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Silicon Valley’s Legendary ‘Coach’ Bill Campbell Has Died
- nickgrosvenor 11y agoAbsolute Legend. Here's an hour long interview with the man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFWG51nGmGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFWG51nGmGA
- dang 11y agoUrl changed from http://www.businessinsider.sg/bill-campbell-has-died-2016-4 http://www.businessinsider.sg/bill-campbell-has-died-2016-4, which points to this.
- drusenko 11y agoVery, very sad indeed. I had far too few chances to interact with Bill, but when I did, they were always incredibly memorable. One of my favorite quotes came at the SV Angel CEO conference a few years ago. When asked about culture, Bill said: "Culture is not about the free food or the ping pong tables. Culture is about how you treat your people and how they treat each other." Rings very true to me. My condolences to his family, Bill was a great man.
- spydertennis 11y agoSays volumes about our level of discourse that this is considered a pearl of wisdom.
- hkmurakami 11y agoUnfortunately this was particularly the case around 2011 :(
- visakanv 11y agoCan you think of any examples of wisdom that don't seem blatantly obvious on hindsight? Would sincerely love to hear them
- dworin 11y agoI've said the same thing to leaders at multiple startups (some well known) and they all gave me a look like I was a neophyte who didn't understand the motivating power of ping pong tables.
- shrugger 11y agoThis should constitute a black bar for today. Campbell was responsible for shaping some of the greatest minds the tech industry has ever known. I mean, the amount of money that the people who learned from Campbell control can be measure in TRILLIONS. This man was the absolutely one of the most influential people I can even think of when it comes to tech. I wish I could've met him!
- fizwhiz 11y ago> TRILLIONS C'mon now, let's not get ahead of ourselves...
- blazespin 11y agoApple and Google alone have over a trillion in market cap.
- vkou 11y agoHow much of that valuation is due to his efforts, and how much is due to the decades of labour by over a hundred thousand talented engineers?
- hkmurakami 11y agoEric Schmidt is quoted as saying that the totality of Google's organizational structure owes itself to Bill Campbell. That's a pretty substantial fraction of the company's valuation.
- endlessvoid94 11y agoThat's not what he suggested: > the amount of money that the people who learned from Campbell control can be measure in TRILLIONS
- chetanahuja 11y agoValuation =/= "control" over that money. (source : Founder)
- gjmulhol 11y agoA truly sad day. I had a chance to meet Bill 4 or 5 times as a student and as an entrepreneur, and you would have no idea that he was such an institution: completely approachable and willing to give advice and support even to a random kid from North Carolina.
- shrugger 11y agoHey, I'm from North Carolina too, from Clayton! That's really awesome to hear that you were able to meet him. I always hear stories about people like that, who leave that 'approachable' impression on people they meet, I'm glad that there are still others like Campbell left, and that it seems that so many have learned from him. Surely his great work will continue on in the lives he touched.
- ggraham 11y agoThat free food and those ping pong tables are very representative of how a person treat their employees, though. They typically mean that the person believes that food and games are appropriate compensation for continuous overtime. I wouldn't need food if I was (socially, it's rarely made explicit) allowed to leave at an appropriate time (5pm, assuming 9am arrival), because I'd have time to make my own dinner. Similarly, ping-pong tables mean you do not value your employees' focus, and believe that "whack whack whack" noises are totally okay in a room of knowledge workers (well, then that it's a single room room means...). So culture might not be the ping-pong tables and candy, but they're certainly representative.
- btian 11y agoI have plenty of time to make my own dinner, but I don't like cooking, and hate washing up.
- vaishaksuresh 11y agoYes but people with kids and family would like that time for themselves. Although you mean good, when enough number of people in the office stay late for food and in the process work a little, it puts pressure on the family people. This results in them giving up their family life for the fear of being perceived as a slacker.
- morgante 11y agoThe world is not obliged to bend to your choice to have children, just as I don't expect employers to oblige my decision to occasionally go out drinking on a Thursday night. If leaving at 5pm is important to you, work at an employer who ends work then. There are plenty out there. They also tend to require arriving by 9am (which I would hate), but I don't derail other HN threads to complain about that.
- vaishaksuresh 11y ago>The world is not obliged to bend to your choice to have children But they are when someone stays at office because they don't want to cook (which is the reason the comment I replied to gave)? Nobody is asking for extra privileges for having kids, the problem is being penalized for having a life outside work.
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- nxzero 11y agoWikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Campbell_(business_executive) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Campbell_(business_exe... YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GHLg1wDuc10 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GHLg1wDuc10
- mathattack 11y agoWhat makes him so special is that he was the one "Adult in the Room" who was welcomed in. He understood that technology is a Long Game, not a Short Game, and encouraged great leadership and management. This is an enormous loss. I would love to see comments by people who had personal interactions with him. Please. :-)
- curun1r 11y agoIt's interesting you say that (Adult in the Room), since my interactions with him were kind of the opposite. I don't mean that he was childish, but that saying evokes a feeling of tempering one's impulses in a way that he didn't seem interested in doing. I met him at one company mixer and he was regaling us with many stories from Intuit's past. Someone asked him if he'd like another beer (he'd had a few already) and his response was, "I can't drink from an empty bottle." I also saw him do tequila shots with the head of our business unit on stage at a fireside chat they had. I don't mean to paint him as a lush, because that didn't seem like the case, but more to point out how genuine he was. With him, there was no concession to propriety. He did and said whatever he felt like doing or saying. I can see why the companies he lead and advised tended to have great culture because I think the first step is for the leaders to be as warm/friendly and genuine as possible and Bill had those qualities in spades.
- mathattack 11y agoThank you for sharing. This explains why he was so welcomed. By "Adult in the Room" I mean being the person to instill perspective and a longer time horizon in executives.
- 3ris3d 11y agoThis is very sad. Just this week I have been reading "The hard thing about hard things" by Ben Horowitz and he makes countless mention of how great Bill Campbell was.
- hyperbovine 11y agoI am surprised that the Bill Campbell described in this article could be the same one who oversaw Intuit, a company which has engaged in some very shady business practices with regard to tax reform (https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-fought-free-simple-tax-filing https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax...). This is not to speak ill of the dead, only to note that people are complex and full of contradictions.
- blazespin 11y agoBill Campbell was also the one that helped negotiate the wage theft that Apple and Google were sued over. https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/ https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valle...
- pinewurst 11y agoThere's an interesting portrayal of Bill and his actions in Biz Stone's "Things a Little Bird Told Me", his memoir about Twitter and other things.
- throwaway6497 11y agoCan you add more to this?
- blazespin 11y agoAt board meetings, Campbell would appear to listen to Ev’s presentations on the state of the company. After Ev’s sermons were done, the coach would clap loudly and hug his protegee, proclaiming again to everyone in the room that Ev was “doing a fucking great job” and asking them to clap… Then, after Ev left the room, proud that his mentor thought he was doing such a great job, Campbell would shout at the group: “You gotta get rid of this fucking guy. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.” http://fortune.com/2013/11/04/6-things-we-learned-from-hatching-twitter/ http://fortune.com/2013/11/04/6-things-we-learned-from-hatch...