How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
philip.greenspun.com
How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
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Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
#2I've been racking my brain for months trying to remember where I saw a quote that turns out to be in that article. "The reason that you've having trouble is that you don't know anything and you're not working very hard." Thanks for that.
Lesson 8 is the best part.
Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
#3I think this is about as accurate an account as you'll get in regards to how Bill Gates made his money.
Yes, his entire family was rich and his parents were well connected (when most people tell the story they leave out "Bill Gates got the call from IBM because his mother was on their board")
Yes he got unbelievably lucky (so much so that he turned down IBM, sent them to the makers of QDOS, and still made the deal after QDOS blew it)
and Yes, he's not a great hacker (he's smart and knows enough about technology but the couple Gen 1 Microsoft employees I've met say he can't code worth a darn)
But even with all that he would have failed if not for his keen business insight and technical accumen. I guess you need both luck and skill to become the richest man in the world (but I'm betting skill can still get you pretty rich)
Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
#4Anyone with Bill's off-the-charts intelligence, business savvy, and entrepreneurial drive would end up very wealthy even if they were born in the ghetto. Maybe not Bill Gates wealthy, but more than enough that they'd have no interest in reading this sort of thing.
Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
#5I think this is about as accurate an account as you'll get in regards to how Bill Gates made his money. Yes, his entire family was rich and his parents were well connected (when most people tell the story they leave out "Bill Gates got the call from IBM because his mother was on their board") Yes he got unbelievably lucky (so much so that he turned down IBM, sent them to the makers of QDOS, and still made the deal af…
> and Yes, he's not a great hacker (he's smart and knows enough about technology but the couple Gen 1 Microsoft employees I've met say he can't code worth a darn)
What? I'm pretty sure Gates is the quintessential technical founder. He wrote the original Altair BASIC implementation himself in something like a week, and snuck into University of Washington's computer labs in the middle of the night in high school. I don't think I've ever seen anything that implied otherwise.
Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
#6I've always wondered if the advice to avoid argument and criticism from "How to Win Friends and Influence People" was at odds with internal business meetings. It seems that extremely successful businessmen like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison create a culture where criticism and argument form the cauldron from which great ideas are culled. At the same time, the human mind is seldom changed by argument or logic.
My current opinion is that the Dale Carnegie way of business is great for sales or extremely flat organizations, but in larger or more established organizations, credible and aggressive (almost totalitarian) leadership can build "consensus" more effectively through argumentation, criticism, and decisiveness.
Does anyone have any tips on how best to arrive at decisions in a <4 person startup?
Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
#7I think this is about as accurate an account as you'll get in regards to how Bill Gates made his money. Yes, his entire family was rich and his parents were well connected (when most people tell the story they leave out "Bill Gates got the call from IBM because his mother was on their board") Yes he got unbelievably lucky (so much so that he turned down IBM, sent them to the makers of QDOS, and still made the deal af…
> and Yes, he's not a great hacker (he's smart and knows enough about technology but the couple Gen 1 Microsoft employees I've met say he can't code worth a darn) What? I'm pretty sure Gates is the quintessential technical founder. He wrote the original Altair BASIC implementation himself in something like a week, and snuck into University of Washington's computer labs in the middle of the night in high school. I don…
Being able to create something quick that's workable doesn't really indicate that you're a good programmer.
As far as never hearing anything about it, I based the statement on a couple personal accounts. But "Barbarians Led By Bill Gates: Microsoft From The Inside" has an account of at least one programmer calling Gates code terrible. The programmer in question co-wrote the book so you have to take it with a grain of salt but it seems true because the story he tells is one that paints Gates in a positive light (he doesn't fire the guy for calling his code junk right to his face)
Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
#8I think this is about as accurate an account as you'll get in regards to how Bill Gates made his money. Yes, his entire family was rich and his parents were well connected (when most people tell the story they leave out "Bill Gates got the call from IBM because his mother was on their board") Yes he got unbelievably lucky (so much so that he turned down IBM, sent them to the makers of QDOS, and still made the deal af…
> and Yes, he's not a great hacker (he's smart and knows enough about technology but the couple Gen 1 Microsoft employees I've met say he can't code worth a darn) What? I'm pretty sure Gates is the quintessential technical founder. He wrote the original Altair BASIC implementation himself in something like a week, and snuck into University of Washington's computer labs in the middle of the night in high school. I don…
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Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
#9I think this is about as accurate an account as you'll get in regards to how Bill Gates made his money. Yes, his entire family was rich and his parents were well connected (when most people tell the story they leave out "Bill Gates got the call from IBM because his mother was on their board") Yes he got unbelievably lucky (so much so that he turned down IBM, sent them to the makers of QDOS, and still made the deal af…
> and Yes, he's not a great hacker (he's smart and knows enough about technology but the couple Gen 1 Microsoft employees I've met say he can't code worth a darn) What? I'm pretty sure Gates is the quintessential technical founder. He wrote the original Altair BASIC implementation himself in something like a week, and snuck into University of Washington's computer labs in the middle of the night in high school. I don…
Ever play the "Gorillas" game in GW-BASIC that shipped with many copies of MS-DOS.
Bill Gates wrote that.
And was proud of it.
Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates
#10Anyone with Bill's off-the-charts intelligence, business savvy, and entrepreneurial drive would end up very wealthy even if they were born in the ghetto. Maybe not Bill Gates wealthy, but more than enough that they'd have no interest in reading this sort of thing.
Anyone is a lofty standard. Some is true, but you don't hear about the super smart guy who worked really hard but for some reason or another luck didn't go his way and then he had no safety net to fall on. I can take risks because although my parents aren't leaving me a trust fund, if shit REALLY hit the fan, I could always move in with them instead of starving in the streets. If you have nobody to lean on, risks seem a lot bigger when you have further to fall.