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Bringing Up Bill
theodp writes "Over at the WSJ, Bill Gates Sr. describes what it took to turn an unruly 12-year-old into Microsoft's founder and the world's richest man. This included throwing a glass of cold water in the boy's face when he was having a particularly heated argument with his mother at the dinner table. 'He was nasty,' says Libby Armintrout, Bill's younger sister. 'I'm at war with my parents over who is in control,' Bill Gates recalls telling a therapist, who told his parents that their son would ultimately win the battle for independence, and their best course of action was to ease up on him. The rest, as they say, is history. The accompanying Gates Family Album is also worth a look."
His life achievements notwithstanding, obviously Bill never outgrew this mentality, from his "open letter to hobbyists" on the antics of Microsoft, especially from the 90s onward...
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He grew up in a family with a moderately oppressive mother and a caring yet distant father, who valued intelligence. He talked like a lawyer (he was one), and while he cared about his son, if you wanted his respect you needed to be able to verbalize a coherent and logical argument. These combined to be a powerful motivation for Mr Bill to try to learn everything about the world, since that's what it took to get respect.
He was a smart guy. He scored a near perfect on his SAT, and went into Harvard.
Qxe4
Really? How is this not 'news for nerds'? Love him or hate him, he's been one of the most important 'nerds' in the world for the last couple of decades. While I've have only gone over the summary; I believe that it's fairly clear that it's an frank account of his childhood. Also, most of the time when people think of 'nerds' the seem to believe that we're mild, or focused; when in reality we struggle with our 'gifts', perhaps more than most.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Because it's a chance to look at Bill Gates (our 'enemy') from a side we've never seen him. A lot of us can probably even relate to him. If you read the article, you'll find out at least five things you didn't know about him, and if you are perceptive you will gain a new view of the man. It's an interesting article (though apparently not to you), that's why it's on slashdot.
Qxe4
Believe it or not, there's an awful lot of nerds that honestly have no idea how Gates got his start. I'm old, but many people around here aren't.
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I'm not sure whether to mod you insightful or funny, so I'll just post... I really think this is quite a valid opinion.
I'm probably the first to despise Bill for his tactics with regards to computers, but I can only imagine what it'd be like if he was a politician. Makes me kind of thankful that he stayed with stealing other people's software...
I think it's pretty clear that organizations, even big ones, tend to reflect the personalities of their leaders - especially when those leaders have strong personalities. This is very visible with Microsoft, Apple and Google. They're very different companies and I think that's largely down to the way Jobs, Gates and L&S are as people.
Microsoft and Apple are both pretty darn important, and I think Jobs and Gates have pretty darn similar personalities. They both seem to be hyper-aggressive, very controlling A-types who don't think twice about intimidating their "minions". I think that also sums up Microsoft and Apple as companies. So studying Gates can tell us more about the Microsoft of the 90s, which is an interesting topic for anyone in the tech industry.
It sounds like the perfect qualities and personality for conquering an industry. Maybe we should be glad that he stayed out of law, or we could have ended up with a real control-freak president here.
Please, don't go giving him ideas.
If a control freak was president he would be very unhappy. Being president there is way to much entropy and with the checks and balances you do not have full control. So you need to get congress to go along with your ideas, the same with the judical system, and many of them do not like the fact that you are in power and will fight you every step of the way. Then you have a general population who will determine if you get an other term or not. Or to replace the people in congress with the guys who hate you. A controll freak would not be happy there as they have little control of what they do.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Really don't care. He's an arrogant prick and i really don't care that he came from some privileged family that taught him early to bend the rules, cheat, lie and steal. He should be taken out back and shot instead of making him out to some 'geek hero', which is is not.
Now, a story about Woz's childhood, that would be interesting.
Ya, mod me down, i cant help it that i despise the man and doing it wont change my mind.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Trying to put a soft human side to the person who stole innovation and profits from the PC industry, who used illegal leveraging of a monopoly to build his wealth.
The IBM people saw that business people using the Apple II normally had a Z80 Softcard from Microsoft with CP/M and several Microsoft tools and applications. They decided that their machine should have this as well.
In their meeting with Bill, they were shocked to find out that CP/M belonged to a different company. Bill Gates immediately called Gary Kindall and told him he was sending some very important people to talk to him. The IBM people went to California and when things didn't work out they came back to Seattle and Bill promised to supply an OS himself.
Don't trust me on this - see what the people actually involved said about it:
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part2.html
Gladwell's latest book "Outliers" has a chapter about Bill Gates. Overall the book is about how a certain very few people are able to have outrageous success. The standard American story of this is that through hard work and determination that anything is possible. Gladwell points out that in most cases it requires a lot more than grit and determination it also requires being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right skills. (I know... duh. Right? But it is a good book).
For Bill Gates... he went to a wealthy private school whose Mom's organization decided to buy a computer terminal in 1968! Bill would have been one of a handful of teenagers in the world who had access to a computer in those days (and one that didn't require punchcard programming at that.) Later he and Paul Allen were able to get access to U. of Washington computers late at night. As a result they got jobs programming during high school.
I don't remember all the details, but Gates (and a similar story for Bill Joy of Sun) had lots of very unusual, very lucky situations along the way that led to him being a young very skilled programmer at a time when virtually no other people in the world would have had that level of experience (10,000 hours).
He was a smart, tenacious kid, but Microsoft wouldn't have happened if he hadn't had access to that terminal when he 13 years old.
First against the wall when the revolution comes
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