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.
Bill Gate’s PR is so good. Uses his foundation to dodge tax, prevents vaccines patents from being opened up for anybody to use, and people love him for it.
He’s a piece of shit just like Musk, Bezos, and Jobs.
I 100% guarantee the likes of Bezos and Zuckerberg will try to emulate Bill’s philanthropist PR strategy when they get old.
I 100% guarantee the likes of Bezos and Zuckerberg will try to emulate Bill’s philanthropist PR strategy when they get old
One certainly hopes. That would be amazing.
Well Elon Musk is basically a cartoon villain at this point so that’s not saying much
His mum already looks like one.
This could be the cover for a cyberpunk Far Cry 7
Yeah exactly. Sure, Gates clears the bar, but it was a very low bar.
Gates: “I’m at least 1% less evil than these two sociopaths.”
I don’t think he is though
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
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
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
you can’t post links from youtube. google eats the full path
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.
Bill Gates has done more good for the world than anyone you’ve ever known, and nearly able everyone you’ve ever read about, combined.
Until you can beat that one-line argument, your entire line of reasoning is meaningless
Being better than Elon is a pretty low bar but, I suppose I’d agree he passed it
yeah and jobs. he could throw bezos in there too.
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.
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.
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.
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
Compared to hitler I’m also a pretty nice guy
Steve Jobs is the best of all three of them. At least he had the decency to die.
Stupidly, no less.
Bill Gates is a master of corporate blunt force, but also knows the absolute power of having PR make you appear friendly, harmless and mandane.
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.
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 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.
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