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Steve Ballmer Says Tech Firms Should Be As Accountable As NBA Teams (backchannel.com) 120

Posted by BeauHD from the show-me-the-money dept.
New submitter mirandakatz writes: Steve Ballmer has worn many hats -- as the CEO of Microsoft and the owner of the LA Clippers, to start -- and his latest endeavor, launched earlier this year, is a comprehensive trove of government statistics called USA Facts. Ballmer recently sat down with Backchannel's Steven Levy to discuss publishing government information, owning the Clippers, why he bought stock in Twitter, and what tech can learn from the world of professional sports: "There's no hiding in sports. How well you're doing is all entirely transparent, and there's no way to talk yourself out of a jam, or confuse yourself. It's hardcore -- you either win or you lose. Your season's over, or it's not over. It's just binary. It's the highest accountability thing in the world. In basketball, every human on the planet can evaluate your performance. All the analytics are available. Everybody can watch all your games or write about it -- the columnist knows absolutely everything that the general manager knows. Everything. Your individual human performance can get reviewed in a way that never happens in business. And every 24 seconds, I can tell you how good our teamwork is. That's high accountability." In response to a question asking if a tech company should publish everyone's salary and be transparent to the press, Ballmer replied: "I only worked at one tech company, but I would say, the opportunity to improve accountability in the tech industry is not insubstantial. It's different than Procter & Gamble, which got to show good soap sales every quarter. Some companies making money right now say they're investing for the future. Where's the accountability? You can say, 'Well, the ultimate accountability's the stock price.' It sort of is, but it sort of isn't. You can talk your stock price up. But you can't talk up wins and losses."
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Steve Ballmer Says Tech Firms Should Be As Accountable As NBA Teams More

Steve Ballmer Says Tech Firms Should Be As Accountable As NBA Teams

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  • He's right. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sconeu ( 64226 )

    And oddly, while I depised him at MS, I kind of like him as the owner of the Clips.

    Seems to be an "everyman" type owner. Similar to Cuban.

    • As he rides the team's fortunes further into the ground...

    • No he's not, he's fundamentally wrong (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Wins and losses in a sports league are literally a zero-sum game. For you to win, someone else has to lose.

      That's not true in business and economics in general - it's not a zero-sum game (which is the fundamental failing of Marx, btw...). When you buy something, both you and the seller tend to think they "won". You got what you wanted at a price you were willing to pay, and they got the amount of money they wanted for what they sold you.

      • Only in the context of teams playing each other.

        For owners of teams that get the city to pay for their stadium it's usually the city and tax base that loses out. I've seen a lot of hand waving on the math on how it 'pays for itself' but if that was really the case then the owners should build and buy their own stadiums.

        How many cities are still paying for the 'old' stadium?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gnick ( 1211984 )

        Wins and losses in a sports league are literally a zero-sum game. For you to win, someone else has to lose.

        That depends on how you're defining wins and losses. The fan gets to watch a game for a price he was willing to pay and the players and various members of the organization earn wages at a rate they've agreed to. That's a win for both sides. Who cares who won the game?

  • So Steve said this.. woop-te-doo (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @10:20PM (#54565223)

    Any [mb]illionaire can own a football team, basketball team or a villa in France. How utterly, utterly undemanding and uninspiring. So they win! So they lose! So what.
    Some billionaires do REAL things with their wealth for the benefit of mankind, like start their own space program, or fund cures for malaria or cancer.
    Till YOU do that, Steve, you're just another one of the bunch.

    • Ballmer Doesn't get it (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Ballmer has discovered big data. Great. However, he is prejudiced by a philosophy that in order for someone to win, others must lose.

      The Microsoft way is failing. There is a time to compete and a time to collaborate. While Steve is trying to compete, others have learned to collaborate without him.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msauve ( 701917 )
      "Any [mb]illionaire can own a football team, basketball team or a villa in France."

      You're very naive about what a million dollars can buy.

    • The report omitted to mention that at the end of the interview he got up and started chanting "Salaries! Salaries! Salaries! Salaries!".

      His throwing a chair at the guy who brought him slightly too-warm Evian was also left out.

    • Can we, for once, focus on what was said and whether it makes sense, rather than who said it?
      Anonymized quotes might fix that. Call it "accidental wisdom", if you will.

  • Ballmer is such a mental midget (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Right place, right time, nothing more

    This guy has always been an idiot. The moron who laughed and scoffed at the iPhone. And now he reveres sports. Ugh.

  • Would he have said that... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @10:28PM (#54565269)
    ...when he was in charge?

  • As a coach, you can also throw a chair (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @10:35PM (#54565293) Homepage

    Where did Mr. Ballmer get the idea that he is so smart that people should listen to him?

    I'm thinking that this whole train of thought came about that just like a pro basketball coach a CEO can throw a chair so the two endeavours must be completely interrelated and you can transfer ideas & concepts between the two and they make complete sense.

    Over the years, I've heard of *many* ideas like this:
    - Business is like hunting, if you don't return with skins, you've failed
    - Business is like prostitution, you get fucked or you're the fucker
    - Business is like a parent, you coddle, worry, teach and it takes years to find out if you were successful

    I don't think Mr. Ballmer has ever appreciated how lucky he was to be at the right place at the right time - otherwise he'd just be some obnoxious nobody that people try to ignore.

    As it is, he's just a rich obnoxious nobody that people try to ignore.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Where did Mr. Ballmer get the idea that he is so smart that people should listen to him?

      Same place as Mr. Trump I guess.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        > Same place as Mr. Trump I guess.
        Ballmer made more money than Trump, but he was also a whole lot luckier and a good bit smarter, both pretty substantial advantages even in the world of billionaires. Trump has had to be a hardass his whole life to get success, and he thinks (rightly or wrongly, more likely wrongly) that he has practical advice for the middle and lower class.

        Still, he inspired Barack Obama and like a hundred million other success stories, and won the presidency despite a full court press

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Chris Katko ( 2923353 )

      So wait, from you, and other commenters, we're supposed to not value his opinion (without actually debating what he said) because you attack his authority. ... except... by the same logic, why should we be listening to you, over that of a billionaire, ex-CEO?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Where did Mr. Ballmer get the idea that he is so smart that people should listen to him?

      It's not like he put out a press release. He was interviewed. That's where one person asks questions and the other answers them. That's what happened here.

  • I just want to see that howler monkey impression video he did way back when.

  • Obviously, success is ultimately important, but in tech you gotta be willing to fail. Can't be afraid to fail. Technology is a very different endeavor than sports.

    Look at the striking difference in Nadella's response to the AI debacle Microsoft had some months ago:

    "Just under a year ago, Microsoft launched a Twitter bot by the name of Tay (officially, Tay.ai), in an attempt to advance how artificial intelligence communicates with humans in real time. Things took a vicious turn, though, when hackers and othe

    • Nadella:

      "Keep pushing, and know that I am with you ... (The) key is to keep learning and improving." -- Inc. [inc.com]

      Tay was about as technically sophisticated as Racter, a stand-alone chat-bot released in 1984 by Mindscape. It just remembered everything you typed to it, and randomly brought up things that you had mentioned before. It was basically ELIZA with a phrase-learning function.

      That was why Tay was so easily punked by internet pranksters. It was, like, a mere 30 years later, but the Microsoft "AI Team" simply 'phoned it in' (probably at 2400 baud), and Microsoft just shoveled it out the door like all of the ot

  • in the guy that used to take Bill to strip joints.

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      You can't exclusively blame Ballmer, the toxicity of Microsoft's strategy was in full effect by the time he took charge, and even Bill Gates was pissed about it. Still, he didn't seem to do them many favors.

      The bigger problem with his comments is this: a basketball team can be a complete failure one year and a smashing success a couple years later. They still get a seat at the table. A basketball team that exclusively loses won't go out of business, and will instead be given preferential draft picks. Th

    • Here's the relevant excerpt from Ballmer's recent Freakonmics [freakonomics.com] interview:

      BALLMER: Hoopers, hoopers, hoopers. It's a little more, running a basketball team. I mean, I own a basketball team. I actually have people who run the basketball team, which is great. In the case of Microsoft, you are worrying every day about the future of the enterprise. Are you going to grow? You got 100,000 people who work for you - are they going to be stable in their jobs? There's no question: a basketball team is not going out of

  • How to become a millionaire investing in Ballmer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @10:49PM (#54565375)
    Start with a billion dollars and invest in a company where he's the CEO.

  • That USA Facts site sounds like an interesting idea, but the implementation could sure use some work. Navigate to the homepage and you're given a search box: What do you want to know about? "Search for some things."

    Off the top of my head, I decide to compare the number of deaths by firearm due to murder and the number of firearm deaths due to suicide. And ... for the life of my, I can't figure out how to make it call up that information. Which is odd, since if you went to the original Department of Justice

  • ... as a Christmas turkey.

    Ballmer hasn't seen his name in print lately, is what this is about.

  • and the workers should be unionized like the teams!

  • As Accountable As MBA Teams (Score:4, Funny)

    by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @11:51PM (#54565703)

    If there's anything a team of MBAs isn't, it's accountable.
    Oh, wait...

  • How the NBA team is doing as a team playing basketball, sure, that's out there. That's something along the lines of how a company is doing in market share.

    How the NBA team is doing as a BUSINESS is quite different. And that's equivalent to how a tech company is doing overall. And it isn't quite so obvious how to measure that in either case.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hipp5 ( 1635263 )

      My thought exactly.

      Yes, if winning is your metric, then the stats are all right there. But as an owner, winning is probably not your number one goal (though it helps with your other goals). The Toronto Maple Leafs haven't won a cup since 1967... but they're the third most valuable NHL franchise.

  • Spoken like the genuine sort of MBA idiot to whom the U.S. has handed over the keys of the planet to.

  • It might be a cancer according to him, but there is no hiding in OSS either.
    Much of what he describes for the sport teams, is true for OSS.

  • Call them for a meeting and motivate them with a wonderful rendition of, "Dribblers, Dribblers, Dribblers ....". We need some comic relief.

  • Not very insightful (Score:3)

    by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @10:09AM (#54567867) Homepage

    So honestly, the comparison is kind of stupid. He wants things to be as clear as "wins and losses", but that's not how the world operates. When you have a well defined game with contrived endpoints and rules that are agreed upon, it's easy to find clarity. One team wins because we all agreed to an arbitrary set of rules that say the game ends after a set period of time, and whoever has the most points wins.

    So with a tech company, when does the game end? What constitutes "winning"? Obviously, if you're stupid, you might say, "Whoever has the most net profit at the end of the year wins!" But that doesn't deal with the question of which company achieved more growth, or which company is better positioned for future years. It might be that a company didn't make much money this year, but they work they did this year will get them more money 5 or 10 years from now. That's not like a game. In basketball, you can't say, "I didn't win this game, but the play I pulled off this game will get me 100 points next game!"

    He points out that, in basketball, either you make the playoffs or you don't. You won or you didn't. Achievement is binary. In tech, and in the rest of life, that's not the case at all. It's not win or lose. Honestly, coming in second is often basically as good as coming in first. Or really, more to the point, most of us will come in 300th, which is about as good as coming in 299th. Plus, a lot of people start businesses and run businesses because they like what they do, and achieving high metrics just isn't the chief concern.

    It's kind of disturbing to me, when he says:

    In business, you can say, “Well, I didn’t get it right, but we’re gonna keep working. Okay, we’ll improve that.” In tech, employees like to yak: “My review score—what is it? How much is this? How much is that? Did I do a good job? Let me talk to you.”

    So he's complaining that, in business, you might not get things right, and then continue to work on it? He's complaining that people want to know if they did a good job? And if your employees were focusing on their review score, maybe you should consider that it's because you, as the head of the company, instituted review scores. If you set up a system of metrics and then base employee success on meeting those metrics, you shouldn't be surprised or put off when those employees want to know how well they're meeting those metrics.

    Finally, the whole way of talking about it shows that he doesn't understand the nature of professional basketball either. Owning a basketball team is also a business. He talks as though his success as an owner can be determined easily with the binary metric of a win or a loss, but sports teams have a lot more to contend with than that. What about ticket sales? Merchandise sales? Brand association, licensing, fan satisfaction? What about maintaining good relationships within the league? Getting good players and coaches so you can build a better team for future years? I mean, is he really so dumb that he's measuring his success as an owner based on whether his team won the last game, or whether his team makes it to the playoffs?

    Really, people should not listen to this man.

  • the columnist knows absolutely everything that the general manager knows

    Not even close. Does a columnist know detailed injury info that isn't released to the public, what went on at the practice that is closed to the public, or what the coaching strategy (and how well the players are following it) was?
    A reporter can see the in-game performances, but there is more to any sport then just the games themselves.

  • He was a spectacularly awful CEO of Microsoft.
    He managed to bring on board a successor who was less spectacular, but every bit as awful.
    As to his monetary situation. He's just a chump who was in the right place at the right time around the right people. You can't depend on luck.

    Why the hell would ANYONE in their right mind listen to him?

  • Where in the world does he think having the teams winning record being available makes it accountable? Just because everyone knows if his basketball team loses 10 games in a row it doesn't hold the people responsible for the losses to account and it certainly doesn't fix the problem. Accountability is taking responsibility for how things are. I don't see many coaches that get fired give up the remaining money on their contract. How many players give some of their money back for having a bad year? No matte

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