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The Day I Played Bill Gates and Satya at Ping-Pong
- the_common_man 9y agoI 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...
- wapz 9y agoI used to use penhold because I thought it was cool and my serves were good. Then I learned from a competitive player (~1600 rating in whatever US rating system they had iirc; not too high), switched to shakehand and never looked back!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jkuria 9y agoThe op here. There were Chinese players in the tournament but fortunately for us, of only average skill. I entered the GeekWire ping-pong tournament in Seattle earlier in the year and got destroyed by some highly skilled Chinese 'Asian Tigers'.
- ido 9y agoMay 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 9y agoThe 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 :)
- saghm 9y ago> 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
- melling 9y agoIt probably is more fun for everyone if you make it look interesting for a few minutes.
- Uehreka 9y agoSeems odd, given that he played Magnus Carlson at speed Chess on live TV with a time handicap, and seemed pretty unsurprised and self deprecating when he lost in like 7 moves.
- the_common_man 9y agoHere's the game - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0QdI0rVoHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0QdI0rVoHA
- hammock 9y agoMy 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!
- terminado 9y agoThe 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 9y agoThere'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.
- uiri 9y agoSatya 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 9y agoThis 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.
- ashtavakra 9y ago"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_ 9y agoI 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?
- RugnirViking 9y agoI think what he means is you need to be thankful for their contribution and try to make it fun for them. In the sense that when you run a volunteer organisation you want to keep people coming back
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- danielvf 9y agoSatya Is says that he wants to make his employees jobs fulfilling enough that people would want to do it. He's not really discussing pay at all. Of course he's getting paid and they are getting paid. So I've worked near corporate people who obviously hated their jobs. Being in a team with such people is not a good thing for you or the project. Similarly I was part of a volunteer team that formed ad-hoc to save a huge programing contest. Every person was there because they wanted to be there. It was a whole lot of fun and an effective team.
- taneq 9y agoI 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".
- dbrower 9y agoCould either of them apply topspin or return it?
- jkuria 9y agoFrankly 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-Gatess/dp/0743273222 https://www.amazon.com/Guanxi-Art-Relationships-Microsoft-Ga...