Quote:
Originally Posted by Matata
He had to pay them well, they knew how much money was coming in and they had skills he needed.
Gates started off as an all star star coder and programmer, but his time at Microsoft was largely defined by his ruthless business practices, how he would smash his rivals, find ways to steal their IP or get it for cheap, with the ultimate goal of creating a tech Monopoly. The primary reason for creating a monopoly is to keep all the money and power for yourself, so I'm going to assume that was his motivation. How much of gates Fortune is other people's fortunes that he pirated away for himself?
Keep in mind I just listed his Forbes value, in all likelihood he probably has tens of billions squirreled away in offshore accounts, remember the Panama papers?
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Bill Gates really wasn't an allstar coder, he if I remember was really only involved in one project where he coded and that was prior to Microsoft, when he worked on a traffic tracking system or something like that in his home town.
He always surrounded himself with the people who could do the coding to support his vision.
Where he was brilliant is that he could see concepts and bring them into his vision. His purchasing of a Disk Operating System from a small computer hobbiest store in Seattle (I think it was seattle) and repackaging it and coming up with a licensing agreement for every PC sold secured his future. His tour of the Xerox lab and seeing Windows propelled him and Jobs to millions as they each claimed that vision and then turned their people loose on it.
Same with Word and Excel, Lotus 123 and Word Perfect and other applications were literally there before and he took those concepts and turned his people loose on it.
The Web browser concept and the Internet, netscape was really there before and was better, but Bill had the advantage of being able to give it away for free and then claim the internet was pretty much his vision.
Gates was a visionary sales person, he was a legendary exploiter, he was a technology thief in the day and age where the Computer industry was the Wild Wild West.
I'd argue that he wasn't the innovator that people give him credit for. He ruthlessly squashed his opposition and even his friends to make a buck, he was greedy and nasty and not a good guy to work for, but he made his people rich by paying them little and giving them stock options that fortunately made them wealthy.
He was the ultimate capitalist, and when he had his billions he went on a campaign to reform his image and good for his for that.
I'm not saying this as a negative thing. His negative aspects and ruthless business and personal practices have sent billions to charity.