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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.
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.
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
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
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
So they have to sell one copy of Windows Vista to compensate. Big deal...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
This is what happens when you get overeager to slam MS. I mean $289 million dollars, not $289 dollars. I previewed for formatting but not for stupidity.
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.
Does anyone actually care what Steve says?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
"...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Another theory states that he is angry to be the only person on earth not having received a gmail invite...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
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.
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
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"?
So much for the free market, then
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.
Awesome rebuttal! Well done! I know I'm swayed by your convincing arguments!
I'm running a pirated copy of Linux.
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?
Means not working for YOU, Steve.
..don't panic
And somewhere, off in the distance, a chair gives it's life as sballmer@microsoft.com receives 492 simultaneous Gmail invites.
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.