6 ms·

Bill Gates 2013 Annual Letter

108 points by sethbannon 14y ago

adnrw 14y ago
Kottke's Report on it is very interesting: http://kottke.org/13/01/read-bill-gates-annual-letter http://kottke.org/13/01/read-bill-gates-annual-letter
dr_ 14y ago
Gates' legacy will ultimately be his foundation, more so than Microsoft.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  Like Carnegie before him.
  - dmhdlr 14y ago
    The Gates Foundation's answer to the thousands of public libraries Carnegie built is . . . the Khan Academy?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - crgt 14y ago
      233 million lessons delivered so far isn't such a bad start..
    - akiselev 14y ago
      If I were a bettin' man I'd wager that more people have access to the internet than to public libraries. Also, no one ever snags that last book that you really need for class. (Instead publishers charge you out the ass for a digital copy you dont even own!)
  - WalterBright 14y ago
    Carnegie's steel built America. It's a hell of a legacy.
- jfoster 14y ago
  That can't happen. The foundation was completely dependent on Microsoft happening, so the story of Bill Gates will be in two parts. Part 1: Microsoft. Part 2: Gates Foundation.
sethbannon 14y ago
Bill Gates always seemed like a more appropriate person to idol, if you must do such things, than Steve Jobs. Not only did he build the worlds largest technology company (in its time), but he's making a global philanthropic impact.
- rwbt 14y ago
  They both excel in their own ways.
- larrydavid 14y ago
  Whenever there is a topic concerning Bill Gates, there always seems to be someone in the discussion section that will find a way to shoehorn Steve Jobs into a comment, however irrelevant. An interesting phenomenon.
  - nkozyra 14y ago
    Yeah, it's weird. Like when Joe Frazier or George Foreman come up in Ali discussions. Or when you talk Larry Bird, inevitably Magic Johnson comes up. Or when you talk about NES, someone brings up Sega. Oh wait it's because those things are narratively, intrinsically connected because of the compelling nature of rivalry as it turns out that is not weird at all.
  - brudgers 14y ago
    Even more phenomenologically interesting is that everyone leaves out Larry Ellison.
  - jfoster 14y ago
    I don't think it's shoehorning as much as it is Bill Gates & Steve Jobs being yinyang.
  - enjo 14y ago
    The two are inescapably linked. Ali and Frazier. Magic and Bird. DiMaggio and Williams. We'll spend the next few decades putting them in context with each other.
- 14y ago
zt 14y ago
The letter led me to wonder about measurment and results in the world of "doing good". I was wondering what this forum's thoughts on the matter are. Should we only fund the things that get results? How should we quantify our results? And probably most importantly: what do we choose to measure? (Decrease in rainforest destruction vs companies that choose to use non rainforest sources for wood or palm oil?) I worry sometimes--and I co-founded an organization that brings data science to civic and social organizations--that this will be similar to No Child Left Behind (or World Bank like), where non profits do what is best for their metric instead of what is best for the population they are trying to serve.
tokenadult 14y ago
I don't know how many of you who have followed the link where offered the reader survey as you visited the link. I found that interesting, in that it asked a few of the same questions before reading the page, with my consent, and then again after I read it. I suppose the questions are designed to track attitudinal change from reading the page. I had read some of the page content earlier as the New York Times op-ed, which I think was also submitted here to HN. I will always rail at Microsoft products, although I still use them. (Two of my four children have already switched to Linux for their PCs, but I'm still an old Windoze fuddy-duddy.) I do like Bill Gates's approach to philanthropy a lot. I particularly like the Gates Foundation research on effective teaching, some of which I apply to my own work as a mathematics teacher in private practice. Helping charities become more effective would indeed be a great contribution to society.
pkeane 14y ago
This five-part exchange between a public education advocate and a member of the Gates Foundation team working on education was eye opening. http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/dialogue_with_the_gates_founda.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/... The Gates Foundation work is and will likely continue to be disastrous for public education in the U.S. It is simply an attempt to push education into the private sector.
- hexonexxon 14y ago
  He's pushing for same review system MS uses to be implemented into public schools in order to increase their school rankings, which is apparently riddled with corruption and ineffective according to ex employees like this guy: http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pubs/essays/working_at_microsoft.html http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pubs/essays/working_at_mic... "Microsoft's review system, in which a mid-level manager has significant control over all the review scores within a 100+ person group (so it's in your best interest to get on his/her good side), and conversely needs only a fraction of that group's total support to succeed as a manager (so it's in his/her best interest to cultivate a loyal fanclub to provide that support). The cult gives the manager the appearance of broad support, and makes the few people who speak out against him/her look like sour grapes unrepresentative of a larger majority. After a string of successes, the manager is nearly invincible."
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
adventured 14y ago
Steve Jobs keeps coming up in this thread. People seem to be missing two very important things regarding him. Warren Buffett is giving his wealth away, but he isn't doing much actual charitable giving of his own direction. If you read up on it, you'll find that Buffett regards the best use of his time to be capital allocation, aka running Berkshire to generate profit. And then giving that wealth generation to the Gates Foundation to distribute. Why? In Buffett's own words, he thinks he would suck at distribution, so he picked someone better to do it. Buffett is regarded as an important philanthropist now. However, he had no intention of being that during his lifetime. Susan was supposed to give his wealth away, but she (unexpectedly) died before him, forcing Buffett to change course. I assume I don't need to elaborate the point that things are not so linear as so many here seem to think. Has anybody considered that Jobs regarded his best gift as building products? And that his wife would be far better at giving the wealth away. Jobs died at a mere 56 years of age. He was sick for seven years with a form of cancer that is particularly hard to cure. If we're talking about his fortune, in all likelihood his best use of time was to drive Apple forward (he held something like $2 billion worth of Apple stock), and complete the sale of Pixar to Disney (2006) to secure his billions there as well. Was Jobs going to suddenly become an amazing philanthropist, while dying from a horrific cancer, while running Apple and Pixar? This is an absurd notion. Bill Gates - by all accounts a highly productive person - had to leave his work at Microsoft in order to become a good philanthropist and go full time at the Gates Foundation. Gates will spend the rest of his life on the philanthropy course. There was no 'rest of his life' for Jobs, his wife will fulfill that end. His wife will be the great philanthropist. And I believe it's very likely that was exactly what he had in mind. That thought is amplified by his lack of affection for wealth, there's no reason to think Jobs was desperate to hold onto it so he could buy mansions and leave his children billions. The logical conclusion is, he didn't view himself as the one to do the giving. Laurene is a mere 48 years old, she has a long life of giving ahead of her, bet on it.
- camo 14y ago
  It would seem that steve jobs was more interested in suing other companies than anything non-ego driven. He wouldn't even pay up for his super-expensive titanium boat. I'll keep betting on Bill and Warren to save the world, thanks.
TheYComb 14y ago
I am happy to be building the startup (BloomBoard) that Colorado is using to assess the quality of their teachers =)

108 points by sethbannon 14y ago

adnrw 14y ago

Kottke's Report on it is very interesting: http://kottke.org/13/01/read-bill-gates-annual-letter http://kottke.org/13/01/read-bill-gates-annual-letter

dr_ 14y ago

Gates' legacy will ultimately be his foundation, more so than Microsoft.

hkmurakami 14y ago
Like Carnegie before him.
- dmhdlr 14y ago
  The Gates Foundation's answer to the thousands of public libraries Carnegie built is . . . the Khan Academy?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - crgt 14y ago
    233 million lessons delivered so far isn't such a bad start..
  - akiselev 14y ago
    If I were a bettin' man I'd wager that more people have access to the internet than to public libraries. Also, no one ever snags that last book that you really need for class. (Instead publishers charge you out the ass for a digital copy you dont even own!)
- WalterBright 14y ago
  Carnegie's steel built America. It's a hell of a legacy.
jfoster 14y ago
That can't happen. The foundation was completely dependent on Microsoft happening, so the story of Bill Gates will be in two parts. Part 1: Microsoft. Part 2: Gates Foundation.

sethbannon 14y ago

Bill Gates always seemed like a more appropriate person to idol, if you must do such things, than Steve Jobs. Not only did he build the worlds largest technology company (in its time), but he's making a global philanthropic impact.

rwbt 14y ago
They both excel in their own ways.
larrydavid 14y ago
Whenever there is a topic concerning Bill Gates, there always seems to be someone in the discussion section that will find a way to shoehorn Steve Jobs into a comment, however irrelevant. An interesting phenomenon.
- nkozyra 14y ago
  Yeah, it's weird. Like when Joe Frazier or George Foreman come up in Ali discussions. Or when you talk Larry Bird, inevitably Magic Johnson comes up. Or when you talk about NES, someone brings up Sega. Oh wait it's because those things are narratively, intrinsically connected because of the compelling nature of rivalry as it turns out that is not weird at all.
- brudgers 14y ago
  Even more phenomenologically interesting is that everyone leaves out Larry Ellison.
- jfoster 14y ago
  I don't think it's shoehorning as much as it is Bill Gates & Steve Jobs being yinyang.
- enjo 14y ago
  The two are inescapably linked. Ali and Frazier. Magic and Bird. DiMaggio and Williams. We'll spend the next few decades putting them in context with each other.
14y ago

zt 14y ago

The letter led me to wonder about measurment and results in the world of "doing good". I was wondering what this forum's thoughts on the matter are. Should we only fund the things that get results? How should we quantify our results? And probably most importantly: what do we choose to measure? (Decrease in rainforest destruction vs companies that choose to use non rainforest sources for wood or palm oil?) I worry sometimes--and I co-founded an organization that brings data science to civic and social organizations--that this will be similar to No Child Left Behind (or World Bank like), where non profits do what is best for their metric instead of what is best for the population they are trying to serve.

tokenadult 14y ago

I don't know how many of you who have followed the link where offered the reader survey as you visited the link. I found that interesting, in that it asked a few of the same questions before reading the page, with my consent, and then again after I read it. I suppose the questions are designed to track attitudinal change from reading the page. I had read some of the page content earlier as the New York Times op-ed, which I think was also submitted here to HN. I will always rail at Microsoft products, although I still use them. (Two of my four children have already switched to Linux for their PCs, but I'm still an old Windoze fuddy-duddy.) I do like Bill Gates's approach to philanthropy a lot. I particularly like the Gates Foundation research on effective teaching, some of which I apply to my own work as a mathematics teacher in private practice. Helping charities become more effective would indeed be a great contribution to society.

pkeane 14y ago

This five-part exchange between a public education advocate and a member of the Gates Foundation team working on education was eye opening. http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/dialogue_with_the_gates_founda.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/... The Gates Foundation work is and will likely continue to be disastrous for public education in the U.S. It is simply an attempt to push education into the private sector.

hexonexxon 14y ago
He's pushing for same review system MS uses to be implemented into public schools in order to increase their school rankings, which is apparently riddled with corruption and ineffective according to ex employees like this guy: http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pubs/essays/working_at_microsoft.html http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pubs/essays/working_at_mic... "Microsoft's review system, in which a mid-level manager has significant control over all the review scores within a 100+ person group (so it's in your best interest to get on his/her good side), and conversely needs only a fraction of that group's total support to succeed as a manager (so it's in his/her best interest to cultivate a loyal fanclub to provide that support). The cult gives the manager the appearance of broad support, and makes the few people who speak out against him/her look like sour grapes unrepresentative of a larger majority. After a string of successes, the manager is nearly invincible."

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

adventured 14y ago

Steve Jobs keeps coming up in this thread. People seem to be missing two very important things regarding him. Warren Buffett is giving his wealth away, but he isn't doing much actual charitable giving of his own direction. If you read up on it, you'll find that Buffett regards the best use of his time to be capital allocation, aka running Berkshire to generate profit. And then giving that wealth generation to the Gates Foundation to distribute. Why? In Buffett's own words, he thinks he would suck at distribution, so he picked someone better to do it. Buffett is regarded as an important philanthropist now. However, he had no intention of being that during his lifetime. Susan was supposed to give his wealth away, but she (unexpectedly) died before him, forcing Buffett to change course. I assume I don't need to elaborate the point that things are not so linear as so many here seem to think. Has anybody considered that Jobs regarded his best gift as building products? And that his wife would be far better at giving the wealth away. Jobs died at a mere 56 years of age. He was sick for seven years with a form of cancer that is particularly hard to cure. If we're talking about his fortune, in all likelihood his best use of time was to drive Apple forward (he held something like $2 billion worth of Apple stock), and complete the sale of Pixar to Disney (2006) to secure his billions there as well. Was Jobs going to suddenly become an amazing philanthropist, while dying from a horrific cancer, while running Apple and Pixar? This is an absurd notion. Bill Gates - by all accounts a highly productive person - had to leave his work at Microsoft in order to become a good philanthropist and go full time at the Gates Foundation. Gates will spend the rest of his life on the philanthropy course. There was no 'rest of his life' for Jobs, his wife will fulfill that end. His wife will be the great philanthropist. And I believe it's very likely that was exactly what he had in mind. That thought is amplified by his lack of affection for wealth, there's no reason to think Jobs was desperate to hold onto it so he could buy mansions and leave his children billions. The logical conclusion is, he didn't view himself as the one to do the giving. Laurene is a mere 48 years old, she has a long life of giving ahead of her, bet on it.

camo 14y ago
It would seem that steve jobs was more interested in suing other companies than anything non-ego driven. He wouldn't even pay up for his super-expensive titanium boat. I'll keep betting on Bill and Warren to save the world, thanks.

TheYComb 14y ago

I am happy to be building the startup (BloomBoard) that Colorado is using to assess the quality of their teachers =)