Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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 than he can throw hundred dollar bills handfuls at a time.

We're not talking about anything normal here because no one here *literally* makes thousands of dollars in the time it takes to wipe their ass. You can become poor, he would need an act of god to do so.

We can have a conversation about tipping and how much everyone hates it, but to ignore the fact that we're talking about someone with this kind of money is... ludicrous[1]. Throwing down a hundred bucks means literally nothing to the man. It is not even what a penny is worth to most of you. He's not you and framing the discussion this way is obtuse. Rage on tipping, I don't give a fuck and I'll probably join you. He's not "sticking it to the man" or "standing up for his values" he *is*" the man. He's playing an important role in creating this machine you're raging against. I just don't understand any of you

  [0] 1e11*0.05/365/24/60
        |   |    |   |  |_ minute
        |   |    |   |____ hour
        |   |    |________ day
        |   |_____________ Conservative 5% yearly return
        |_________________ At least 25bn less than he is worth...

  [1] FWIW, I hate tipping too. Fuck the till based tips with the ever increasing percentages. I frequently click 0. But fuck it man, I'm a grad student. Still, if I'm a regular somewhere and they are giving me special service, I'm gonna throw a few dollars into the tip jar. Tipping culture or not they're going out of their way for me and I should show gratitude in some way (you can also do by other means)

"Everyone, chill"

then proceeds to drop emphasis, F words and other strong words.

Maybe take a page of your own book.

The substance of his comment is still well-intentioned though. I agree with him.

This is eye-opening. I make a fraction of what Steve does and am still dumb enough to be hitting 20% at the machine every time I go out.

If 0% is good enough for Mr. Ballmer, it's good enough for me.

Chill because you all are giving me anxiety that I don't need.

Idk how to tell you this, but this is a pretty common pattern for human speech. You see it in plenty of countries, plenty of cultures. Welcome to Earth. Words mean more than the literal dictionary interpretation of them.

Edit:

I only have sass in me tonight.

I read “everyone chill” to mean “there’s a lot of bad takes here”, not literally “remain calm”. In that context, I think the comment makes sense — they’re illustrating just how wrong the common take is

> Still, if I'm a regular somewhere and they are giving me special service, I'm gonna throw a few dollars into the tip jar.

There are some philosophical problems there. The business/servers can't renegotiate the menu like that - if they aren't getting paid for a service and the customer didn't ask for it then there is no reason they should get more money for it.

Also, an observation about how the economics of regulars work - if you are a regular the business is probably already making a lot of money off you. Someone who goes back even a single time earns them 2x as much as a one-time walk in. Being a regular is already a favour to a business even if all you do is order something cheap off the menu. In my experience, when a business identifies that I am a regular they try to make me pay less to keep me coming back.

I've literally never heard that expression before

That just means that it wasn't about money for him.

One problem with unbounded capitalism is that people can’t understand how big big numbers are. They think of themselves but slightly richer. So of course people should be able to accumulate the wealth of a city or a country, and there’s no negative aspect to that at all. They just worked like we do. And they should get gains on their wealth just like we do for our retirement. There’s no difference except a couple of zeros.

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.

Someone learns something new everyday!

Actually, there is a restaurant where I go sometimes that when I pay cash instead of with a credit card, the owner gets so elated that rounds down the amount to pay in some 3-7%. The countertip I guess.

Restaurants and bars especially in my city love tax evasion - that's why they are so enthusiastic about cash payments.

Random person writes completely unsourced negative comment about someone HN dislikes for no reason. HN cheers before launching in a pointless and already rehashed a thousands times discussion about tipping culture.

I don’t know if it’s well intentioned but it’s peak HN.

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 car. It's because these people place value on everything, a car to themis just depreciating numbers. They formed a habit of critically assessing the "why".

Back to the topic at hand: Tipping is a ridiculous notion that the wealthy can see through, while the rest of us are too brainwashed to objectively analyze

The workweek just started, you gotta save some sass for the rest of the week too.

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.

Why should he give money to someone over literally any other person in the same establishment or outside of it? What does that have to do with "the man"?

> Back to the topic at hand: Tipping is a ridiculous notion that the wealthy can see through, while the rest of us are too brainwashed to objectively analyze

Oh yes, the wealthy are superior to us unwashed masses in every way. How I wish I could see through and objectively analyse, but my bank account won't allow that.

I have, now what do we do? Which of us controls the language?

So what's your point, should he have tipped?

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.

Yes thats normally the main drive, cash is usually just annoyance and additional risk to business.

I wouldnt be too harsh judging that business though, quite a few restaurants are barely cutting it so this may help them stay afloat. Its this or generally higher prices in restaurants.

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

> 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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

> 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)?

I don't think you're wrong, but I can't help thinking that the tip money would be better off funnelled towards political change.

I also use that one park garage all the time and my streets are snow plowed and I appreciate that. Still I don't know anyone who tips those workers. Do they provide less service than the person making me a drink?

I personally only tip if service was extraordinary and I appreciated it. Which is once a full moon at best

> Tipping is a ridiculous notion that the wealthy can see through, while the rest of us are too brainwashed to objectively analyze

Tipping culture is quite different in the Americas than it is in e.g. the UK. I don't think it takes much effort to analyse that the winners of tipping culture are the restaurant/bar owners as they don't have to pay their staff properly and can avoid tax.

Whilst I don't like tipping culture, I think there's a different reason as to why billionaires might not tip - greed. Normal people would never get to be a billionaire as it takes a particular kind of greed to have millions of dollars and to be determined to hoard even more money when you know full well that it's often made by exploiting the employees that made you all those millions. It's a very nasty, selfish form of hoarding that hurts society, so don't be surprised when billionaires demonstrate that they don't care about anyone else.

And keep this twisted system in place. The only way for it to finally collapse is if people stop always tipping. To me that's truly heartless.

> Yeah, except that most of these (low income/low skill) service workers don't have the negotiation power to change this power dynamic.

And by tipping you are keeping it so they can just afford to keep making ends meet, thus enabling the status quo.

It could be argued you are continuing the problem.

If you didn't employ them you don't have to pay their salary, or even know how to start to evaluate what that would be.

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

For example?

And you work to keep the system the same way. You work to earn, and then spend your money sponsoring the system when it's optional for you to sponsor it.

I like how in this case 1e11 almost reads as "hell" :)

Interestingly, I have never seen tips being demanded by restaurant staff almost as an entitlement in any other country other than the US - even in far poorer nations.

It really rubs me the wrong way that you tell everyone to chill and then go on to levy your own value judgement of the situation. If you want to larp as the ref or moderator you don't get to pick a side.

>I would love to have the experience of just dropping a $1k tip to see what it's like.

What exactly are your expectations here?

>Yeah, except that most of these (low income/low skill) service workers don't have the negotiation power to change this power dynamic

This has no bearing in reality. Most of these places can't staff their stores because no one will work for prevailing wages.

>Thus, you, someone with enough means to eat out

Oh yeah, the people grabbing coffee at Starbucks are all rich.

Raise your prices and pay your staff.

>Not showing appreciation to something he clearly appreciates

He shows appreciation by showing up and buying tea every day.

How much do you tip Apple or Microsoft as appreciation for their software every time you show up to use it?

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

Name one (let alone "lots").

Or maybe he does tip generously, and maybe he does throw of dollars, but only does it to actual waiting staff? After all, that's the issue most people seem to have here.

It makes no sense to psychoanalyze a Ballmer's mind from this short episode.

Judging by the number of ads in Windows, maybe $1/day.

I'm not sure, that's exactly why I'd like to experience it and find out! I guess the server would be very grateful, but who knows. They might tell me it will change their life in some way, the restaurant might name a dish after me, countless things could happen.

I take it you meant form habits?

> How much do you tip Apple or Microsoft as appreciation for their software every time you show up to use it?

I don't use their products which for me are all garbage and I tip often free and open source software.

Now the important thing, comparing "tipping" Apple and Microsoft to giving a tip to a minimum wage worker is quite evil.

> Oh yeah, the people grabbing coffee at Starbucks are all rich.

Relatively speaking? Yes.

Someone spending $4+ on one coffee mean they can easily tip.

And if your argument is that they can't afford that?

Then those same customers won't be able to afford the price increase if Starbucks simply raised labor costs and passed it on.

> It is the workplace's responsibility to pay their staff adequately. NOT YOURS.

I don't get this argument, because at the end of the day you're paying both ways.

Either you're paying higher menu prices (because labor costs have increased) or you're paying tips (because labor costs are artificially low and you're supplementing them).

There is no magical "the business pays its employees more, but everything you buy stays the same price."

Especially not with food service margins.

The funny thing is when people reasonably say raise the price to actual costs, the answers is "Customer may stop coming..". As if the whole point to scam customer with fake low prices.

Thats exactly the point. Raise the price then customer can decide if they can afford it or not. With fake low prices customers may not know what they are getting into.

Rock paper scissors for it

I really don't like this medium for it, when/where? :)

I'm a grad student and ABD (all but dissertation). My work week has no beginning nor end. But don't worry, I still got plenty in me.

I'm not against "unbounded" capitalism, but certainly there should be things in place that ensure adequate competition is taking place. So I prefer "unfettered". I think this is of special concern given that the Silicon Valley Model is to literally become a monopoly. That's not good for anyone, including the company.

That said, obviously I have some concerns on the billionaire class, especially the hundred billionaires.

  > can’t understand how big big numbers are.

It isn't just this (though it is true[0]), but that money works extremely differently at this scale. Interest is not a rounding error, or something you think about being influential down the line. Passive income is so great that it gets difficult to imagine. There's those sites[1] that have you try to spend a large fortune and they don't even get to the different part. That being that for people like Elon, anything on that list can be bought by a week's worth of... doing nothing. That the passive income is so high that the problem isn't even that you couldn't spend the money if it was not growing, but that it grows so fast that you can't even spend it if you tried really hard. Spending a static billion dollars is incredibly difficult and you have to get creative. But in the real world with interest, it is exponentially more difficult.

I think the best example of this is MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos's ex-wife. She's been spending her money as fast as she can and she "hasn't lost a dime". Forbes had her starting at $36bn and currently has her at $35.6B[2]. In the time since she has divorced Bezos she's given away nearly $17bn. We're talking less than 5 years.... In <5 years she's "spent" half of her static wealth and still has what she started with. Money at this level simply does not work the same way and a lot of people do not fundamentally understand this.

But there's also a psychological issue I don't get. What is the point of having so much "fuck you money" if you are not going to tell people to fuck off. Certainly they do at times, but often they don't. To have the wealth to do whatever you want, to be unconstrained, unburdened, and to still have anxiety and concern? To be stressed? I can understand that old habits die hard, but they do die.

[0] I started my academic life in physics. We do giant numbers and tiny numbers. I can with great certainty assert that our brains are not made to actualize these numbers. It is amazing that we have the math to work with them but when you stop to compare and it blows your mind. This is not done enough.

[1] https://www.spend-elon-fortune.com/ or articles like this https://youngfinances.com/spend-1-billion-dollars-you-cant-h...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/profile/mackenzie-scott/

Maybe. Or maybe he still lives like he is poor. If he does, or if he lives in any way where he is considering money as meaningful, then he is delusional. The man has so much money he can buy a mega yacht with less than a week's passive income. If money means anything to him, he is does not understand. If he also doesn't see how he can fundamentally change people's lives in a single act that means nothing to him, what does that say? After all, this is a man who could dump a pile of hundred dollar bills on the table every day, at every restaurant and coffee shop he visits and the act is less of a burden to him than it is for us to hold a door open for someone who's an awkward distance away.

Money is a proxy. Did we forget what it was for?

Whoever is able to use it to communicate ideas.

Alas, we are no further. Remember how we got here: you opened with what barely qualifies as an anecdote. Not remotely an idea. I'm trying to be fair.

How about we go with the rock-paper-scissors suggestion?