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The Bill Gates Mythology in this essay is a bit odd though. No doubt a hard worker, but the claim >"Bill Gates, for example, was among the smartest people in

by RC_ITR 5y ago

The Bill Gates Mythology in this essay is a bit odd though. No doubt a hard worker, but the claim >"Bill Gates, for example, was among the smartest people in business in his era, but he was also among the hardest working. "I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one." doesn't align with the facts that have recently emerged about him. [1] Maybe PG should examine selection bias and self-reporting bias a bit more before making the claim he does here. [1]https://nypost.com/2021/05/10/bill-gates-womanizer-held-nude-pool-parties-biographer/ https://nypost.com/2021/05/10/bill-gates-womanizer-held-nude...

munificent 5y ago
From the linked article: Another ex, Jill Bennett — described as his “first serious girlfriend” — said they split because of Gates’ fixation with working long hours. “In the end, it was difficult to sustain a relationship with someone who could boast a ‘seven-hour turnaround’ — meaning that from the time he left Microsoft to the time he returned in the morning was a mere seven hours,” she told Wallace. I don't see that being a "womanizer" is in any way incompatible with being a workaholic.
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  Again. He claimed not a single day off, which is insanely unhealthy and almost certainly untrue if he had time for naked pool parties. I’m not claiming he was lazy, just asking “why take his provable lie at face value?”
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
conductr 5y ago
I don’t see misalignment at all. I see complete irrelevance between that quote and the facts. Why can he not be a womanizing workaholic? They are not mutually exclusive and possibly actually correlated. Sex lives need to be private or at least not included as judgement of individual as they are not relevant at all to people’s accomplishments in politics, business, academics, or any other facet of an individual’s life.
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  Because “not taking a day off” and “naked pool parties” are incongruent. Like I said in the parent. No doubt a hard worker, but let’s not mythologize for no reason
  - conductr 5y ago
    Incongruent? I've frequently worked full day and then hosted a pool party in the evening. More often, I've also hosted pool parties in the day time and went on to work 12+ hours afterwards. I'm left assuming either you've never owned a pool and incorrectly assert that it's a full day activity to host a party or since you seem to want to be a myth buster I could assume it's the "naked" part you see as an issue. This completely ignores the fact that in the '80s, it was not uncommon to do business at strip clubs and a naked pool party is really not much different. So maybe the party was his work that day? He sold software, right?
    - RC_ITR 5y ago
      What an extremely revealing comment on your part. For your sake, I'm sorry the world has moved past your heyday of 'business in strip clubs'. I'm also sorry that your life is such that you can't even enjoy a full day off. I have two separate threads of response: 1) You think Bill Gates just had friends who he could casually invite over for a naked party? You don't think that he had to invest a significant amount of time into coordinating those parties (read: finding and paying for his guests, since it is also widely reported that most guests were strippers likely under NDA)? I really want to know what world you live in where you can be a semi-famous (at the time) sexual libertine who operates in secret without devoting a lot of time to it. Maybe you pull it off, given the confident tone of your comment, but I'm guessing not. 2) I'm in shock that you can read PG's essay on hard work (Assuming you did), then make a comment that 'maybe the naked pool parties with strippers WAS his work for the day.' Even if that was true, my point about mythologizing 'Bill Gates' hard work' still stands. EDIT: Tell me you've never been to a strip club without telling me you've never been to a strip club. Maybe they were brighter and quieter in the 1980's, but I somehow doubt it.

by RC_ITR 5y ago

munificent 5y ago

From the linked article: Another ex, Jill Bennett — described as his “first serious girlfriend” — said they split because of Gates’ fixation with working long hours. “In the end, it was difficult to sustain a relationship with someone who could boast a ‘seven-hour turnaround’ — meaning that from the time he left Microsoft to the time he returned in the morning was a mere seven hours,” she told Wallace. I don't see that being a "womanizer" is in any way incompatible with being a workaholic.

RC_ITR 5y ago
Again. He claimed not a single day off, which is insanely unhealthy and almost certainly untrue if he had time for naked pool parties. I’m not claiming he was lazy, just asking “why take his provable lie at face value?”
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

conductr 5y ago

I don’t see misalignment at all. I see complete irrelevance between that quote and the facts. Why can he not be a womanizing workaholic? They are not mutually exclusive and possibly actually correlated. Sex lives need to be private or at least not included as judgement of individual as they are not relevant at all to people’s accomplishments in politics, business, academics, or any other facet of an individual’s life.

RC_ITR 5y ago
Because “not taking a day off” and “naked pool parties” are incongruent. Like I said in the parent. No doubt a hard worker, but let’s not mythologize for no reason
- conductr 5y ago
  Incongruent? I've frequently worked full day and then hosted a pool party in the evening. More often, I've also hosted pool parties in the day time and went on to work 12+ hours afterwards. I'm left assuming either you've never owned a pool and incorrectly assert that it's a full day activity to host a party or since you seem to want to be a myth buster I could assume it's the "naked" part you see as an issue. This completely ignores the fact that in the '80s, it was not uncommon to do business at strip clubs and a naked pool party is really not much different. So maybe the party was his work that day? He sold software, right?
  - RC_ITR 5y ago
    What an extremely revealing comment on your part. For your sake, I'm sorry the world has moved past your heyday of 'business in strip clubs'. I'm also sorry that your life is such that you can't even enjoy a full day off. I have two separate threads of response: 1) You think Bill Gates just had friends who he could casually invite over for a naked party? You don't think that he had to invest a significant amount of time into coordinating those parties (read: finding and paying for his guests, since it is also widely reported that most guests were strippers likely under NDA)? I really want to know what world you live in where you can be a semi-famous (at the time) sexual libertine who operates in secret without devoting a lot of time to it. Maybe you pull it off, given the confident tone of your comment, but I'm guessing not. 2) I'm in shock that you can read PG's essay on hard work (Assuming you did), then make a comment that 'maybe the naked pool parties with strippers WAS his work for the day.' Even if that was true, my point about mythologizing 'Bill Gates' hard work' still stands. EDIT: Tell me you've never been to a strip club without telling me you've never been to a strip club. Maybe they were brighter and quieter in the 1980's, but I somehow doubt it.