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Gates Still Working Behind the Scenes at Microsoft
- duxup 8y agoNot much to that article, but Gates does seem like one of those guys who even if not directly in the mix has more than enough experience and would still be relevant to talk to to get some perspective / advice now and then. I imagine some ex executives might be stuck in the mud, Bill seems like he would still be very relevant.
- Waterluvian 8y agoThere is something magical about people who have so much experience and developed wisdom that they can issue practical, useful advice even though they haven't been in the trenches in years, and in your specific trenches ever.
- amoorthy 8y agoI've noticed this is more common than I expected and seems to happen when two conditions are present: (1) the person is an outsider so can ask "dumb" questions that make you think through the foundational assumptions of your work. (2) they've experienced many failures themselves so they know what questions really matter. i.e. perhaps it's not so much that Gates is a genius (he is) as much as the above conditions are present. The corollary for me, as a startup founder, has been that I should be asking these basic questions of myself regularly (a good marketing person helps) and I've got to be careful with cash burn so I have time to learn from failures.
- pjmorris 8y agoI've heard multiple Microsoft Research researchers describe that they'd interacted with Gates, and he was able to discuss quite technical aspects of their fields and their work.
- maxxxxx 8y agoI have heard that too from some guys in the Munich office where he visited. He joined a conversation and the guys were really impressed how much he knew about the low-level details they were working on. He seems to have an incredible memory.
- ashelmire 8y agoEver talked with someone with 30-40 years of professional dev experience? This has been my experience with them - even if they don't know exactly what you're doing or the particulars of a specific technology, they have a vast amount of accumulated knowledge and experience that is often useful. And of course, they can probably school you in C.
- ryacko 8y agoI think the previous comment may have been referring to Bill Gates having photographic memory.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoHe may, but even if he doesn't having as much technical experience as he does, or anyone else who's been around the block as much as he has, is going to give you a shortcut to insight into most situations.
- ashelmire 8y agoHe said incredible memory. But I suppose my point is that it's easier to remember things when you've encountered them many times in your career and been developing so long (over 45 years!).
- maxxxxx 8y agoThe way I was told the story it was more about him knowing EXACTLY what they were doing. They suspected that he is reading a ton of E-mails and remembers all the details.
- Angostura 8y agoThe 10 minute video referenced in the article. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzUUghxDhYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzUUghxDhYM
- FatalErrorr 8y agoisn't he a board member? why would that be surprising?
- gingerbread-man 8y ago"Gates continues to serve on Microsoft’s board of directors and as an advisor on key development projects." https://news.microsoft.com/exec/bill-gates/ https://news.microsoft.com/exec/bill-gates/
- WorldMaker 8y agoFor a period in the Ballmer era it was said that Gates had entirely disconnected to focus 100% on the charity work. There is some surprise that Gates seems to be more involved in the Nadella era given how strict Gates was said to be hands-off during Ballmer's tenure, though certainly it is still no surprise that the charity work is still Gates' focus.
- debacle 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Personal_life > They have three children: Jennifer Katharine (b. 1996), Rory John (b. 1999), and Phoebe Adele (b. 2002). Probably has something to do with it. His youngest is close to college age now.
- jdironman 8y agoThat doesn't really make a lot of since though. Why all of a sudden for the younger one? He spend most of those years in command for Microsoft, before focusing on charity work from 2008 and up. (His children would have been roughly 12, 9, and 6 at that time.) So, that may be a part of it but probably not a major part.
- rabidrat 8y agoHe basically stepped down from active management with the birth of his second child. (Ballmer became CEO in Jan 2000).
- faitswulff 8y ago> "Even to this day I do some architecture things on the various products," Gates said during the segment. I really wonder what that looks like.
- shdh 8y agoVMS -> WNT
- packetslave 8y agothat was all Cutler, not Gates
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- setquk 8y agoI hope the hell its yelling at the Windows team for it not working properly. That was what he used to do I understand.
- ikeboy 8y agoI assume he's on the forced upgrades and data loss teams
- cptskippy 8y agoChange Management and Loss Prevention are their official team names. /s
- beatgammit 8y agoMinistry of Truth?
- Nicksil 8y agoWhy do you assume that?
- S_A_P 8y agoI believe he is the Visual Basic product champion.
- umichguy 8y agoHopefully, he can steer MS away from projects like the Zune.
- moolcool 8y agoYou take that back, the Zune was the best portable media player ever made
- LordHumungous 8y agoBill is the man.
- paxys 8y agoThey announced he would start getting involved again when Nadella became CEO.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kyberias 8y agoLet me just leave this here if there are some people who have missed this jewel: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
- Anthony-G 8y agoCoincidentally, I only just read this entertaining anecdote earlier today because I have to support a VBA application and thought I′d check out https://stackoverflow.com/tags/vba/info https://stackoverflow.com/tags/vba/info for good resources to get up to speed on it (coming from a Unix background). This was the last link on that page and knowing Joel’s a great writer, I read it first. I particularly liked this summation: > He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual, programmer.
- ThirdFoundation 8y agoThat was a nice read, thank you
- person_of_color 8y agoAnyone else cringe? The absolute worship of rich people in American culture.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y agoI mean, I don’t think you’re getting the full picture here. The guy who wrote that is pretty damn successful himself now (he helped create stackoverflow and his company has had some huge successes with software like Trello) and probably owes some part of that success to the stuff that BG invented. So while I think your sentiment in general might be true (Americans certainly do have a disgusting idolization of rich people) I think in this case it’s a bit misguided.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoThe primary advantage is not any kind of architectural wisdom or specific knowledge, although that may be the case in some instances. 1) Having the 'magic of the founder' in place is worth a lot. Imagine young Engineers getting to sit on meetings with 'the World's Once Richest Man', world renowned, influential, 'powerful', and the 'creator' of their initiative. It's like a celebrity who is paying attention to you and is meaningfully participating in something you are doing. You'd never forget that meeting. It's exciting and inspiring, and adds meaning or resonance to what you do. It's like being a little bit a party of mythology and gives emotional impetus to the original 'raison d'etre' of the company. 2) Satya can use Bill (I don't mean negatively) to move the needle in areas where Satya couldn't alone. CEO's, surprisingly, don't always have a lot of power. They are like nervous feudal lords, always worried about popular revolts, public opinion, antagonism from the nobles (i.e. other execs). So having someone with the tremendous power of 'authenticity' is like gold. If Satya and Bill agree 'we need to move the company in this direction' ... Satya alone would have a lot of convincing ... but if 'Bill says it' and starts propagating this idea in all-hands and in meetings, then it's a done deal. It will happen for better or worse. Having the 'founders word' is such an amazing thing if it works in a situation. 3) Maybe he was always doing this, but having his 'extra organizational outreach' is powerful. Calling up big CEO's of customers, politicians, lobbyists, governmental people etc.. Who's going to turn down a call from Bill Gates? Nobody really :). So it's a big thing to have him create connections and pave the road ahead socially.
- kthejoker2 8y agoThe CTO of Schlumberger once completely ghosted Satya. His son works for Google and they had a big push for GCP and Satya called on him to discuss options and such and ... Crickets. This was when Satya was a bit more of an unknown but still, ignoring the CEO of one of the largest companies in the world is stone cold.
- ccnafr 8y agolol, so this article is based on a throwaway line in a YouTube video that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways.... yeah, great reporting
- SilverSlash 8y agoA non-article if there ever was one.