7 ms·

Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

34 points by grenek 14y ago

davidjgraph 14y ago
"I know most of you can't stand the guy" Really? I thought people took objection to Microsoft but generally thought of him as an intelligent, charismatic and, more recently, very generous man.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Being somewhat more divorced from MS and his charity effort have helped his public image a lot over the last few years but I'm sure we can still remember the days of the slashdot borg icon etc.
  - fakeer 14y ago
    People stereotype people. For instance I am just fine with Gates but sort of don't much like Jobs(don't hate though, or maybe I do). I love my Mac and hate Windows(though MS is credited with many others to put computer in the hands of many people). I can't stand anything written/said by GrubIgler but that doesn't make them &&&& and morons. They have a huge following, they must be good. This is how it works. I am sure all are(were) good.
    - pyre 14y ago
      | They have a huge following, they must be good. Good at what is the question. Not levelling anything at them specifically, but there are plenty of people with large followings that are basically 'good' at getting large followings and making money off of them (e.g. tele-vangelists).
      - fakeer 14y ago
        >>Good at what is the question. Good at whatever the people following them liked in them or found worth the attention. It can be anything - good voice, other skills or just the looks. Anything. It depends on the person following what good was in the guy he/she follows.
  - bpatrianakos 14y ago
    I don't remember the Slashdot borg icon (I was 10 in '96 when we got AOL, our first internet service) but I do remember the song 'Bill Gates Must Die', Micro$oft as a derogatory term,the blue screens of death, IE, antitrust, my printer doesn't work (again!), and on and on. I was just a kid but I remember the sentiment being that because of Bill Gates' ruthlessness as a business man the entire computer industry was suffering from a lack of any real competition, a stranglehold on vendors, customer lock-in, and on top of it all you always had to buy a new computer to upgrade to the newest Windows and it would only work for like a couple of months before everything stopped working one by one. I'm not stating all this as fact (though some of it is), that's just the sentiment others around me had at the time (like 1995 - 2001). Since his departure from MS though I personally see him as a much kinder, gentler, and even more brilliant man than ever before. It's strange because there was a time when I loved to hate the guy but now that he's gone and seeing what Microsoft is doing these days I almost feel like "damn, I wish Bill Gates would come back, that guy was smart". Maybe this is a totally crazy thing to say but I'll say it: I feel like it's the same feeling people who followed politics in the 90's feel about Bill Clinton. They may have been pissed at him for reasons XYZ at the time but now many have a much different memory of him and kind of yearn for him to come back (if it were possible). Nostalgia is a powerful thing.
- afandian 14y ago
  There are plenty of intelligent and charismatic people who are loathed by many. BillG is amongst them. And bearing him a personal grudge for the actions of the company he ran isn't unreasonable in any case. Where did all his generous cash donations come from? Just being good at selling software?
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    > bearing him a personal grudge for the actions of the company he ran isn't unreasonable Isn't it a bit of a contradiction? He ran a company that engaged in actions that harmed society. Doesn't he deserve some credit?
    - adventured 14y ago
      How did Microsoft harm society?
      - rbanffy 14y ago
        Monopoly abuse and other anticompetitive actions that ultimately inflated prices. Why do you think the DoJ got involved?
        acheron 14y ago
        The DOJ "got involved" because Microsoft didn't want to play the lobbying game, so the government decided to teach them a lesson. http://washingtonexaminer.com/carney-how-hatch-forced-microsoft-to-play-k-streets-game/article/2500453 http://washingtonexaminer.com/carney-how-hatch-forced-micros...
        tanzam75 14y ago
        Well, they learned their lesson. Microsoft is now a prolific spender on DC lobbying. In the tech world, they are matched only by Google. Bill Gates used to be a Congressional page, and his father was a lawyer. So I'm surprised he had such a naive viewpoint of the justice system. He ought to have known that it was more political than that. The irony is that Bill Gates, a staunch Democrat, was hounded by the Clinton DOJ. It ended up being the Bush administration that rescued his company by terminating the lawsuit and signing that consent decree.
- melling 14y ago
  No, I hate Microsoft because they destroyed Borland, Lotus, WordPerfect, etc. They gobbled up everything (Visio, PowerPoint, etc). They killed off Netscape the company, stuck us with IE6 for a decade by "making it part of the operating system." They embraced, extended, and tried to extinguish everything they could. (e.g. Java->C#, OpenGL->DirectX). Bill, however, I greatly admire. He took no prisoners. :-) I've got his book on my shelf somewhere. It's 20 years old now. I should go back and read it.
  - bdcravens 14y ago
    Apple has arguably destroyed/killed off RIM. Microsoft's "destruction" is today's startups' "disruption". (At least in HN circles I think we applaud AirBNB or Uber doing damage to the hospitality or transportation industries). Twitter and Google are gobbling up and often times killing products of value. I think Microsoft did a lot of things we value: disrupt and grow. Looking back, I think we see it through a different lens, but modern startups (or those who have eclipsed that label to be "big") can be Microsoft (or at least little Microsofts). Probably the only thing separating Microsoft from many companies is the presence of a moral compass at the company level.
  - jimmaswell 14y ago
    What's wrong with how they handle c#? I prefer it to Java and it's often considered superior.
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    Most of the companies you list failed to keep up with the changing marketplace and withered off by being complacent, while Microsoft doggedly kept improving their initially poor offerings(remember the adage, the 3rd version of a Microsoft product is when it gets real). IE5 was actually better than Netscape at the time which got bogged down in a rewrite. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html With more nimble competitors like Intuit with Quicken, Microsoft didn't make too much headway with Money. Same with Adobe. To see an example of this playing out now, look at the Xbox versus Playstation. Sony(and Nintentdo) has been scoring a lot of self goals lately.
- snogglethorpe 14y ago
  > but generally thought of him as an intelligent, charismatic and, more recently, very generous man. Er, Bill Gates is definitely a smart guy, but he's never been known as charismatic, or even nice. His reputation at MS was pretty nasty. [I'm talking about his "inside" reputation, to employees; his "outside" reputation tended to be conflated with that of MS (this is very different, for instance, than Steve Jobs, who left a pretty strong impression even on the general public).] Of course, he's doubtless mellowed with age and with his new post-business role.
venomsnake 14y ago
Bill Gates also shipped the office assistant, windows ME was done mostly under his command and got the attention of the DOJ anaconda on microsoft. And I would recommend against doing this things. All great people have a track record of good and bad decisions. And you cannot take only the ones you like. Also I had this pretending to be done project once ... one year later we were still struggling, the customer was losing money daily and I was happy watching my management being roasted on a slow fire for not listening to us lowly techies.
- pyre 14y ago
  You're also forgetting WinFS. WinFS was apparently his baby during the development of Windows Vista (aka Longhorn), but was one of the things cut when shedding cruft. I can't find a reference to it, but I recall hearing that there were grumblings from the rank-and-file about 'making a pig fly' (not exactly, but something similar) with regards to Gates' focus/drive on WinFS.
adventured 14y ago
In the same vein as how Microsoft sold IBM an OS that didn't exist, one of my favorite stories is Excite bidding $3 million to be on Netscape's browser circa 1996 or so (while having $1 million in the bank), prodded on by Vinod Khosla (they didn't get the deal, but it's still a great move). http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/2004/09/persistence_pay_1.html http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/2004/09/persistence_pay_1.h...
Datsundere 14y ago
those are the worst suggestions to be given to a startup guy today. Gate's business strategy isn't something we should learn from. I can't believe people like those exist that want to learn and reprocure what Gates did to apple and the rest of the world. In a way I'm glad ballmer is the ceo now, you reap what you sow microshit
- grenek 14y ago
  I was only pointing that one special situation, not his whole career. He behaved like a sales genius on that occasion and it doesn't have anything to do with his futher strategy. I wouldn't advise to copy the whole Microsoft strategy.
- nickster 14y ago
  Seems like there is a lot of hate in what you are saying. Yeah they were fierce in the industry, but I think any company in their position would have done the same. What did Gates do to the rest of the world in the 90s?
meerita 14y ago
Even fearing downvoting I must say these articles, most of them I've been reading in the past month from that site are just plainly wrong assumptions. This article for example try to argues that you can be like BG and try to sell something without actually having it. I say BG had the OS in that time, he just didn't bought it but he knew the SO was right away to be bought (and cheap).
- pmelendez 14y ago
  It wasn't finished though nor available and didn't know how much work required to be ready to sell it. They just knew that they couldn't let that opportunity pass away.
mikecane 14y ago
Those who don't know how Microsoft once operated need to read this book: Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kaplan/dp/0140257314 http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kaplan... Hell, anyone doing a startup needs to read it anyway.
- sreyaNotfilc 14y ago
  Just ordered it. Can't wait to read it. Great find Mike!
hallomac2013 14y ago
If being dark lord of the evil empire is what you want, you would follow in his steps. Beware of the jedi order that is 'us' though.
- derefr 14y ago
  Let's put that another way: if you're not afraid of being seen as the dark lord of an evil empire in order to get what you want (which, in Gates' case, seems to be "billions of dollars to solve the most important problems the world has to offer") then you should follow in his footsteps. In other words, if you have world-changing vision, and want to succeed on a truly massive scale, you probably have to Think Like A Supervillain (http://dirtsimple.org/2009/02/everything-i-needed-to-know-about-life.html http://dirtsimple.org/2009/02/everything-i-needed-to-know-ab..., http://lesswrong.com/lw/gp7/think_like_a_supervillain/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gp7/think_like_a_supervillain/).
  - hallomac2013 14y ago
    If you are destroying a part of the world to fix another, you are not good. You may be evil even. Because you are selfishly choosing the part to fix, in expense of the part you destroy. If you are good, you should do no evil, or at least strive to.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Nightrider 14y ago
If Bill wanted to uncover a hidden talent or keystone habit of his, or to rediscover what made him happy, why, he would revert to his Last Known Working Configuration: http://zerotosuperhero.com/mindhack/find-your-lifes-last-known-working-configuration/ http://zerotosuperhero.com/mindhack/find-your-lifes-last-kno... This "hack" was super useful for me for identifying what habits and activities really improve my quality of life. May be of help to others as well.
brvs 14y ago
Don't forget that the businessman is the new political savior. We all love the oh so charitable landlord who by day evicts his tenants and by night donates cardboard boxes to them for shelter now that they're homeless. Isn't it so wonderful that the man that's taken more of a share of the world's wealth than any human in history gives some of it back? It should be obvious that if you want to change the world, don't vote or organize, buy more copies of Windows!!

34 points by grenek 14y ago

"I know most of you can't stand the guy" Really? I thought people took objection to Microsoft but generally thought of him as an intelligent, charismatic and, more recently, very generous man.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Being somewhat more divorced from MS and his charity effort have helped his public image a lot over the last few years but I'm sure we can still remember the days of the slashdot borg icon etc.
- fakeer 14y ago
  People stereotype people. For instance I am just fine with Gates but sort of don't much like Jobs(don't hate though, or maybe I do). I love my Mac and hate Windows(though MS is credited with many others to put computer in the hands of many people). I can't stand anything written/said by GrubIgler but that doesn't make them &&&& and morons. They have a huge following, they must be good. This is how it works. I am sure all are(were) good.
  - pyre 14y ago
    | They have a huge following, they must be good. Good at what is the question. Not levelling anything at them specifically, but there are plenty of people with large followings that are basically 'good' at getting large followings and making money off of them (e.g. tele-vangelists).
    - fakeer 14y ago
      >>Good at what is the question. Good at whatever the people following them liked in them or found worth the attention. It can be anything - good voice, other skills or just the looks. Anything. It depends on the person following what good was in the guy he/she follows.
- bpatrianakos 14y ago
  I don't remember the Slashdot borg icon (I was 10 in '96 when we got AOL, our first internet service) but I do remember the song 'Bill Gates Must Die', Micro$oft as a derogatory term,the blue screens of death, IE, antitrust, my printer doesn't work (again!), and on and on. I was just a kid but I remember the sentiment being that because of Bill Gates' ruthlessness as a business man the entire computer industry was suffering from a lack of any real competition, a stranglehold on vendors, customer lock-in, and on top of it all you always had to buy a new computer to upgrade to the newest Windows and it would only work for like a couple of months before everything stopped working one by one. I'm not stating all this as fact (though some of it is), that's just the sentiment others around me had at the time (like 1995 - 2001). Since his departure from MS though I personally see him as a much kinder, gentler, and even more brilliant man than ever before. It's strange because there was a time when I loved to hate the guy but now that he's gone and seeing what Microsoft is doing these days I almost feel like "damn, I wish Bill Gates would come back, that guy was smart". Maybe this is a totally crazy thing to say but I'll say it: I feel like it's the same feeling people who followed politics in the 90's feel about Bill Clinton. They may have been pissed at him for reasons XYZ at the time but now many have a much different memory of him and kind of yearn for him to come back (if it were possible). Nostalgia is a powerful thing.
afandian 14y ago
There are plenty of intelligent and charismatic people who are loathed by many. BillG is amongst them. And bearing him a personal grudge for the actions of the company he ran isn't unreasonable in any case. Where did all his generous cash donations come from? Just being good at selling software?
- rbanffy 14y ago
  > bearing him a personal grudge for the actions of the company he ran isn't unreasonable Isn't it a bit of a contradiction? He ran a company that engaged in actions that harmed society. Doesn't he deserve some credit?
  - adventured 14y ago
    How did Microsoft harm society?
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      Monopoly abuse and other anticompetitive actions that ultimately inflated prices. Why do you think the DoJ got involved?
      - acheron 14y ago
        The DOJ "got involved" because Microsoft didn't want to play the lobbying game, so the government decided to teach them a lesson. http://washingtonexaminer.com/carney-how-hatch-forced-microsoft-to-play-k-streets-game/article/2500453 http://washingtonexaminer.com/carney-how-hatch-forced-micros...
        tanzam75 14y ago
        Well, they learned their lesson. Microsoft is now a prolific spender on DC lobbying. In the tech world, they are matched only by Google. Bill Gates used to be a Congressional page, and his father was a lawyer. So I'm surprised he had such a naive viewpoint of the justice system. He ought to have known that it was more political than that. The irony is that Bill Gates, a staunch Democrat, was hounded by the Clinton DOJ. It ended up being the Bush administration that rescued his company by terminating the lawsuit and signing that consent decree.
melling 14y ago
No, I hate Microsoft because they destroyed Borland, Lotus, WordPerfect, etc. They gobbled up everything (Visio, PowerPoint, etc). They killed off Netscape the company, stuck us with IE6 for a decade by "making it part of the operating system." They embraced, extended, and tried to extinguish everything they could. (e.g. Java->C#, OpenGL->DirectX). Bill, however, I greatly admire. He took no prisoners. :-) I've got his book on my shelf somewhere. It's 20 years old now. I should go back and read it.
- bdcravens 14y ago
  Apple has arguably destroyed/killed off RIM. Microsoft's "destruction" is today's startups' "disruption". (At least in HN circles I think we applaud AirBNB or Uber doing damage to the hospitality or transportation industries). Twitter and Google are gobbling up and often times killing products of value. I think Microsoft did a lot of things we value: disrupt and grow. Looking back, I think we see it through a different lens, but modern startups (or those who have eclipsed that label to be "big") can be Microsoft (or at least little Microsofts). Probably the only thing separating Microsoft from many companies is the presence of a moral compass at the company level.
- jimmaswell 14y ago
  What's wrong with how they handle c#? I prefer it to Java and it's often considered superior.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  Most of the companies you list failed to keep up with the changing marketplace and withered off by being complacent, while Microsoft doggedly kept improving their initially poor offerings(remember the adage, the 3rd version of a Microsoft product is when it gets real). IE5 was actually better than Netscape at the time which got bogged down in a rewrite. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html With more nimble competitors like Intuit with Quicken, Microsoft didn't make too much headway with Money. Same with Adobe. To see an example of this playing out now, look at the Xbox versus Playstation. Sony(and Nintentdo) has been scoring a lot of self goals lately.
snogglethorpe 14y ago
> but generally thought of him as an intelligent, charismatic and, more recently, very generous man. Er, Bill Gates is definitely a smart guy, but he's never been known as charismatic, or even nice. His reputation at MS was pretty nasty. [I'm talking about his "inside" reputation, to employees; his "outside" reputation tended to be conflated with that of MS (this is very different, for instance, than Steve Jobs, who left a pretty strong impression even on the general public).] Of course, he's doubtless mellowed with age and with his new post-business role.

venomsnake 14y ago

Bill Gates also shipped the office assistant, windows ME was done mostly under his command and got the attention of the DOJ anaconda on microsoft. And I would recommend against doing this things. All great people have a track record of good and bad decisions. And you cannot take only the ones you like. Also I had this pretending to be done project once ... one year later we were still struggling, the customer was losing money daily and I was happy watching my management being roasted on a slow fire for not listening to us lowly techies.

pyre 14y ago
You're also forgetting WinFS. WinFS was apparently his baby during the development of Windows Vista (aka Longhorn), but was one of the things cut when shedding cruft. I can't find a reference to it, but I recall hearing that there were grumblings from the rank-and-file about 'making a pig fly' (not exactly, but something similar) with regards to Gates' focus/drive on WinFS.

adventured 14y ago

In the same vein as how Microsoft sold IBM an OS that didn't exist, one of my favorite stories is Excite bidding $3 million to be on Netscape's browser circa 1996 or so (while having $1 million in the bank), prodded on by Vinod Khosla (they didn't get the deal, but it's still a great move). http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/2004/09/persistence_pay_1.html http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/2004/09/persistence_pay_1.h...

Datsundere 14y ago

those are the worst suggestions to be given to a startup guy today. Gate's business strategy isn't something we should learn from. I can't believe people like those exist that want to learn and reprocure what Gates did to apple and the rest of the world. In a way I'm glad ballmer is the ceo now, you reap what you sow microshit

grenek 14y ago
I was only pointing that one special situation, not his whole career. He behaved like a sales genius on that occasion and it doesn't have anything to do with his futher strategy. I wouldn't advise to copy the whole Microsoft strategy.
nickster 14y ago
Seems like there is a lot of hate in what you are saying. Yeah they were fierce in the industry, but I think any company in their position would have done the same. What did Gates do to the rest of the world in the 90s?

meerita 14y ago

Even fearing downvoting I must say these articles, most of them I've been reading in the past month from that site are just plainly wrong assumptions. This article for example try to argues that you can be like BG and try to sell something without actually having it. I say BG had the OS in that time, he just didn't bought it but he knew the SO was right away to be bought (and cheap).

pmelendez 14y ago
It wasn't finished though nor available and didn't know how much work required to be ready to sell it. They just knew that they couldn't let that opportunity pass away.

mikecane 14y ago

Those who don't know how Microsoft once operated need to read this book: Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kaplan/dp/0140257314 http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kaplan... Hell, anyone doing a startup needs to read it anyway.

sreyaNotfilc 14y ago
Just ordered it. Can't wait to read it. Great find Mike!

hallomac2013 14y ago

If being dark lord of the evil empire is what you want, you would follow in his steps. Beware of the jedi order that is 'us' though.

derefr 14y ago
Let's put that another way: if you're not afraid of being seen as the dark lord of an evil empire in order to get what you want (which, in Gates' case, seems to be "billions of dollars to solve the most important problems the world has to offer") then you should follow in his footsteps. In other words, if you have world-changing vision, and want to succeed on a truly massive scale, you probably have to Think Like A Supervillain (http://dirtsimple.org/2009/02/everything-i-needed-to-know-about-life.html http://dirtsimple.org/2009/02/everything-i-needed-to-know-ab..., http://lesswrong.com/lw/gp7/think_like_a_supervillain/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gp7/think_like_a_supervillain/).
- hallomac2013 14y ago
  If you are destroying a part of the world to fix another, you are not good. You may be evil even. Because you are selfishly choosing the part to fix, in expense of the part you destroy. If you are good, you should do no evil, or at least strive to.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Nightrider 14y ago

If Bill wanted to uncover a hidden talent or keystone habit of his, or to rediscover what made him happy, why, he would revert to his Last Known Working Configuration: http://zerotosuperhero.com/mindhack/find-your-lifes-last-known-working-configuration/ http://zerotosuperhero.com/mindhack/find-your-lifes-last-kno... This "hack" was super useful for me for identifying what habits and activities really improve my quality of life. May be of help to others as well.

brvs 14y ago

Don't forget that the businessman is the new political savior. We all love the oh so charitable landlord who by day evicts his tenants and by night donates cardboard boxes to them for shelter now that they're homeless. Isn't it so wonderful that the man that's taken more of a share of the world's wealth than any human in history gives some of it back? It should be obvious that if you want to change the world, don't vote or organize, buy more copies of Windows!!