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.
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.
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.
Hey, that’s not a nice thing to say about turds.
Being better than Elon is a pretty low bar but, I suppose I’d agree he passed it
It’s like saying “I may be shit, but I’m not burning, sulfurous, liquid fire shits.” Dude is still shit.
With Elon Musk having problems being nicer than Hannibal Lecter, the bar is indeed low.
yeah and jobs. he could throw bezos in there too.
Where?
steve jobs, jeff bezos. very low bars as well.
Bill Gates is like that token villain lord whose heir has already replaced him and he’s grown to the age where he realizes no one will miss him after the life he’s led.
Well Elon Musk is basically a cartoon villain at this point so that’s not saying much
Yeah exactly. Sure, Gates clears the bar, but it was a very low bar.
His mum already looks like one.
This could be the cover for a cyberpunk Far Cry 7
Or a new Hunger Games character
Wasn’t she the one who wouldn’t let Elon do a cage match fight with Bezos? If denying us that isn’t villainy then I don’t know what is.
Musk: Sorry Mark, mum said I can’t come out and play.
Gates: “I’m at least 1% less evil than these two sociopaths.”
I don’t think he is though
I don’t think he was able to exploit people as much as Jobs or Musk.
People who avoid apple and tesla tend to have higher standards than those who do not.
A lot of people use Microsoft. Even people who have teslas and iPhones.
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.
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.
He can get rid of his fortune any time he wants. If he’s trying to improve, he’s not trying very hard.
Nah, he’s just used more of his money to whitewash his image with articles such as this. When you peek behind the curtain, he’s just as ruthless as the others.
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
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?
Eradicating malaria is a good thing, yes. I don’t understand why that needs to be democratized.
Also not sure how donating your private fortune is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
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”…
If you put the general noncery and the Linux circlejerking aside, and just take it at face value, it’s still absolutely not true.
Back in the day, Bill Gates was infamous for being a jerk during reviews of services. I remember Joel Spolsky calling out the infamous BillG Reviews in a post of his, and there were several instances where others had said they’d been verbally insulted or just fired for getting something wrong. There are probably still plenty of stories around online of Gates losing it with entire rooms of people, cancelling 3+ year projects he didn’t personally like, or making unreasonable demands because he was in a bad mood.
Don’t get me wrong, Jobs and Musk are cunts too, but Gates wasn’t any better.
It’s quite literally not possible to be a nice guy and region billions of dollars in net worth. Social systems don’t actually support that. I’m not talking about inheritance or marrying into it - if you are the fortunate maker, and the fortune is that big, you have to step on a lot of people to get there and more to stay there. Just depends how well you hide it.
Gates would insult employees but Jobs was legendary for screaming at his employees. But the worst is the stories that Woz tells about how bad Jobs was. Things like not giving stock to the very early Apple employees. He abandoned his daughter such that the mother and daughter were on welfare when he was worth millions.
Steve Jobs is the best of all three of them. At least he had the decency to die.
Stupidly, no less.
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
If Bill Gates was a good person he would already have given away his billions like Chuck Feeney rather than just talk about giving away the money.
You’re not fooling anyone Bill.
You’ll be eaten along with all the other billionaires, including ‘ole Musky.
Unlike them, he is at least working on giving his money away. And he has said in the past that the government should tax people like him more. There is a difference, even though I agree he shouldn’t be a billionaire, either.
Chop chop!
Bill just has a better publicist.
Correction: he HAS a publicist. Elon doesn’t.
while hes not the greatest person, hes at least trying to be philanthropic and not just cartoony evil
Steve Jobs was also philanthropic, he just chose not to be vocal about it.
Bill doesn’t come off as kind, rather amicable more than anything else. He knows how to shmooze. And constantly complaining about petty things, and still comparing himself to Jobs, in the news means he still can’t let go of the past.
But I agree with you. As long as he’s giving his money away for causes that benefit the public, I couldn’t care less what kind of person he is.
He sort of is now. He sure wasn’t out to help society in the 80s and 90s.
You should probably look deeper into his philanthropy, it’s not as great as he claims. It showed especially during COVID.
In what way? He helped pay for millions of vaccines. Can’t get much better than that for a private citizen.
He’s still pretty much the same Bill Gates of the anti-trust deposition (if you never saw that video I highly recommend it).
The fact that this will not be remembered as part of Gate’s legacy makes my blood boil.
You could maybe Google it instead of asking, but here’s a starting point: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/how-bill-gates-makes-the-world-worse-off
what do you think trying means. someone whose trying doesn’t mean what theyre doing is sucessful
You think it’s just purely an accident that he kept becoming richer despite ‘giving away his fortune to charity’? The only thing he’s trying to do is lowering his tax bill.
I don’t even trust him like that, but people act like its entirely a binary thing whether hes purely good, or purely evil. how anyone could have read the original statement and assume I remotely think hes purely good is beyond me, hes just less evil than actually purely evil people who just spend their money solely on theirselves.
In many ways it would be better if he just spent money on himself. He’s pushing philanthropy that’s actually harmful (in the US he’s promoting charter schools, for example, to the detriment of the quality of education).
His influence in global health probably killed millions of people during the pandemic too by delaying the distribution of the Oxford vaccine in developing countries.
You’re just falling for the PR that philanthropy gives it’s users.
So do you believe he should have revoked all the money that was donated to something like malaria research?
Yes, and that would’ve gone to taxes instead.
I suppose you think Carnigie was a good guy too
Don’t trust billionaires. Don’t trust the (bought and paid for) good press surrounding them. They didn’t get their billions being nice or looking out for the common man.
at what point did I say I trust him?
at the point you’re implicitly buying into his propaganda? specifically:
hes at least trying to be philanthropic
which is patent bullshit. his philanthropy is not meant to help people- it’s meant to avoid paying taxes while also letting him retconn his reputation.
Even if he’s the best of the bad, it doesn’t mean he’s good
never in the line did i say he was good
I didn’t say you did, but it was an add-on for people who do.
It’s not an uncommon attitude to run across. People used to think Musk was one of the good guys too. I’ll be the first to admit he had me fooled about a decade ago but when he showed his true self I walked away.
Many people still think Gates is the quirky nerd that made it big and decided to use his money to help people.
No one is the villain of their own story.
We are grading.
On a hell of a curve.
“I’m not so bad, as serial killers go” is not a great defense.
My first though exactly. I agree with him, he is better. However more than zero isn’t a great measurement to hold yourself to.
