
The Day I Played Bill Gates and Satya at Ping-Pong - yinso
http://info.capitalandgrowth.org/bill-gates-lp/
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ashtavakra
"Leadership is a privilege that can easily be taken away. The talented people
who work for me have a plenty of options and can leave at any moment. I
therefore treat them like unpaid volunteers"

Interesting perspective.

~~~
ue_
I don't really understand what he means by this. Just beacuse you're choosing
to have a certain job, or because you can leave, it doesn't mean you're not
entitled to compensation. If that were true, anyone with any choice of job
wouldn't receive a wage in exchange for his labour power.

Of course the people under him get paid (perhaps not by Satya himself), so
what does he mean? That the leadership is unpaid? One would expect that
leadership means a higher paid position, because leaders are applying a more
specialised labour.

Am I looking at this the wrong way round, or being obtuse?

~~~
taneq
I think it means "treat them as well as you'd treat a volunteer doing the same
job". The contrapositive (which I've actually had thrown at me in a past job)
is "your employees get paid to do their job, they deserve no thanks beyond
that".

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uiri
_Satya was also more accessible than his predecessor and would meet with
anyone in his division for 10 minutes on Fridays._

I imagine Satya no longer has this policy as CEO. Are there any division head
level or higher execs in Microsoft which copied this policy? I imagine it
works best as a mid-level manager where there are at least 50-100 people below
you but not 10's of thousands.

~~~
rubidium
This generally works out well no matter how big the number or reports.

People realize that there's x people reporting to you, and tend to be very
careful about deciding to bring something to you. If someone wastes his time
it looks bad on them.

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saghm
> We were cautioned beforehand not to embarrass him

I would hope Bill Gates doesn't have such a delicate ego that he couldn't
handle losing a game a ping pong

~~~
hammock
My old boss low-key used to be on the Indian national ping pong team. So when
some local businesses had a charity tournament (with betting system as well).
Over 100 contenders signed up. I put all my money on him and watched as he
played 100% defensively, relying on unforced errors to advance, always
returning playable balls - not slamming them. He made it all the way to the
finals and beat his worthy opponent handily, again via unforced errors only.
No one was embarrassed!

~~~
gadders
This was also the Eric Sink approach to running his business:

 _The principle_

The thing I find most interesting about Ping Pong is that you can often win
without doing anything fancy or aggressive. A lot of players think the way to
win is to slam the ball really hard. The problem with this strategy is that a
slam is a high-risk/high-reward shot. If you do it right, you almost certainly
score a point when your opponent fails to return the ball. If you do it wrong,
you give your opponent a point.

Modesty aside, I consider myself a "pretty good" Ping Pong player. I can slam
the ball when necessary, but I hardly ever do. I can beat most other players
by simply returning every shot with a little backspin. Hitting the ball hard
simply isn't necessary. All I need to do is wait for the other player to make
21 mistakes.

 _How software is similar_

You can beat a lot of competitors by simply not beating yourself. Most
companies go out of business because of their own stupid mistakes, not because
of the brilliance or strength of their competitor. Stay conservative, and stay
in business. Watch the years go by, and you'll be surprised how many of your
competitors come and go.

[http://ericsink.com/articles/Game_Afoot.html](http://ericsink.com/articles/Game_Afoot.html)

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the_common_man
I am a ping-pong enthusiast myself and spend endless time playing it. So, I
loved reading this article. Was this competition for entire MS or just some
small division. I am wondering where the chinese players are :-) We have some
in our office who love to show off their pen-hold. Curiously, the best player
in my office is a dutch...

~~~
ido
May I humbly ask what was so enjoyable about this article?

It's fairly short and as far as i can tell almost entirely devoid of content
(the moral seems to be that Satya is a nice & humble manager?)

~~~
UweSchmidt
The article may appeal to a ping pong player as it describes a moment when the
abstract, specific niche skill finally counts on the big stage of life :)

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terminado
The actual Microsoft corporate subculture is bizarre to behold, when
contrasted with the perceived subculture of the Microsoft user, operator,
systems administrator, penetration tester, et c.

~~~
13of40
There's no single Microsoft subculture. The company is too big, made of too
many parts, and 4-dimensional. The culture of Windows in the 90's would be
absolutely alien to the culture of (for example) Skype in the 201*'s.

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dbrower
Could either of them apply topspin or return it?

~~~
jkuria
Frankly I don't remember. But Bill was decent as he had worked on his game and
got coaching for sometime. Apparently, when Microsoft was entering the China
market he had to engage in ping-pong diplomacy. It is a practice that dates
back to president Nixon's time that is explained in the book _Guanxi: The Art
of Relationships (Microsoft, China, and Bill Gates 's Plan to Win the Road
Ahead)_

[https://www.amazon.com/Guanxi-Art-Relationships-Microsoft-
Ga...](https://www.amazon.com/Guanxi-Art-Relationships-Microsoft-
Gatess/dp/0743273222)

