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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#421

Post by meiraleal »

71bw wrote: post #375
ethbr1 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between being frugal and being an asshole. If you have enough money that tips are a rounding error for you -- not tipping just makes you an asshole.

It's none of your business to ever tip anywhere UNLESS you explicitly want to thank somebody for their service. How hard is that to understand? It is the workplace's responsibility to pay their staff adequately. NOT YOURS. 0% tip all the way everywhere. No matter if I have $10 or $10k on the bill.

> It's none of your business to ever tip anywhere UNLESS you explicitly want to thank somebody for their service. How hard is that to understand?

That's exactly the point? Buying iced tea everyday for some time means that he liked it. Not showing appreciation to something he clearly appreciates

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#422

Post by DSingularity »

godelski wrote: post #245
not_a_bot_4sho wrote: post #124

Funny story. I used to see Steve almost every weekday for a couple of years. I can't speak to his business skills, but I can attest that he never once offered a tip for his daily black iced tea. We'd even have it ready for him before he showed up so he never had to wait! He would pay with cash, and I'd hand him his change and drink, and that was that. It's funny to me now: one of the richest men in the world and he n…

Everyone, chill Regardless of how you feel about tipping culture we're not talking about the average person nor are we talking about the average * experience* . The dude is worth north of $100bn, and is making nearly $10k per minute![0]. Someone who cannot spend his wealth. Someone who'd have to spend tens of millions of dollars every single day just to stop his wealth from growing. Someone who makes money faster tha…

What’s the saying? Everyone is acting like they are a multi-millionaire that is in a temporary financial bind?

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#423

Post by bravetraveler »

justanotherjoe wrote: post #406
godelski wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone, chill Regardless of how you feel about tipping culture we're not talking about the average person nor are we talking about the average * experience* . The dude is worth north of $100bn, and is making nearly $10k per minute![0]. Someone who cannot spend his wealth. Someone who'd have to spend tens of millions of dollars every single day just to stop his wealth from growing. Someone who makes money faster tha…

That's crazy, i didn't know that. That is a guy who is 2 orders of magnitude above a 'mere' billionaire. And for what? Because he was friends with bill gates at Harvard, and employee#30 at microsoft. Talk about capitalism's greatest mistakes.

Developers, developers, developers. I'm no fan of the guy but he definitely had a bigger role than proximity.

My distaste is exactly because of how he spent his time working. I believe we'd be further along without them, considering efforts against free/libre software.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#424

Post by throwaway2037 »

not_a_bot_4sho wrote: post #124

Funny story. I used to see Steve almost every weekday for a couple of years. I can't speak to his business skills, but I can attest that he never once offered a tip for his daily black iced tea. We'd even have it ready for him before he showed up so he never had to wait! He would pay with cash, and I'd hand him his change and drink, and that was that. It's funny to me now: one of the richest men in the world and he n…

First, I love this story. I'm on your side. For me personally, the most charming detail is that he paid in cash. I guess it was a while ago! Your story makes me think of the scene from the film "Casino" when the mafia guys spit into the "free" sandwiches that they give to the police. (Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPufB6oaJFE)

It is weird to me that a guy like that even bothers to pick up his own daily black iced tea. Once you are making a few million dollars per year (and you have a net worth > 1B USD), I would assume that everything would be brought to you. Literally, have an assistant who does all of this stuff and brings it to your office. The most highly paid people that I have ever observed up close were in non-stop meetings all day long -- talkin' money! They had no time to buy their own daily coffee or lunch. There was an assistant who would bring everything to their office. That said, maybe he did it to "feel normal". For any human being, having a net worth > 1B USD must really screw with your world view.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#425

Post by bravetraveler »

pheatherlite wrote: post #364
godelski wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone, chill Regardless of how you feel about tipping culture we're not talking about the average person nor are we talking about the average * experience* . The dude is worth north of $100bn, and is making nearly $10k per minute![0]. Someone who cannot spend his wealth. Someone who'd have to spend tens of millions of dollars every single day just to stop his wealth from growing. Someone who makes money faster tha…

That's not the point, though. It's not how generous he is with his money. It's how he sees money, its purpose in his life. People who see wealth as a force multiplier don't gorm habits of being careless with it. Just like you see people who have no money live pay check to pay check, take on debt just to assume a class they don't exist in. Yet you used to see Bezos in a camry and Buffet in some equally run of the mill…

The phrase, penny wise and pound foolish comes to mind, though probably doesn't strictly apply. I don't spend my life reading. I read then live.

I don't see this hyper-optimization as a good thing. Externalities and so on. Of course dragons hoard coins. They look nice, bring good things, and who is going to stop them? "Game theory" is broadly applicable

All this to say: if tipping is a life altering decision for you, I have news. You're closer to the townsperson than the dragon, outlook is grim. Now the cycle may continue!

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#426

Post by maeil »

wkat4242 wrote: post #108

For me it was more his personality that made me dislike him. He acted like a baboon on stage. Nadella is much more composed and seems more intelligent as a result. I don't like that kind of extreme expression and this is important because I wouldn't respect such a leader at work. See also other stuff like the chair-throwing incident of course. Also something I didn't see covered, this was also the dark age where Micr…

> One thing I don't really like about Satya Nadella by the way, his AI strategy is a mess. They're slamming stuff on the market way too quickly (see the recall fiasco)

Google did an even worse job in that regard, Gemini's reputation is still greatly tainted in the tech world despite now being competitive with the other frontier models.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#427

Post by throwaway2037 »

71bw wrote: post #375
ethbr1 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between being frugal and being an asshole. If you have enough money that tips are a rounding error for you -- not tipping just makes you an asshole.

It's none of your business to ever tip anywhere UNLESS you explicitly want to thank somebody for their service. How hard is that to understand? It is the workplace's responsibility to pay their staff adequately. NOT YOURS. 0% tip all the way everywhere. No matter if I have $10 or $10k on the bill.

This is a pretty heartless reply. I will be downvoted for expressing my view here.

    > It is the workplace's responsibility to pay their staff adequately. NOT YOURS.
Yeah, except that most of these (low income/low skill) service workers don't have the negotiation power to change this power dynamic. Thus, you, someone with enough means to eat out, can offset that gap, just a little bit, by tipping.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#428

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

godelski wrote: post #245
not_a_bot_4sho wrote: post #124

Funny story. I used to see Steve almost every weekday for a couple of years. I can't speak to his business skills, but I can attest that he never once offered a tip for his daily black iced tea. We'd even have it ready for him before he showed up so he never had to wait! He would pay with cash, and I'd hand him his change and drink, and that was that. It's funny to me now: one of the richest men in the world and he n…

Everyone, chill Regardless of how you feel about tipping culture we're not talking about the average person nor are we talking about the average * experience* . The dude is worth north of $100bn, and is making nearly $10k per minute![0]. Someone who cannot spend his wealth. Someone who'd have to spend tens of millions of dollars every single day just to stop his wealth from growing. Someone who makes money faster tha…

Like you say, at his level of wealth, the actual dollars and cents become almost meaningless. Setting aside whether somebody in that position should be leaving a tip, how could you not want to? I would love to have the experience of just dropping a $1k tip to see what it's like. Maybe he did that once so never felt the need to again.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#429

Post by highwaylights »

YawningAngel wrote: post #417
71bw wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's none of your business to ever tip anywhere UNLESS you explicitly want to thank somebody for their service. How hard is that to understand? It is the workplace's responsibility to pay their staff adequately. NOT YOURS. 0% tip all the way everywhere. No matter if I have $10 or $10k on the bill.

There are lots of instances in which it is in fact your responsibility to pay the staff and if you choose to ignore that fact and stiff them that's on you

I do tip, but is this perspective really helping the people that live off their tips?

You don’t feel the need to tip the people stacking shelves at Walmart or the Amazon driver.

In almost any other job we reasonably expect that someone’s compensation is between them and their employer and that the state should be making sure they’re protected from exploitatively low income.

Why are waiting staff a special case? People have worse jobs that come without tips and it doesn’t seem to bother anybody.

Those tips are expected now and irrelevant to service so it’s also just helping employers get away with paying those staff members less, so it’s really just subsidizing restaurants and cafes at this point.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#430

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

YawningAngel wrote: post #417
71bw wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's none of your business to ever tip anywhere UNLESS you explicitly want to thank somebody for their service. How hard is that to understand? It is the workplace's responsibility to pay their staff adequately. NOT YOURS. 0% tip all the way everywhere. No matter if I have $10 or $10k on the bill.

There are lots of instances in which it is in fact your responsibility to pay the staff and if you choose to ignore that fact and stiff them that's on you

> There are lots of instances in which it is in fact your responsibility to pay the staff

I'm not aware of this, but then the U.S. has a different tipping culture to elsewhere. Have you got any examples?

Also, if it's your responsibility to pay the staff, do you also get the right to dictate how they do their job (within reason)?

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