The patent king is stepping down from his empire
Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board
111–120 of 152 posts
Re: Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I attended a party at his house with a group of interns. He was worshipped, but in the wrong way -- a number of people wanted to touch his clothing or get his autograph, and they were employees . I don't think he was ever comfortable with that, and this allows him and his wife to work on interesting problems without causing political problems for MSFT.
Haha, my man, I have to admit that is pretty weird. I don't imagine anyone would like that. Haha, it's like the pope or something.
It was like they were touching Jesus. I was uncomfortable, and so was he.
Re: Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board
#113Bill Gates got his start at Micro-Soft coding BASIC dev stacks for the microcomputers of his day-- and Microsoft has now announced that further development on Visual Basic is to be frozen indefinitely ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22570684 - "Going forward, we do not plan to evolve Visual Basic as a language"). There's no way that this is mere coincidence.
Excellent detective work, Lou! /s
Do you really think his ego is that Trumpian that he's throwing a tantrum over something he made 45 years ago?
If I were him I'd be grateful that that piece of software began my path to billions and billions of dollars, but I wouldn't be angry about something not really used anymore being classified obsolete.
Re: Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kind of odd, being an employee there, I've never heard of eleven of the twelve board members before.
Most of the board members seem to be partners at various investment firms. Many of them don't seem to even remotely tech people. It's kind of sad that the Microsoft board lacks any external visionaries.
Padmasree Warrior was CTO at Motorola, and then at Cisco.
Re: Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board
#115Also stepped down from the Berkshire board as well. Given that he stepped away from a day to day role in 2008 and then stepped down as the chairman in 2014, I'm guessing he's focusing on his foundation. He's still the 8th largest shareholder according to Bloomberg's records(103,000,000 share), which is pretty impressive given that the 7 entities above him are all funds. Incase you wanted to know who the remaining 12…
Whats the advantage or strategy behind having someone from Marriott?
You often see people sitting on boards from entirely different industries. One reason might be having a entirely different perspective on your business. When you have a board that entirely from the same sector, you end up with a lot of group think.
Re: Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board
#116Bill Gates got his start at Micro-Soft coding BASIC dev stacks for the microcomputers of his day-- and Microsoft has now announced that further development on Visual Basic is to be frozen indefinitely ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22570684 - "Going forward, we do not plan to evolve Visual Basic as a language"). There's no way that this is mere coincidence.
Or, it could be that
> Bill Gates stepped down from the company's Board of Directors to dedicate more time to his philanthropic priorities including global health, development, education, and his increasing engagement in tackling climate change.
If you follow Bill Gates at all, you'll understand this is where all of his energy, and passion, have been going for a long while now.
Re: Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board
#117The optimist in me wants to believe that this means he's about to be appointed as the head of the national coronavirus response. There's probably no better qualified person in the world to manage the coordinated effort.
Why on earth would he be the most qualified person for that?
He has experience and credibility in the field and could bring widespread attention to a clear plan to tackle the problem. Everybody already knows what needs to be done to slow down the pandemic, but there needs to be swift and strong political leadership to make it happen.
Re: Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board
#118I would guess that Bill Gates has been looking to do this for a while now, and this is just a good time PR-wise. It won't tank the stock anymore than it already has because the market's crashing, and people have other stuff to worry about.
Eh, I honestly don't think he has to care how much any news would marginally affect the stock or not. Unless he actually cares if he or Bezos is the #1 wealthiest person -- both being anyways astronomically rich at the end of the day. I didn't in fact even know he still had a role in Microsoft. My understanding was first Ballmer and then Nadella took over running the show years ago. So I don't think it's not even goi…
He played a pretty important role in convincing them not to acquire Slack, which was interesting:
https://www.ccn.com/not-buying-slack-bill-gates-best-call-ev...
Re: Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board
#119[dead]
Re: Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the board members seem to be partners at various investment firms. Many of them don't seem to even remotely tech people. It's kind of sad that the Microsoft board lacks any external visionaries.
Board members aren't there to invent the next iPhone, they're there to determine when the CEO should be fired, and to hire a new CEO when necessary. Right now, the Microsoft board is particularly pointless since Satya Nadella is one of the highest-performing CEOs in the world and isn't close to retirement.
If Satya got hit by a bus this weekend that "pointless" board would become very important very quickly.