Gates Still Working Behind the Scenes at Microsoft

https://redmondmag.com/blogs/scott-bekker/2018/10/gates-behind-the-scenes-at-microsoft.aspx?m=1

by myinnerbanjo • 8 years ago

186 53 8 years ago

duxup2• 8 years ago

Not 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• 8 years ago

There 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• 8 years ago

I'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• 8 years ago

I'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.

maxxxxx3• 8 years ago

I 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.

asah• 8 years ago

can confirm

duxup2• 8 years ago

I only ever met one executive who was like that. It was amazing.

Dude was basically on a guided tour and like many before stopped to ask me what I was up to. I mentioned some high level stuff and then he asked some questions that shocked me ... in the sense that they were good questions that really indicated he knew what I did. I answered cautiously, he asked some more along the lines of "oh so" and we went back and forth and I realized dude just "got it" as far as how we worked, what we were doing, challenges, and etc.

It was great, and maybe a bit sad that was the one time.

Dude in question was too good for the company at that time and moved on. The company didn't really want someone who knew what was going on because inevitably that meant some push back / organization / shifting momentum here or there. So he moved on and we got a yes man who had no clue.

Spooky23• 8 years ago

I worked with an MCS guy years ago who carried a picture in his wallet of him and Bill. I guess they went through some difficult solution to a problem and walked away making a bunch of well-thought out and necessary changes after about 10 minutes.

samfisher83• 8 years ago

He went to harvard and got 1590. He is probably on the very very high end of intelligence curve. He also reads a ton and has a lot of experience. Its not surprising he can have technical conversations with researchers.

Angostura• 8 years ago

The 10 minute video referenced in the article. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzUUghxDhYM

FatalErrorr• 8 years ago

isn't he a board member? why would that be surprising?

gingerbread-man• 8 years 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/

WorldMaker• 8 years ago

For 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• 8 years ago

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.

philwelch• 8 years ago

Purely speculation on my part, but that makes a lot of sense. During the Ballmer era, he would have wanted to send a clear and unambiguous signal that he was no longer calling the shots, so he would have made a greater effort to step away. Also important was that, while Ballmer wasn’t technically a cofounder, he had been around since the early days. With Ballmer gone and Gates having demonstrated that his foundation is by far his #1 focus, there’s less reason for him to give Microsoft some distance and more reason for him to occasionally show up and, among other things, serve as a living connection to their early history.

SmellyGeekBoy• 8 years ago

He probably got involved again because Ballmer made such a big hash of things.

mandeepj• 8 years ago

There is some surprise that Gates seems to be more involved in the Nadella era

Nadella had asked Gates to step up and be more involved when he accepted CEO position

faitswulff• 8 years 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• 8 years ago

VMS -> WNT

packetslave• 8 years ago

that was all Cutler, not Gates

setquk• 8 years ago

I hope the hell its yelling at the Windows team for it not working properly. That was what he used to do I understand.

ikeboy• 8 years ago

I assume he's on the forced upgrades and data loss teams

cptskippy• 8 years ago

Change Management and Loss Prevention are their official team names. /s

beatgammit• 8 years ago

Ministry of Truth?

Nicksil• 8 years ago

Why do you assume that?

S_A_P• 8 years ago

I believe he is the Visual Basic product champion.

umichguy• 8 years ago

Hopefully, he can steer MS away from projects like the Zune.

moolcool• 8 years ago

You take that back, the Zune was the best portable media player ever made

LordHumungous• 8 years ago

Bill is the man.

paxys• 8 years ago

They announced he would start getting involved again when Nadella became CEO.

kyberias• 8 years ago

Let 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-rev...

Anthony-G• 8 years ago

Coincidentally, 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 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• 8 years ago

That was a nice read, thank you

person_of_color• 8 years ago

Anyone else cringe? The absolute worship of rich people in American culture.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 8 years ago

I 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• 8 years ago

The 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• 8 years ago

The 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• 8 years ago

lol, 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• 8 years ago

A non-article if there ever was one.

Gates Still Working Behind the Scenes at Microsoft

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