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.
I assume he does the best thing a rich person could probably do
He doesn’t talk much and lets his PR do what it was paid to do.
He tries to be a regular guy, he just really can’t because everybody knows his face. He’s been known to occasionally show up waiting in line at a local burger joint, for example. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not saying he’s a regular guy. But he tries to live like a normal person to at least some degree.
He probably knows that a banana doesn’t cost $10.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
He strikes me as an ordinary, if intelligent and ambitious, person. Which speaks as to the corrosive danger of that kind of power in any individual’s hands.
He’s come out and told people to stop telling him their next big tech idea went they greet him in public because if it’s good, he will use it.
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 is a master of corporate blunt force, but also knows the absolute power of having PR make you appear friendly, harmless and mandane.
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.
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.
Linux nerds about to have an episode over this one.
Can I interest in the story of our Lord and Saviour: Arch Linux?
The best part about Linux in 2023 is that MS is now entirely irrelevant in the desktop market space if you don’t want to deal with them in any fashion, like me!
Stability? Drivers? Gaming? Emulation? VMs with QEMU? Containers? About the only thing Linux can’t do is Adobe and even that is becoming irrelevant with some of the newer image editing software that isn’t the tragedy that is Gimp.
👌👍
I think I saw a post just this week from the Linux being a complete asshole in an email.
But he’s not as rich.
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.
I think you’d find all the info you need in this YouTube video I made about it -
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=ARM8-qltIBU&si=nr7zKanyzXPezkiV
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”…
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
you can’t post links from youtube. google eats the full path
Do you know what a description is?
Yes but I’m not clicking a YouTube link to find it
Now yes, he is. Bill was a fucking asshole and a total sociopath not too long ago.
still is, in fact. the philanthropy is basically morality banking- and it’s peanuts to what he could be doing.
also, it’s a great way to dodge taxes and still be able to buy shit.
That’s . . . that’s not how charitable donation writeoffs work.
Really, this whole comment is a terminally-online trainwreck.
Just write it off!
You don’t even know what that means, do you?
#Seinfeld
That’s not the tax dodge.
The foundation is its own 501c non profit, they donate to it, put their money into the trust fund.
The trust fund then turns and invests all that cash thst they donated and make bank while paying back “costs” for whatever. The only tax that gets paid is personal income taxes on the salaries paid out.
Which are much reduced because the fund also pays for things like hotels and rentals and travel
What the foundation then gives out, they were going to give out anyhow so as to whitewash their reputation and make themselves feel good
Source? Or is this just speculation
This video provides a great explanation, all sources can be found in the description
https://apnews.com/article/business-philanthropy-b8acb10f529ac2dbaff7631021d823c9
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/donor-advised-funds-tech-tax.html
it’s the same reason why the Mormons operate one of the largest hedge funds in the US.
ETA: there are a lot of ways personal 501c corps are exploited by the ultra-wealthy. It’s the pinnacle of graft
They donate to their foundations. Their foundations are only required to use ~5% of their assets for actual charity.
…
These are actual IRS links.
So these foundations are free to invest 95% of the money into whatever they want and only 5% into charity. And this data is partially open, they invest into oil, pharma, finance etc.
What is not open but very likely happening, is private talks behind the scenes about what these 95% should be invested in based on personal motivations/goals of these billionaires, i.e. just doing with their money what they want anyway, just in a tax-free way.
You’re extrapolating from limited data and assuming the worst. You are the problem here.
The only thing I “extrapolated” is to assume that the 95% of money that they are actually free to invest wherever is essentially being decided by their whims. Sure, this might not be completely true, but let’s say you assume that “extrapolation”/assumption is not the case.
As I said, the 5% charity requirement, 95% whatever is definitely true, that’s why I even provided the IRS links, i.e. the actual tax institution governing these foundations. You can also see all the worst companies you can think of are being invested in, this is open data. There are also so many “very likely conflict of interest donations” it’s hard to not “assume the worst” - like for example Gates donating large sums to the private school their children attend, investing in big pharma that are directly responsible for the huge price of vaccinations his foundation tries to make available…
These (and you can find more if you search) are not speculations/“extrapolation”, these are things that provably happen. Of course it’s possible to construct “good” reasons on why these “coincidences”(or whatever) keep happening, but the huge volume of these things where you have to try to come up with “good explanations” is just unreasonably high.
It’s exactly how it works. You calculate what your tax bill will be, and instead of paying it in taxes where the government decides what to do with the money (in theory democratically, in practice it’s different obviously, see point #6), it goes into a charity in your name.
Then you use this charity for multiple things:
- Free PR, as you don’t need to use your own money, you use the money that otherwise went to taxes. The headline is X donates $N billion to charity, you look so giving, even though it’s money you wouldn’t have been able to keep any other way.
- Your foundation donates to prestigious academic institutions. That’s something that you can parlay into a board seat or at least influence. Now you can decide what this institution will do. In Bill Gates’ case, he used his influence to make sure the Oxford vaccine wasn’t open sourced, but instead licensed. This delayed the response in the developing world by a year or so, and made sure that the pharmaceutical industry made even more money than they even made otherwise. Oh, and Bill Gates privately (on the non-charity side), owns a bunch of pharma stock.
- speaking of academic institutions: you buy a fancy building for their economics department. Suddenly the whole field of economics is basically limited to professors teaching trickle down economics. Marx’ analysis of economics is considered fringe, and MMT as well.
- your foundation throws
partiesfundraisers where you get to hang out with important people. Catering, venue, entertainment, etc is paid for by your charity. The people donating to your charity are using their own charities to do so, it’s just one big circlejerk with free money that would’ve gone to taxes instead. - you get to circumcise a bunch of African men for dubious reasons and people will think you’re awesome
- your foundation can donate to politicians or political organisations that will advocate for things you want. The things you want are deregulation, less taxes, etc. This in turn benefits you personally again on the non-charity side.
Ne he’s not. He uses his foundation to avoid taxes and even gets praised for it. This video provides a pretty good explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH4uh8cHuto
When Carnegie got old he felt guilty and gave out pennies to look good
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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.
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,
I’d like more details on your claim
from everything I read, Gates has aged well,
Reading fawning PR does not equate to Gates “aging well.”
He seems much more respectable in retirement, doing some good with his money,
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
but im still left with the impression it is a huge force for improving the world.
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.
second biggest donor to the World Health Organization (WHO) - that’s huge
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.
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.
Do you have articles on Gates’ work causing harm on the food sector?
He had some valid reasoning behind preventing an open source covid vaccine.
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 should be funding local business in Africa
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.
I do agree with Gates in part that hunger is a production problem.
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.
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.
Chop chop!
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.
He doesn’t have billions under a mattress. Wealth is not money, you can’t give it away.
What about all the farmland he all of a sudden now owns which makes him the biggest private farmland owner in the US? Can you give that away?
Ok, tomorrow BG gives you a few acres of his land for free. What do you do next? How will that improve your life? I bet you know shit about farming.
Fuck off with that attitude, do you think bill gates personally farms all that farmland? Do you think he even has to know anything about it to own it and put it to use? What the fuck kind of argument is that, when the owner is a tech billionaire and not a farmer? How can you give him a free pass for that solely on the grounds of him being a billionaire, but criticize me for daring to say he maybe doesn’t need all that land?
Also I don’t have to be personally given anything from any single billionaire. We could try redistributing all that wealth from all billionaires between everyone and we’d all end up with like tree fiddy (well, more like less than 300 us dollars). That’s really not the point of criticizing obscene wealth accumulation. With that money they all get power, and they use the power to bend everything to their will in order to hoard more power. They don’t need any of it, but they keep hoarding it, at the cost of everyone from their own employers, to competitors, to everyone’s information, to the very legal systems and infrastructures of entire countries. And, as someone pointed out, they absolutely can and do occasionally turn part of that power into pure money for whatever reason they might need to, such as, oh idk, buying a 44bn dollar tech company as their personal toy. If that money, or that land, were in hands of non-profits or governments, you’d see very measurable results in quality of life improvements for societies all around the world. Maybe not flying car futuristic utopias like the Jetsons promised, but maybe, just maybe, we’d avoid looking like blade runner or cyberpunk dystopias.
You can’t redistribute wealth. Wealth is not money.
Sure most of his wealth, like every rich person is in stocks. I own some stocks too and I’m pretty sure I could sell them and have money in my bank account. That money could probably given away, although I’m no expert.
Elon buying Twitter in cash should have clued in even the densest what a bullshit lie that was, but here we are.
I still wonder if that was an accident. He declared something on Twitter, then a lawyer got through to him what the SEC could do to him if it were fraud
Selling large amounts of shares is not that easy. It can easily collapse the company. Also you need to sell to someone. Some people just want the rich to sell their shares, but if they all do, who will buy? Mmm? You? Can you buy 10% of Microsoft at will?
Yeah, sorry, that doesn’t work. Wealth is not money.
God I hate hearing this stupid fucking rhetoric. Jeff Bezos owns a yacht that’s literally too big to be serviced at most ports so he has yachts to keep his superyacht serviced. Stop acting like stock wealth isn’t tangible enough to be considered in the conversation. You’re not going to get any of their attention no matter how much you love licking their boots.
Not to mention Elon literally buying twitter so a kid could stop tracking his airplane.
Lol ok.
I mean he did exactly that. He diversified his portfolio.
Microsoft stock is still going strong.
Just because something is not easy, doesn’t make it impossible. I have provided a very clear example of how wealth is in fact money, but you very obviously need to be right.
Because I am.
You might want to take a look at the other responses as well as mine. You might learn something.
Yeah, I learned that there are too many dumb people who don’t understand the basics.
The Tech Won’t Save Us podcast very recently did a great in depth and nuanced episode that heavily criticizes The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
It’s a really amazing podcast imo, and this one in particilar was a great listen. Highly recommended.
But if you want a shorter video format that focuses more on The Gates foundation’s influence on the US school system, then I highly recommend taking a look at The Hated One’s youtube video on the subject.
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.
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.
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.
Compared to hitler I’m also a pretty nice guy
Signed: Mao Zedong
Idk that Mao can be compared positively to Hitler. China just quietly succeeds at genocide, authoritarianism, and mass deaths.
That’s the point? 😇
