, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS....I love this company!
Balmer is, in my mind the perfect nutbar to be in charge of Microsoft at this point in time. While their foundation slowly erodes beneath them he sits up on top of the company and makes us laugh while still being easy to hate. He makes a fool out of himself with his stupid antics (chair tossing, monkey dancing, and ridiculous over the top hyperbole) and all the while he maintaines the "condescending asshole aura" that we've come to expect in Microsoft leadership.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Insane? Try: "Insanely Great."
Not a day goes by (except for vacations, and not always then) that I don't Google search many times. Google has revolutionized my life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Steve Ballmer calling anyone else insane is a bit hypocritical...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kvbWLfr-Z4s
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4MzqBFxZE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zPFu9ezddyk
http://youtube.com/watch?v=La_u1jPLOIA
Hey Steve, how's the medication workin' out for ya?
I am Jack's smirking revenge.
"When I was at Microsoft (and this figures into why I no longer work there and am glad to be out) is that Microsoft regularly tells the world and itself that it produces the best software in the world. The propaganda beat in Redmond is unending, and I think that much of the company - and all of its senior management - truly believe this."
This sounds a lot like Google to me. The main point of Google's hiring gimmicks is to convince everyone that Google people are smarter than everybody else. Of course, if you're succesful like MS or Google, there are plenty of people who will buy into your superiority without any real evidence that it is true.
To say nothing of monkeyboy "squirting" something. Although I prefer to replace the marketspeak with my own term "Dryping" (Dripping, transformation in the same vein as byte and nybble) a far more accurate representation of the action and much better negative connotation index.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Once upon a time Bill Gates commented that hiring the best developers did two things for M$.
1) M$ had the best.
2) Everyone else didn't.
Personally I suspect that all of this development at Google means that M$ can't just pick one idea and counter it. There are hundreds and they don't know which ones are real threats.
Is this part of Google's strategy - decoy projects? Confuse the competition until they deploy their killer app?
Or maybe it's the idea that if you have hundereds (thousands?) of Google employee's with post-grad degrees spending ~400 hours a year (1000 employees -> 400,000 hours -> 200 man years), one will eventually deliver a M$ crushing killer app?
Me thinks Balmer just wants someone to tell him what to compete against. Paranoid yet Steve?
I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.
Hmmm. A random collection of people doing their own thing has saved me from ever having to run your ugly, bloated operating system!
Why stick up for big business?
While I don't use it that often, I understand that Visual Studio is popular for people who write Windows programs.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Weren't we all lamenting the other day, that Computer Science is Dead?.. Well, I guess, it is not...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Slashdot has always had its percentage of clueless assholes arrogantly spouting off at the mouth, but it's disturbing to realize they now comprise the majority.
Only one source of revenue?
Well, it's worked for CNN for 25 years now. It's also worked for CBS for around 80 years. Some newspapers have used advertising as thier major revenue source for over 200 years. If that's just a flash in the pan, it's an awfully long flash.
Balmers company makes it's money from charging for software. A business revenue stream that is only 25 years old or so, and is now trying to compete on price with free. Who's really at risk here.
Looks like Google is relying on an older more tested revenue model.
I wonder which one will work longer.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Just so they don't steal Balmer's latest idea for business:
1. Throw chair
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
That is all.
...why was your shitty, banal post modded +5, much less insightful?
Suppose that Steve is right on this.
It is clearly ridiculous to consider the idea that an entire industry could grow around the idea of giving the product away for free and deriving all the income from advertising. I mean please: name one successful example of this...other than local papers...and radio...and television. OK, other than a few trillion dollar industries, the whole idea is obviously absurd.
I hate to agree with an Anonymous Coward, but he has a point here.
if inflation is a bitch...
...developers developers developers!
I want to join in - I hope MS or Google contacts me soon to bribe me to astroturf for them here on Slashdot, as they appear to have paid nearly 400 others to do this already.
I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.
Did anyone else think of open source software after reading this quote?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Means not working for YOU, Steve.
..don't panic
'I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.'
Well, let's see, Mr. Ballmer:
1. Linux - inarguably a "random collection of people doing their own thing", it is more secure, more stable and much less bloated than Windows.
2. Google - the very company these remarks were made about. I don't use Microsoft's search engine because it sucks! Google was better the day they brought it on-line and Microsoft has now had several years now - it still sucks!
3. Google - can actually develop very complex applications (try Google maps) that work very well out of the box. Microsoft cannot even buy an application and have it do well (see OneCare). I have no doubt that Google's Office suite will work better in version 1.0 than Microsoft Office after 10 years of continuous bug-fixing. There are still problems in Microsoft Office that I bitched about in Office '97.
So put your money where your mouth is, Mr. Ballmer. Take that selected elite group of programmers under your carefully supervised control and make Vista secure, bug-free and fast! Then make OneCare work the way you said it did when you released it. Until then, STFU!
Balmer should look inward before throwing stones at Google.
According to mini, MS is planning on hiring an additional 10-12k people in the Seattle area. No one really seems to know why these people would be hired or what they would be doing. Pre-emptive strike against Google to keep talent off the market? From what I hear MS is a fat, bloated company already. Think of all the people getting paid to do nothing once another 12k people show up at the office.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Wa! (sniff sniff) WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! (gurgle) WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
I use Linux (I know, blah blah blah).
I have never used itunes or their drm'd music.
I just copy songs from my linux computer or my cd's to the ipod.
gtkpod does just fine.
There are about three or four other Linux apps that let you use your ipod as well.
If you don't like Apple's DRM policies, just don't use itunes. I'm sure there must be Windows and Mac apps that work with the ipods other than itunes.
If you don't like Microsoft's DRM use the competition. If there is not an equivalent app for your needs, try sponsoring one.
GOOG's profits, according to google finance, were $3.077 billion in 2006. Google has 10.6K employees. Microsoft's profits were $12.59 billion with 71K employees.
;-)
So, I get GOOG making $288,311 in profit per employee, and MSFT making $177,450 per employee. Or in other words, GOOG is making about 1.6 times the profit per employee that MSFT is.
Looks to me like Dr. Schmidt has nothing to learn from Ballmer. Of course, he's far too classy to tell monkey-boy to STFU, but I still wish he would.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
STEVE SMASH!!
Warning to Larry Page and Sergey Brin: Watch out for flying chairs!
Hydraulic pizza oven!! Guided missile! Herring sandwich! Styrofoam! Jayne Mansfield! Aluminum siding! Borax!
I also interviewed with Google, and the 20% thing seemed to be just a myth. What really did seem to me was that the programmers spent a large percertange of their time just doing interviews to people like me. So they sort of replaced that 20% project thing with 20% interviewing time. Maybe google is only a good place for someone that likes HR.
I'd describe most of Microsoft's efforts outside of Windows and Office as "cute" as well.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What if you could hire up all the smart programmers, or at least enough so that there weren't enough left over for your competition? It doesn't matter so much if they're doing a great deal of work for you, they're not doing work for your competition. That's at least half a win.
Start Running Better Polls
I call my random collection of people doing their own thing, "The United States of America." Of course, Mr. Ballmer is correct: he really does not know.
I would consider selling my soul to work on Halo, if I could ever get into Bungie at Microsoft. They hired an orchestra for that little Halo 3 trailer. It's a game I love and enough corporate backing to be able to do it right, even if you lose money.
But I will not have anything to do with Microsoft, because I know that somewhere, at the top of the chain, is an insane monkey boy who frankly embarrasses me enough to be of the same species as him that I could never be in the same company.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You just forgot to attach a .gif image and "it's going to skyrocket!"
If MS buys products and doesn't create them themselves, why do they need so many PHDs?
Mmmm, cogent argument, well put. I'm convinced.
Sorry, morality is so booooring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4MzqBFxZE
So what's to stop them from just using an older version of Windows? Either way you have to deal with an unsupported OS. But at least with Windows, it's an unsupported OS which you know how to use, and you can actually get software for.
Linux advocates that everyone in the world needs to push a boulder uphill, because somehow you will be happier with that boulder once you get to the top of the mountain. That's simply insane.
Then try to install Windows on a system with a raid controller and no floppy drive. See if you still agree then.