
How Hard Could it Be? Joel Spolsky recalls what it was like to work for Bill Gates - prakash
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080701/how-hard-could-it-be-glory-days_Printer_Friendly.html
======
wallflower
My favorite billg story:

I actually heard this originally from my ex-boss when he was telling stories
during a lull at his startup. A friend of his worked for MSFT in the 1980s; I
was just thrilled that it was googleable as I had the gist of the story but
not the detail in my memory.

"What are the greatest business lessons Bill has taught you over the years?

Very early in my career at Microsoft, around February 1984, we found a data-
crashing bug. I wondered if I would get fired over it. I went to Bill with the
head of development. I was then the product manager.

It was a classic meeting. Bill was on the couch looking down. I explained that
we found this bug and that we thought we were going to have to recall the
product. He nodded, did his rocking thing and kept looked down. We were both
wondering if we would get fired. Bill wasn't saying anything so my anxiety was
growing.

I explained that we're going to have to recall the product, and that it's
going to cost several hundred thousand dollars and be a hit to our reputation.
Bill rocks and looks down. We didn't have anything else to say. I thought: Is
this when the ax comes?

Then Bill looks up and says: "You came in today and lost a few hundred
thousand dollars. You come in tomorrow and hope you do better."

His expectation wasn't that we weren't going to make mistakes. He wanted to
know that we took it seriously and learned from our mistakes. That's very
motivating."

[http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/06/25/raikes-bill-
gate...](http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/06/25/raikes-bill-gates-tech-
cz_vb_0625techraikes.html)

~~~
bct
That sounds suspiciously similar to this story:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=184257>

------
jgrahamc
Actually this isn't about what it's like to work for Bill Gates, it's about
Joel Spolsky and reflected glory.

~~~
ConradHex
I find that Joel's essays are always a lot of fun to read. But complaints
about his writing, not so much.

~~~
xssinrails
Joel's essays are just that. Essays. He continues to ignore any and all
research in the area and pretends to know what he's doing. If I wanted a bunch
of misinformed opinions I could just ask non-programmers.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Research would be great. Would you be so good as to recommend a peer-reviewed
study of the efficacy of Bill Gates' management technique?

Meanwhile, anecdotes may be anecdotal but they're still more enjoyable than
flamage.

------
jeroen
I thought I recognised that, and indeed it is taken partly from
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html> . The original is a bit
more detailed.

~~~
midnightmonster
The original is better--the order of the story and the emotion both work
better. Probably has to do with trying to dumb down, sound more professional,
and remove the swearing for Inc readers. Joel's Inc Magazine columns compared
to his blog writing have pretty much convinced me _not_ to subscribe to Inc..

~~~
mynameishere
_Joel's Inc Magazine columns compared to his blog writing_

Most of his articles have been inferior re-writes, to the point that I'm not
sure why nobody at Inc. has caught on. Maybe they don't care, but I'd be
pissed.

~~~
hernan7
Maybe they think Inc and Joel On Software have mostly non-overlapping
readerships?

------
augustus
I wonder if Bill knew details of windows as much as about Excel.

We'll never know because people who write kernels can't write as well as
Spolsky.

------
ctingom
In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to
save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone. \- Bill
Gates

------
edw519
So _this_ is supposed to be an example of good management?

Looks more like an example of why Microsoft succeeded _in spite_ of its
management. I guess when you're milking a monopolistic cash cow with crappy
products, you really don't need good management.

Think about it. The CEO comes into a meeting with 6 levels of management and
proceeds to treat his people like children by acting like a child himself and
"teaching them a lesson".

I wonder what Mike Conte, Chris Graham, Pete Higgins, and Mike Maples were
thinking during this charade.

With 6 levels of management, you'd think that the CEO would focus of the big
picture, set the course, and trust his people to do their jobs.

Perhaps the best evidence that Bill Gates was too busy bullying and
micromanaging was the book he wrote 3 years after this meeting, "The Road
Ahead," which never even mentioned the word "internet". Imagine, the CEO of a
multi-billion dollar technology company who didn't see the internet in 1994.

There are stories of him being upset with having to write that book because it
made him take his eye off the ball. I always wondered what ball he was talking
about. Thanks to Joel, now we know.

~~~
chrisl99
I have a copy of the first edition of The Road Ahead. Here is the index entry
for Internet:

Internet, 3-4, 91-100, 91 activities on, 93-97 addresses on, 94 cost of use
of, 97-99, 125 e-mail on, 96-97, 124-25 expectations for, 125 foundation of,
97 growth and evolution of, 91, 95-96 and information highway, 3-4, 89, 95,
100, 230, 246 and publication, 95, 123-25 real-time content on, 99 regulation
of, 161-63, 204 revenue from, 125 and security, 95, 96, 145 software on, 100
and standards, 96 and telephone system, 99 and Windows, 64 and WWW, 94, 95,
193, 201

~~~
neilc
Per Wikipedia:

After the book was written, but before it hit bookstores, Gates recognized
that the Internet was gaining the critical mass needed to drive it to
dominance, and on December 7, 1995 — just weeks after the release of the book
— he redirected Microsoft to become an Internet-focused company. Then he and
coauthor Rinearson spent several months revising the book, making it 20,000
words longer and focused on the Internet. The revised edition was published in
October 1996 as a trade paperback.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead>

~~~
edw519
Thank you! For a minute there, I thought I was losing what's left of my mind.

------
babul
To me this highlights that experience over the years and being technically apt
and knowledgeable with the burning desire for your company to do well allowed
Bill to harness his vast amount of knowledge and experience to 'probe' people.
The level of probing would reveal weaknesses very quickly, as no doubt it
would begin in the broad sense, then delving deeper, until the nitty-gritty
establishes your understanding of the subject matter.

In this example, the common understanding and concerns between the two was
there due to the development of Excel to include "Visual Basic for
Applications", allowing VB programmers to extend the Office Apps. The
Date/Time concerns would have been paramount, particularly as concerns about
Y2k were also just emerging - the first online debate being in 1996.

------
ctingom
"We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it down the
throats of our users." \-- Paul Maritz, Microsoft group vice president

------
okeumeni
This article makes me have more respect for Bill Gates. I use to dream working
for him since high school. Great stuff!!!

------
sanj
"When i graduated from college, in 1991"

Where's copyediting gone to?

~~~
noonespecial
_“You ended that sentence with a preposition…Bastard!”_

-Richard Dean Anderson (as Jack O'Niell)

~~~
gruseom
I was going to quote one of my favorite lines by Churchill: _This is the sort
of English up with which I will not put_.

But I figured why not check the Google first, just in case. First thing I see
is an old post from the inestimable Language Log arguing that the quote isn't
Churchill's at all:
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001715.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001715.html)

Basically, if you're famous, all the best jokes get attributed to you.

