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 Gates is far, far worse than Musk and Bezos put together.
Unlike Musk and Bezos, Gates literally stole an open-source vaccine away from the world while it was in the midst of a fucking pandemic. Musk and Bezos doesn’t actually pose a clear, present and direct threat to 3rd world food security - unlike Gates with his attempts to enforce privatized monocropping on societies that are already desperately food insecure.
Of all the “celebrity” billionaire parasites, Gates is by far the worst - he is pretty much the Cecil John Rhodes of our era, and, unlike that vile colonizer, his evil isn’t merely limited to one continent.
Do you have articles on Gates’ work causing harm on the food sector? I’d love to learn more.
He had some valid reasoning behind preventing an open source covid vaccine. Whether it was the right call is up for debate.
The most prominent reason that stuck in my mind was to ensure the vaccines were of high quality and made using proper equipment. This is reasonable as a bad one could’ve drastically reduced trust among the general population.
Sure.
No. It’s the exact same “valid” excuses billionaire parasites hide behind when they do their dirty work. His excuse is no more valid than “spreading civilization.”
Thanks!
That address is on the money. Bill should be funding local business in Africa directly for the most immediate impact in the region.
His current approach at best helps once the innovations become accessible.
I do agree with Gates in part that hunger is a production problem. Increasing supply lowers price, which would help with food accessibility. It’s not a silver bullet and has many blockers, like the issues mentioned in the address.
Bill shouldn’t be funding squat in Africa. It’s the continued looting and pillaging of Africa’s resources by colonizers like Bill - and the economic repression policies enabled by their cronies in the Global North’s political establishments - that is causing Africa’s problems.
No. That’s a lie. It’s a distribution problem - something that capitalist parasites like Bill doesn’t want to talk about because it’s his class of racketeers that is profiting off all this constrained distribution. Africa has always produced more than enough foodstuffs.
I’d like more details on your claim - from everything I read, Gates has aged well, or at least his image has. He was the Elon Musk of his age, but saner, the guy so many of us loved to hate, but extremely successful. He seems much more respectable in retirement, doing some good with his money,
It’s not my claim, Clyde.
Reading fawning PR does not equate to Gates “aging well.”
All that this proves is that Bill Gates, the worst billionaire parasite of them all, has successfully camouflaged his history of parasitism - at least when it comes to people like you.
Thanks for the info - btw the Wikipedia article on AFGRA covers the concern even better and is more up to date. Yes it seems like AFGRA missed its mark.
Looking at the Wikipedia article for the Gates foundation, i see the criticism section includes that plus a few more concerns, but im still left with the impression it is a huge force for improving the world. Of special note from the criticism section was a throw away line that the Gates Foundation is the second biggest donor to the World Health Organization (WHO) - that’s huge
No. It isn’t. The capitalists that got us into this mess are, in no shape or form, a force for “improving” the world. They caused the mess we are in.
Oh, I’d say that’s huge. It means Bill Gates - a billionaire parasite patent racketeer turned neo-colonizer - is also a health czar.
As I said - he is the worst of them all.