Bill Gates name-checked Elon Musk and Steve Jobs during a fireside chat on Thursday. The Microsoft founder said he considers himself “very nice” compared to his fellow tech leaders. But Gates acknowledged that a certain level of intensity is required in innovative fields. Bill Gates said he considers himself a more relaxed boss than many of his tech compatriots at the top.
The Microsoft founder name-checked Elon Musk and Steve Jobs during a fireside chat on Thursday after being awarded the Peter G. Peterson Leadership Excellence Award by the Economic Club of New York.
The talk’s moderator asked Gates about the lessons he learned in creating a culture of innovation during his time at the helm of Microsoft.
The billionaire, who co-founded the technology company with his childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975, said leaders like himself have to think about how “hardcore” they should be when spearheading innovative companies.
“Everybody is different. Elon pushes hard, maybe too much,” Gates said, referencing Musk. “Steve Jobs pushed hard, maybe too much.”
“I think of myself as very nice compared to those guys,” he added with a laugh.
Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak, while Musk is the founder and SpaceX and the Boring Company, and cofounder of OpenAI and Neuralink.
Gates has a checkered history with both men. He and Jobs nursed a decades-long love-hate relationship, going from allies to rivals and back again several times. Their back-and-forth competitive spirit is often credited with spurring major innovations at both Microsoft and Apple over the years.
Steve Jobs Bill Gates Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Beck Diefenbach/Reuters; Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times
After Jobs died in 2011, Gates said he respected the Apple founder and was grateful for their competition.
The philanthropist’s relationship with Musk has been even more turbulent in recent years. The two men have publicly poked at each other and frequently disagree on everything from space travel to climate change.
Gates told Musk’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, that the Tesla CEO was “super mean” to him in 2022.
“Once he heard I’d shorted the stock, he was super mean to me, but he’s super mean to so many people, so you can’t take it too personally,” Gates told Isaacson.
But Gates acknowledged during the Thursday discussion that a “certain intensity” is required to succeed as an innovative leader.
“In my 20s, I was monomaniacally focused on Microsoft,” he said. "I didn’t believe in weekends or vacations.’
The moderator asked Gates to confirm an urban legend that has circulated in recent years in which the billionaire memorized all of his employees’ license plates during the early days of Microsoft so he could track who was putting in long hours at work.
“It wasn’t that many license plates. We only had a few hundred employees,” Gates said, seemingly confirming the tale.
“I can still tell you when they came in and out,” he added.
Gates cites his intensity with the “positive experience” he had at Microsoft, which he said still guides his thinking today.
“I view every problem through this innovation lens,” he said.
Bill did some horrible shit in the past, especially during the start of Microsoft.
But these days he is trying to improve, which we should commend. He could just stayed an awful billionaire that used his money for evil instead of trying to eradicate smallpox.
He can get rid of his fortune any time he wants. If he’s trying to improve, he’s not trying very hard.
His medical work is not commendable. Right now it’s almost impossible to do anything on the world stage without the foundation’s approval. This recent article has links to some issues. This older article highlights a bunch of problems that were highlighted during the ‘Rona vaccine process. Either you do what the foundation wants or you don’t do medicine. Even when you do what the foundation wants, you move capital and ownership up to the top (Gates was a huge proponent of the COVID vaccine IP). The foundation has done good things. The opportunity cost of the foundation is staggering.
But that goes against the narrative. We have to have a rich guy to contrast against Elon or the whole thing falls apart! Bill Gates is good even though everything points otherwise.
That’s a fair point! I really struggled for years with the “gates is cool because look at what he does for Reddit secret Santa” narrative.
removed by mod
What revolution, kiddo? Go to school, learn something useful.
dont member askin bitch boy
Start by going to English language lessons.
removed by mod
It’s kinda hilarious to me that you think people would possibly revolt anymore. Noble goal, never gonna happen.
Gates will keep living the long, rich life of luxury he’s lived and corps will keep getting more powerful.
People are just too apathetic, and governments are too powerful.
lol bruh.
Okay, with Musk, the bar feels extremely low to clear on being a better person, especially after telling advertisers who chose of their own free will to leave twitter/x to go fuck themselves.
Jobs basically offed himself so it’s difficult to compare to him. Elon Musk is one of the biggest pieces of shits there is so I’m not sure that says much by comparing to him.
While I would not say Bill is a terrible person, he has done some very problematic shit in the past.
Bill Gates and all of his billionaire friends can go fuck themselves. Billionaire philanthropy is the biggest lie of this century, this is a great video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH4uh8cHuto
Bill Gates has done more good for the world than anyone you’ve ever known, and nearly also everyone you’ve ever read about, combined.
Until you can beat that one-line argument, your entire line of reasoning is meaningless
You can easily say that in an “absolute amount” sense, i.e. yes, I have not invested millions of dollars to help polio immunization or whatever.
But you got to look at the total - what about the billions of investments in oil companies etc? What about all the anti-consumer practices and exploitation of his owned companies? And so on with all the places the money arrived that was not charity? I have also not done these things.
I’m very sure all the bad things that happened with his money outweighs all the good things that has been done with his money. So someone without any assets at all, a baby born just a few minutes ago, in a total sense, “has done more good in the world than Bill Gates”, because in total, Bill Gates has done much more bad things for the world than good.
But you got to look at the total - what about the billions of investments in oil companies etc?
I fail to see how this is a problem at all. It’s a sound investment.
What about all the anti-consumer practices and exploitation of his owned companies?
Exploiting his own companies? Can you elaborate?
I don’t see how any of this “bad” at all outweighs the good of convincing billionaires worldwide to donate and fund NGOs until they are not billionaires any more.
Isn’t that exactly what people here clamor for?
If I “donate” 12 billion dollars and use it to buy stocks in the company I personally own that made all that money - would you say my concern is funding good cause NGOs until I’m no longer a billionaire or am I just dodging taxes?
Also, if he’s so adamant about giving away his wealth, why does it keep increasing? No way he’s actually more concerned about getting an ROI than his most noble goal of helping others through his “philanthropy”…
Bill Gates’ money has done more good for the world than anyone you’ve ever known, and nearly also everyone you’ve ever read about, combined.
Unfortunately, his foundations’ spending also gives him an absurd amount of power and influence… which I suppose is great if you agree with what he thinks is good for the world.
Some of the uses of his money/foundation have done real good. Others have absolutely done real harm and/or just made him and his friends richer. Others expenditures are still are up for debate. He’s got a fuckload of money so yeah, there is a lot of good but that’s selection bias if you don’t consider the bad.
Money going to a cause you like is good… but that money had to come from somewhere. If Bill robs Peter to cure Paul’s malaria is Bill a hero, a villain, or a billionaire who thinks he knows what’s good for the world and has the power and influence to just do it, or push someone else to do it, without consulting the unwashed masses who maybe have other priorities?
I’m sure you’re right in some ways, but when your source is “Some guy’s YT channel”, nobody will take you seriously, except for other people that believe everything they see on YT
You can find all the sources in the video description. I don’t see the video itself as a source, it’s a summary of many other sources.
It would be nice if you could link some of these sources. There are a lot of people, myself included, who’d rather die than click someone’s YouTube link.
This shouldn’t need a source though, really. My source for knowing billionaire philanthropy is bullshit is “thinking about it for five seconds.”
I’m with Linky here. I’m not watching some twat asking me to smash like for source, fuck dat
You don’t have to watch.
Yeah, you’re right. Hang on, I remember seeing a cool video about this…
You can find all the sources in the video description. I don’t see the video itself as a source, it’s a summary of many other sources.
Please link sources then, so we don’t have to watch a video.
Here’s the difference - ten minutes watching a video to find out the source was Fox News, or you posting a direct link so we just laugh at you
Do you know what a description is?
Yes but I’m not clicking a YouTube link to find it
you can’t post links from youtube. google eats the full path
deleted by creator
Was probably a middle management thing.
When you’ve spent literally decades trying to bury your past self with philanthropic acts and good PR, it becomes quite easy for people to think you’re at least nicer than the steaming turd in a dumpster fire that is Elon Musk.
Gates may be nice compared to some of his billionaire compatriots, but understand that’s a very low bar to pass.
Hey, that’s not a nice thing to say about turds.
Yes, that is exactly it.
From a human standpoint, he is still a shit human.
But from a billionaire standpoint, he is at least somewhat human.
At least now, not so much in the past.
I think this is relatively a new line. I don’t remember him being talked about as a hard ass boss back then.
The media spun him as a techno whizz kid .
Ill give him that he seems nice. But nice isn’t about substance, nice is the wrapping paper. To say one is a good person on substance is to call them kind, different than nice. Same way people will tell you a lot of Southerners can be very very nice, but very unkind at the same time.
He’s also comparing himself against some of the lowest bars for this metric so that’s also saying a lot on the claim as a whole.
No one is the villain of their own story.
Bill you keep using the word “nice”. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
He seemed super apologetic and remorseful ….did you thoroughly vet this before posting it with that caption?
No that was intentional. He’s a fucking spin meister and disingenuous as hell. One of the most ruthless businessmen in history and apparently liked to fuck little girls. But if he acts sorry all is forgiven, right?
Wtf article are you reading??
Nice by oligarch standards. So maybe he’s a slightly less huge asshole. But only because he mellowed with age. In his heyday he was every bit a robber baron, just like the others.
deleted by creator
He seems better. Than two of the worst human beings alive atm.
I like Gates, I’m really impressed by the positive effects of their foundation, but I don’t know enough to say those effects outweigh the negative.
Jobs died in 2011
Nah, they make small batches here and there. Just keep you ears peeled for articles like “New Apple factory will create 2,000 Jobs”.
My mistake, I was thinking of musk and bezos and should have made that clear.
I always found jobs irritating and delusional, but not really a bad person like bezos or musk
Having good PR a good person does not make.
No, but given Musk’s tantrums, there’s something to be said regarding listening to the good PR
And…. Not firing said good pr….
In his book, “Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft,” Allen writes that in 1982, he overheard Ballmer and Bill Gates discussing a plan to reduce Allen’s 36 percent stake in Microsoft shortly after Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Gates is a bad person. And I have no care about his hot take on himself.
You only had to go back 40 years…
I see so many comments in here saying what a piece of shit he is and you’re the only one to actually link something so i can appreciate that, but if this is it then i don’t know what everyone is talking about.
“I hate the rich because they don’t work”
“This fellow ludicrously rich person has Hodgkin’s and can’t work - we need to reduce his stake in the company lest the company suffer.”
“Omg bill gates is a monster”
Like the entire argument is so fucking recursive lol
Space Karen is a large steaming pile of shit, and while I agree with Bill that currently he is a smaller steaming pile of shit than Space Karen, that is a low bar to pass.
