The original is better--the order of the story and the emotion both work better. Probably has to do with trying to dumb down, sound more professional, and remove the swearing for Inc readers. Joel's Inc Magazine columns compared to his blog writing have pretty much convinced me not to subscribe to Inc..
Joel's Inc Magazine columns compared to his blog writing
Most of his articles have been inferior re-writes, to the point that I'm not sure why nobody at Inc. has caught on. Maybe they don't care, but I'd be pissed.
I thought it was funny that they merged the closing "Still." paragraph into the preceding one, changing the meaning -- from hesitant ("Still, I wonder if he could have been talking about me.") to bitter ("He's still talking about those other Excel devs!").
I imagine Inc. has a word limit on articles so they can fit them in the magazine. If so, there's not a lot Joel can do to keep his columns for Inc. as informative as the essays he publishes on his site without any length restriction.
Yes, but it has one great takeaway quote that isn't self-serving:
> Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn't know how to surf trying to surf. Even if he has great advisers standing on the shore telling him what to do, he still falls off the board again and again. The cult of the M.B.A. likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don't understand. But often, you can't.
This is true for any industry and it's a basic common sense for anyone but a recent MBA graduate without any real-world experience. There's nothing particularly great or insightful about this quote.
Not to veer off into politics, but the Bush administration would seem to be an existence proof that at least some part of your statement is incorrect. (Yes, I realize Bush has an MBA.) I've run into this attitude fairly often, and not just among MBAs.
Not really: the practice of installing CEOs without a lot of industry experience is quite common (see Terry Semel). It might be obvious to you, but not to everyone.
Sure, but he didn't have experience as a technology executive, and couldn't call "bullshit" on technical claims made by people reporting to him -- which is Joel's argument for why this sort of CEO isn't often a good idea.
Well, it _does_ help to have sociopathic tendencies. BTW did he ever acknowledge that the child he fathered was indeed his daughter? From the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" I got the idea he wouldn't even _acknowledge_ his child for years.
That's a great case-in-point. He spent nearly his whole adult life running Apple, and he knows that company's business inside and out. He hired a Pepsi guy to take over as CEO, and things went poorly.
It only appears for me next to the post when I click "link" and view a comment individually. I assume this is to prevent knee-jerk flagging. Not sure what the karma limit is.
Joel's essays are just that. Essays. He continues to ignore any and all research in the area and pretends to know what he's doing. If I wanted a bunch of misinformed opinions I could just ask non-programmers.
So point out a couple for things where he is wrong, according to research? That would actually be interesting. Also, Joel does quote research results in his essays.
To me this highlights that experience over the years and being technically apt and knowledgeable with the burning desire for your company to do well allowed Bill to harness his vast amount of knowledge and experience to 'probe' people. The level of probing would reveal weaknesses very quickly, as no doubt it would begin in the broad sense, then delving deeper, until the nitty-gritty establishes your understanding of the subject matter.
In this example, the common understanding and concerns between the two was there due to the development of Excel to include "Visual Basic for Applications", allowing VB programmers to extend the Office Apps. The Date/Time concerns would have been paramount, particularly as concerns about Y2k were also just emerging - the first online debate being in 1996.
I actually heard this originally from my ex-boss when he was telling stories during a lull at his startup. A friend of his worked for MSFT in the 1980s; I was just thrilled that it was googleable as I had the gist of the story but not the detail in my memory.
"What are the greatest business lessons Bill has taught you over the years?
Very early in my career at Microsoft, around February 1984, we found a data-crashing bug. I wondered if I would get fired over it. I went to Bill with the head of development. I was then the product manager.
It was a classic meeting. Bill was on the couch looking down. I explained that we found this bug and that we thought we were going to have to recall the product. He nodded, did his rocking thing and kept looked down. We were both wondering if we would get fired. Bill wasn't saying anything so my anxiety was growing.
I explained that we're going to have to recall the product, and that it's going to cost several hundred thousand dollars and be a hit to our reputation. Bill rocks and looks down. We didn't have anything else to say. I thought: Is this when the ax comes?
Then Bill looks up and says: "You came in today and lost a few hundred thousand dollars. You come in tomorrow and hope you do better."
His expectation wasn't that we weren't going to make mistakes. He wanted to know that we took it seriously and learned from our mistakes. That's very motivating."
So this is supposed to be an example of good management?
Looks more like an example of why Microsoft succeeded in spite of its management. I guess when you're milking a monopolistic cash cow with crappy products, you really don't need good management.
Think about it. The CEO comes into a meeting with 6 levels of management and proceeds to treat his people like children by acting like a child himself and "teaching them a lesson".
I wonder what Mike Conte, Chris Graham, Pete Higgins, and Mike Maples were thinking during this charade.
With 6 levels of management, you'd think that the CEO would focus of the big picture, set the course, and trust his people to do their jobs.
Perhaps the best evidence that Bill Gates was too busy bullying and micromanaging was the book he wrote 3 years after this meeting, "The Road Ahead," which never even mentioned the word "internet". Imagine, the CEO of a multi-billion dollar technology company who didn't see the internet in 1994.
There are stories of him being upset with having to write that book because it made him take his eye off the ball. I always wondered what ball he was talking about. Thanks to Joel, now we know.
I have a copy of the first edition of The Road Ahead. Here is the index entry for Internet:
Internet, 3-4, 91-100, 91
activities on, 93-97
addresses on, 94
cost of use of, 97-99, 125
e-mail on, 96-97, 124-25
expectations for, 125
foundation of, 97
growth and evolution of, 91, 95-96
and information highway, 3-4, 89, 95, 100, 230, 246
and publication, 95, 123-25
real-time content on, 99
regulation of, 161-63, 204
revenue from, 125
and security, 95, 96, 145
software on, 100
and standards, 96
and telephone system, 99
and Windows, 64
and WWW, 94, 95, 193, 201
What was I thinking? I obviously read something that was wrong. Looking for my source...
[EDIT: I give up. I'm not looking anymore. I thought it may have been "Hard Drive" but it's not. So I either read something that was wrong or (more likely) I misinterpreted it.
But I stand by my claim that Joel's meeting is an excellent example of mismanagement. If Bill Gates wasn't so busy maintaining an atmosphere of bullying and "see how smart I am" and instead was a real visionary, would there even be a Yahoo or Google today?]
One thing I should point out, is that although the 1st edition does have a fair bit of talk about the Internet, (even predicting things like VoIP), Gates uses the phrase "information highway" because he thought the Internet would be supplanted by something better:
"...we stand at the brink of another revolution. This one will involve unprecedentedly inexpensive communication; all the computers will join together to communicate with us and for us. Interconnected globally, they will form a network, which is being called the information highway. A direct precursor is the present Internet..."
After the book was written, but before it hit bookstores, Gates recognized that the Internet was gaining the critical mass needed to drive it to dominance, and on December 7, 1995 — just weeks after the release of the book — he redirected Microsoft to become an Internet-focused company. Then he and coauthor Rinearson spent several months revising the book, making it 20,000 words longer and focused on the Internet. The revised edition was published in October 1996 as a trade paperback.
Steve Jobs is notorious for inspecting product prototypes and sending products back to the drawing board because a certain gap is half a millimeter too big. This is pretty much the same behavior as Gates exhibits in the story. This is bad management?
If you're doing the job of a subordinate and not your own job, then yes.
Remember, there were 4 levels of manager in the room. What did they do? Did anyone trust them?
The internet practically passed by the largest software company in the world while 6 levels of micromanagement were showing each other how smart they were. Yes, I'd call that bad management.
In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone.
- Bill Gates
57 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadMost of his articles have been inferior re-writes, to the point that I'm not sure why nobody at Inc. has caught on. Maybe they don't care, but I'd be pissed.
> Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn't know how to surf trying to surf. Even if he has great advisers standing on the shore telling him what to do, he still falls off the board again and again. The cult of the M.B.A. likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don't understand. But often, you can't.
Must be great to have a dad like that.
(In case the post above is deleted; it's about 1000 lines of "-" characters and nothing else.)
I do notice, however, that I see the flag link for your comment now that I've hit the reply button. I think this is a bug.
Meanwhile, anecdotes may be anecdotal but they're still more enjoyable than flamage.
Where's copyediting gone to?
-Richard Dean Anderson (as Jack O'Niell)
But I figured why not check the Google first, just in case. First thing I see is an old post from the inestimable Language Log arguing that the quote isn't Churchill's at all: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001715.h...
Basically, if you're famous, all the best jokes get attributed to you.
In this example, the common understanding and concerns between the two was there due to the development of Excel to include "Visual Basic for Applications", allowing VB programmers to extend the Office Apps. The Date/Time concerns would have been paramount, particularly as concerns about Y2k were also just emerging - the first online debate being in 1996.
I actually heard this originally from my ex-boss when he was telling stories during a lull at his startup. A friend of his worked for MSFT in the 1980s; I was just thrilled that it was googleable as I had the gist of the story but not the detail in my memory.
"What are the greatest business lessons Bill has taught you over the years?
Very early in my career at Microsoft, around February 1984, we found a data-crashing bug. I wondered if I would get fired over it. I went to Bill with the head of development. I was then the product manager.
It was a classic meeting. Bill was on the couch looking down. I explained that we found this bug and that we thought we were going to have to recall the product. He nodded, did his rocking thing and kept looked down. We were both wondering if we would get fired. Bill wasn't saying anything so my anxiety was growing.
I explained that we're going to have to recall the product, and that it's going to cost several hundred thousand dollars and be a hit to our reputation. Bill rocks and looks down. We didn't have anything else to say. I thought: Is this when the ax comes?
Then Bill looks up and says: "You came in today and lost a few hundred thousand dollars. You come in tomorrow and hope you do better."
His expectation wasn't that we weren't going to make mistakes. He wanted to know that we took it seriously and learned from our mistakes. That's very motivating."
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/06/25/raikes-bill-gate...
Looks more like an example of why Microsoft succeeded in spite of its management. I guess when you're milking a monopolistic cash cow with crappy products, you really don't need good management.
Think about it. The CEO comes into a meeting with 6 levels of management and proceeds to treat his people like children by acting like a child himself and "teaching them a lesson".
I wonder what Mike Conte, Chris Graham, Pete Higgins, and Mike Maples were thinking during this charade.
With 6 levels of management, you'd think that the CEO would focus of the big picture, set the course, and trust his people to do their jobs.
Perhaps the best evidence that Bill Gates was too busy bullying and micromanaging was the book he wrote 3 years after this meeting, "The Road Ahead," which never even mentioned the word "internet". Imagine, the CEO of a multi-billion dollar technology company who didn't see the internet in 1994.
There are stories of him being upset with having to write that book because it made him take his eye off the ball. I always wondered what ball he was talking about. Thanks to Joel, now we know.
Internet, 3-4, 91-100, 91 activities on, 93-97 addresses on, 94 cost of use of, 97-99, 125 e-mail on, 96-97, 124-25 expectations for, 125 foundation of, 97 growth and evolution of, 91, 95-96 and information highway, 3-4, 89, 95, 100, 230, 246 and publication, 95, 123-25 real-time content on, 99 regulation of, 161-63, 204 revenue from, 125 and security, 95, 96, 145 software on, 100 and standards, 96 and telephone system, 99 and Windows, 64 and WWW, 94, 95, 193, 201
[EDIT: I give up. I'm not looking anymore. I thought it may have been "Hard Drive" but it's not. So I either read something that was wrong or (more likely) I misinterpreted it.
But I stand by my claim that Joel's meeting is an excellent example of mismanagement. If Bill Gates wasn't so busy maintaining an atmosphere of bullying and "see how smart I am" and instead was a real visionary, would there even be a Yahoo or Google today?]
"...we stand at the brink of another revolution. This one will involve unprecedentedly inexpensive communication; all the computers will join together to communicate with us and for us. Interconnected globally, they will form a network, which is being called the information highway. A direct precursor is the present Internet..."
After the book was written, but before it hit bookstores, Gates recognized that the Internet was gaining the critical mass needed to drive it to dominance, and on December 7, 1995 — just weeks after the release of the book — he redirected Microsoft to become an Internet-focused company. Then he and coauthor Rinearson spent several months revising the book, making it 20,000 words longer and focused on the Internet. The revised edition was published in October 1996 as a trade paperback.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead
If you're doing the job of a subordinate and not your own job, then yes.
Remember, there were 4 levels of manager in the room. What did they do? Did anyone trust them?
The internet practically passed by the largest software company in the world while 6 levels of micromanagement were showing each other how smart they were. Yes, I'd call that bad management.
We'll never know because people who write kernels can't write as well as Spolsky.