

Bill Gates, Hero - GlennKelman
http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2010/09/bill_gates_hero.html
It's hard to believe we once saw Bill Gates as the pie-splattered villain and others as the idealists.
======
edw519
_Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy?_

Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake.

Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from
his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one
Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother
already knew its chairman.

Sure he was smart and he worked hard, but he was no smarter and worked no
harder than many of the rest of us.

And what did he do with these fabulous once-in-a-lifetime gifts? He fucked
anyone who got in his way, always to the benefit of Microsoft, and usually to
the detriment of the industry.

When others wrote better code, he called his lawyers. When other developers
wanted to collaborate, he stole their intellectual property. When customers or
vendors balked, he crushed them. And when the citizens saw how unfair it all
was and took action, he called his lobbyists.

So now maybe he wants to be like Andrew Carnegie in his next act, conveniently
forgetting all the lives destroyed in the hope of "giving it all back". If so,
good.

I really try to keep upbeat and optimistic in my posts here at hn, but I also
understand how much we have forgotten, and sometimes I just can't resist.
Every time I read about Bill Gates worship, I can vomit. Sometimes I really
wonder how much better things would be for all of us hackers is he had just
gone to law school and left our industry to develop as it could have.

</rant>

Oooh, that feels better. Now back to work.

~~~
lionhearted
> Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million
> from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the
> same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because
> his mother already knew its chairman.

The rest of your post is very insightful, but this part above strikes me as
petty - I was low born myself, was given almost nothing except birth in the
USA in the modern era, but I think good for people who are given things and
achieve with them. The bad things stand on their own - you include the fact
that he was given gifts as if it makes him worse - _it doesn't_ \- at least,
not by my ethics. Other people can disagree. Let his bad deeds stand on their
own, the rest of it comes across as sour grapes.

~~~
edw519
_...but this part above strikes me as petty..._

Sorry if it came across that way; that was not my intent.

Everyone's starting point is relative. No one ever gave me the gifts that Bill
Gates got. But then again, I've had gifts that 99% of everyone who ever lived
couldn't imagine.

With those gifts comes responsibility. Whenever I have an opportunity to use
my gifts to do good things, I think of how proud those who made sacrifices for
me would be. I imagine many people here on hn feel the same way.

Bill Gates never used his tremendous gifts for the greater good, only for the
good of Microsoft. He never cared how big the pie got, only how close
Microsoft's share of that pie approached 100%.

The point of the paragraph wasn't to be petty or jealous; it was just to point
out how the one with perhaps the biggest gifts of all didn't choose to share
them like the rest of us would. Sorry if I implied anything else.

~~~
mattmaroon
From your comments its clear that you're zealously anti-capitalist and, as a
result, anti-Microsoft, so you're simply not applying logic.

Bill Gates did his legal duty. When you run a corporation you have a fiduciary
responsibility to it. He would be doing something immoral if he didn't do what
was best for Microsoft. The theory behind free market capitalism is that
enough companies doing the same will average out to the best results.

So the question is what do most people with the gifts Bill Gates was born into
do? The answer is that they get a job in finance doing nothing of benefit to
society and getting paid quite handsomely for it.

Bill on the other hand founded a company that has, at current time, almost
90,000 employees. He helped bring computers to the masses.

It's not petty jealousy that drives your comments, it's anti-capitalist
sentiment. You also have a highly debatable view of what the universe would
look like if not for Microsoft (I for one suspect you wouldn't be on this
site) but that too is a side effect of zealousness rather than the result of
careful reasoning.

~~~
jacobolus
> _The theory behind free market capitalism is that enough companies doing the
> same will average out to the best results._

You left out the part about how this only works if (a) the market is actually
“free” and “competitive” (what this means is a complicated topic beyond the
scope of this text box), and (b) the interests of the company and the
interests of the broader society are aligned. (Which is why we have all sorts
of specialized regulation of companies, various kinds of guaranteed rights
attached to consumers and contract-signers and so on, a court system, and
ultimately elections). In the specific case of Microsoft in the 1980s and
1990s, they clearly were not. The idea that Microsoft’s corporate strategy
embodied some kind of Adam Smith small-firms-in-a-competitive-market ideal is
hogwash. Notice that Microsoft’s actions _were found to be illegal_ in several
court battles.

It is definitely not a company’s fiduciary duty to break the law.

~~~
Bricejm
Free market capitalism is supposed to be about innovation and competition. You
have to weigh the good with the bad. Has Microsoft probably had an advantage
that pushed others out of business - yes, but I'm sure they also inspired
programmers to create new products that they could then sell to
Microsoft/Google type companies. It's hard to say if large companies create or
destroy innovation and competition. There will always be positives and
negatives.

------
pstuart
My understanding is that it should be: Melinda Gates, Hero.

When she connected the plight of many of the world's children to that of their
own he got it.

~~~
brudgers
I'd agree. Then I remember Clippy.

------
siglesias
The interesting fact that is often left out of these Gates-as-philanthropist
v. Jobs-as-salesman arguments is that Jobs has 1/10 the wealth that Bill Gates
has, if that, _even though_ Apple is now worth more than Microsoft. So if this
is a simple comparison of allocation of wealth we find that Jobs simply hasn't
taken the money (look at his paycheck v. Apple's cash holdings for crying out
loud). And socially how effective is charity relative to giving it to the
market? I'm not sure, but it's open to debate.

So does two decades of merciless greed followed by a decade of giving some of
that money away constitute heroism? To an extent, yes. But I think we ought to
give simply taking a lower cash holding a better look also.

~~~
qq66
Jobs' wealth is lower than Gates because Apple raised more money than
Microsoft did early on, and because he sold all his stock when he left Apple
and is now compensated in stock options rather than in founders' stock.

~~~
siglesias
He sold his stock in protest over being fired--again, for principle, not
money.

With $46B cash and short term holdings in the bank, I'm sure shareholders
wouldn't bat much of an eye if Jobs compensated himself with a little bit more
than $1/year, as Ellison and many other tech execs do. Jobs doesn't take that
cash.

The last point I'm going to make is that it's probably immaterial to the
argument the exact cause of the disparity. The fact that people point at Jobs
and accuse him of not being more philanthropic indicates that they are
ignorant of his cash position.

~~~
kenjackson
Selling your stock over being fired is not a principled stand. At least not in
the conventional way of thinking about it.

Plus he has on occassion been labelled the highest paying CEO in the world,
due to his stock options.
[http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/12/lead_07ceos_Steven-P-
Job...](http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/12/lead_07ceos_Steven-P-
Jobs_HEDB.html)

And in any case, most CEOs don't make a HUGE salary. Jobs would probably get
paid $750k. The fact that he doesn't make this money is (a) hardly a dent in
his wallet and (b) doesn't really make any effect on wealth allocation.

~~~
qq66
He sold his stock because he thought that Apple stock without him was
worthless. He was right.

Now, Apple is trying to convince the market that the new Apple can function
without Steve Jobs. People want to believe, but it's far from certain.

~~~
siglesias
I agree with you in principle, that his leaving ultimately doomed the company,
but the stock price did go up when he left, and stayed up for many years.

------
kmfrk
There's an idiom where I come from. Roughly translated:

When the Devil gets old, he joins the abbey.

------
seldo
To me Bill Gates will always be a modern-day Rockefeller: he clawed and
trampled his way to the top, then once he was there he gave away his money --
a lot of it, to be sure -- and will always be remembered for that, rather than
the ugly methods he used to get it.

It's laudable when somebody gives so freely and I don't want to take away from
that, but I find it hard to view him charitably because I know that even now,
this is all about him, making him feel better about himself. Many others
sacrificed much more for the good of others without having to tread so
heavily.

------
lefstathiou
I am rather grateful for Gates' contribution to the software industry.
Standardizing the development environment was monumental toward facilitating
innovation in software development. Imagine if Steve Jobs controlled the
industry with as much power that Gates did, how much different would the world
be? While I dont like to deal in "IF's," if we judge people/organizations by
their actions, Microsoft has always been a relatively open environment whereas
today Apple continues to tyranically control their platform. Seeing Apple rule
would have sucked for everyone.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
On the other hand OS X on the Mac is a relatively robust and usable platform
and Windows on the PC still sucks for many users (I'm two days into a Windows
rebuild at the moment).

It's swings and roundabouts. Gates and MS made good calls and they made bad
calls, Jobs is the same.

For me I think Bill did OK, while I can imagine some using that sort of power
in a more altruistic way, I can also see many doing far far worse things with
it.

------
m3mb3r
>> Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy?

There are two separate aspects here, professional and personal.

Silicon Valley judges people based on their professional acumen and practices.
And Gates did not please everybody in this department.

And the other aspect, yes, people in tech do admire his humanitarian efforts.

It's just that mixing two aspects of a personality and trying to come up with
an overall score does not work.

------
edkennedy
I think he's villanized because of his main product, Windows. It suffers from
the same plight Bill himself suffers as mentioned in the article. Awkwardness.

~~~
lotharbot
As much as this seems like snark, it's a fair observation.

Bill Gates is often seen as a villain because of the late 1990s behavior of
Microsoft and the quality of some of their flagship products (Windows and IE).
It can be hard to separate perceptions of Bill Gates the man/philanthropist
from Bill Gates the businessman. Perceptions of Bill Gates are colored by
BSoD's, IE's non-compliance to standards, Frontpage creating pages that only
rendered in IE, and awkward conventions and interfaces in several popular
pieces of software.

(I personally think very highly of Bill and Melinda Gates for their charitable
work.)

~~~
stackthat
Get over yourselves , have you used *nix systems in 90s as desktops? If you
not you can't compare Windows's quality with something else.

OSX wasn't even properly exist.

~~~
pohl
"NEXTSTEP is probably the most respected piece of software on the planet." --
Byte Magazine, October 1992

I used it during that decade on an x86 desktop, on a SPARC laptop made by
Tadpole, and on an HP PA-RISC "gecko" workstation. It was awesome.

~~~
gaius
I have a Next Color Turbo at home, it's an awesome machine.

And so it should be for what it cost back in the day. Windows PCs made
computing affordable for Jo(e) Consumer, there's no getting away from that.

------
patrickgzill
The first thing you do in real life, not in fantasy blogger-land, once you are
able to is go back and apologize to the guys you stomped on along the way.

I am talking about STAC, Gary Kildall's family, etc.

Also perhaps an effort at MSFT to reverse the culture of lying and deceit that
even now permeates their marketing.

I see no evidence of Gates doing that. Self-reflection would be required for
that to happen.

In some respects I see Zuckerberg following the same path.

------
bhoung
First comment on HN after lurking for a year or so. It does irk me that people
who obtain their wealth by means of sitting at the top of a monopoly can be
praised by giving away the money that they did not have to work so hard for
without others giving second thought to how the person arrived in that
position in the first place. Sure it was hard to get to the monopoly position
in the first place, but what happened after?

------
kitchen
Tax the wealthy to pay for education, but don't worry about Microsoft dodging
licensing taxes by operating out of Nevada, noooo...

<http://boingboing.net/2010/04/23/microsoft-wins-its-1.html>
[http://microsofttaxdodge.com/2010/09/microsofts-nevada-
tax-d...](http://microsofttaxdodge.com/2010/09/microsofts-nevada-tax-dodge-
much-larger-than-previously-estimated.html)

tax the wealthy, so long as it's not him.

Now, to be fair, he is a huge philanthropist and the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation does some amazing work, but praise what you preach, Microsoft needs
to start paying its dues.

~~~
tzs
I'm curious. Do you personally arrange your affairs to maximize your taxes?

If not, then why do you think businesses should do so?

------
Eruc
The man is the greatest philanthropist of our time. He's doing more for the
world than everyone commenting here combined, to some outrageous exponent.
Decry the man's business practices, but at the end of the day it was a means
to an end. He's taking his wealth and spending it wisely on charity. Further,
he's convincing other billionaires to do the same. I say we leave his tenure
at Microsoft in the past and focus on the stuff that will truly be his legacy:
helping mankind. And for that, I say, good for you Mr. Gates.

------
shortformblog
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrJBY2l1MQQ>

For what it's worth, Gates has been getting a lot of crap in the political
sphere for this statement he made a couple of months ago. Glenn Beck's site,
The Blaze, has been ripping him for his stance seemingly favoring "death
panels."

I lean on the side of the blog post, even if his company's quality (as has
been noted in the comments) has been downright abhorrent.

------
brudgers
Perhaps Silicon Valley has never quite embraced Bill Gates because Microsoft
is not part of Silicon Valley.

Microsoft's success in Redmond doesn't fit with the Silicon Valley narrative
that ties creativity to geography.

In other words Microsoft's success challenges the value of Silicon Valley's
terroir. It goes against the brand.

That's not to say that geography doesn't play a role - it's hard to imagine a
Microsoft based out of Bentonville.

------
Bricejm
Bill Gates is the ultimate example of what's explained in the book 'Outliers'
by Malcolm Gladwell. Success is usually a combination of hard work & luck.

------
RuadhanMc
I suppose Bill Gates was responsible for the death of Princess Di as well?
Britney Spears 3rd album too. Not to mention Hanson and Take That. And all
those Hugh Grant films. Sooo bad.

My point? No point really, just adding to the existing rubbish on this thread.

------
kevin_morrill
Glenn has it wrong. Without a doubt Bill's creations at Microsoft are far more
important than what he's doing now. I prefer the capitalist Gates to the
egalitarian one.

------
sliverstorm
Twitter? For Nobel Peace Prize? That's the first I've heard about that, and
I'm not sure I like the idea.

------
jeisc
steve robs and bill takes

------
fady
why is redfin (a real estate company) blogging about bill gates? weird...

------
Cushman
Metonymy.

------
known
I'd say Bill Gates is a true and successful capitalist.

------
ziweb
Bill Gates is the new hero because Steve Jobs is the new villain.

~~~
DrJokepu
How? I mean, could you elaborate that idea please? I don't see how Mr. Jobs
being unpopular in some circles would imply that Mr. Gates became popular.

~~~
pedalpete
I agree with you Doc, this isn't a zero sum game.

However, as Jobs is so closely tied to the recent success of Apple, and Gates
is still seen as Microsoft even though he hasn't been an employee for many
years.

~~~
mtts
He's still an employee, but he's no longer the CEO.

------
arvinjoar
Excuse me, but why is raising taxes on the rich a good thing? If the rich feel
that they have too much then there's always charity. Most of the people on
this site should know that there isn't a limited pie of wealth, and you
shouldn't punish those who enlarge the pie.

------
cwb
How come no one talks about the loss of innovation Microsoft have incurred on
the world? What if Windows were NeXT or Unix? What if Bill Gates had tried
really hard to create the _best tools_ possible, rather than the most
profitable software? What if the world had run on Unix in the two decades
since Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT machine to create the web? Might we have had
a 1% increase in annual productivity (mainly from better innovation, not only
direct efficiency improvements)? We'll never know of course; but you don't
have to be crazy to think so.

~~~
zandorg
Ted Nelson said the world of computing would be different if AT&T hadn't
charged $50,000 for a Unix license (yes, that's per machine!).

~~~
nitrogen
One must remember that a single machine could serve many, many users via
terminals.

------
Kilimanjaro
So, Dick Cheney decides to give away all the billions he made (wars,
corruption, oil cartels) and discovers the cure for cancer and super vaccines
for all children of the world. Good.

It is ok to rape half of the world for the good of the rest.

That makes you an instant hero.

~~~
aik
This kind of logic doesn't make sense. I'd love to find a word for it.

No one has simultaneously done good and bad like that. If a person does bad,
then change their views or themselves, and proceeds to do good wholeheartedly,
then good, I'm happy about their actions. Why do people have to criticize
stuff like this? Learn to forgive. Focus on what's being done now instead of
just being upset about the past.

I'm sure all the Bill Gates hate affected him some back in the day (and
apparently now too), but it's very doubtful that he cares all too much what
other people think or he wouldn't have accomplished much, and still wouldn't
be accomplishing much today.

------
kirpekar
Off Topic: Glenn welcome to HN! Glad to see you here. We bought our first
house using Redfin in 2007 and were very happy customers!

