This is not fair to Steve Jobs. We don't have a full life to judge him by. If this writer had to judge Bill Gates 10 years ago, he would have fallen short of Gates now.
Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs
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Re: Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs
#12Gates has done a lot of good out of the company, so yes for that work he is better than Jobs, better than most people (bit hard to judge with billionaires, most of them want to give away 90% of their wealth but it doesn't make them charitable). In terms of business and innovation, when you look at the five-ish years around the starts of the two companies the stories I keep hearing lean a lot towards Jobs/Woz doing a better, more involved and innovative creation.
Unfortunately the line may well be "Don't make money the way these billionaires did, no-one did it nicely. When you have billions, give it away like they all do."
Re: Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs
#13Great example of where I wish I had a downvote button. This article is fluff linkbait, but it is also on topic.
I agree entirely. This is what the flag link is for.
Re: Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs
#14This post will not be well received on HN because the taste leaders here are people who have deeply internalized the Jobs mindset for better or worse
Re: Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs
#15I wouldn't idolize either of them. Idolatry seems like a bad idea. How about just reading about their lives and seeing what makes sense for you to copy for your life? As one Zen teacher puts it: "there are no enlightened beings, only enlightened actions". So do the actions and ignore the beings.
From a business perspective, Gates offers some interesting lessons - bootstrapping allows a lot of your employees to get rich - even the secretaries; eating your own dogfood can help you produce successful product lines (Project, Office, Visual Studio); you don't have to sell to the the cool kids using Pascal - BASIC is fine; and if you treat consumers like your B2B customers, you will build market share.
Re: Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs
#16The problem with idolizing Bill Gates was stated most elegantly by PG: "no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM[...]Microsoft is a bad data point." There is much to be admired in what Bill Gates has done with his wealth (and little to be admired in Steve Jobs by the same criteria). But if you're looking for an idol in the con…
One of the most important steps in Google's growth was when they cut a deal to be the technology provider for Yahoo's search back when Yahoo dominated the web, so perhaps finding a big company that will bend over at just the right moment isn't as impossible as it seems?
Re: Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs
#17This is not fair to Steve Jobs. We don't have a full life to judge him by. If this writer had to judge Bill Gates 10 years ago, he would have fallen short of Gates now.
I don't know about that. This year they're both the same age, had both amassed billions, and had become titans of industry. One of them publicly devoted himself to spending his riches on improving humanity; the other continued to enrich himself by developing what are at their core expensive first-world gadgets (though how much he gave to charity is I believe not known).
How much does it take before you have a "full life" that you can be judged by?
Re: Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs
#18The whole comparison is silly and a false dichotomy. Using Jobsian attention to detail and work ethic to drive your career/business is not mutually exclusive with donating the result to charity.
Arguably, Jobs's lifestyle is probably more suited for philanthropy because of the (relatively) spartan nature of his tastes in fashion, housing and cars.
Re: Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs
#19This is not fair to Steve Jobs. We don't have a full life to judge him by. If this writer had to judge Bill Gates 10 years ago, he would have fallen short of Gates now.
I don't know about that. This year they're both the same age, had both amassed billions, and had become titans of industry. One of them publicly devoted himself to spending his riches on improving humanity; the other continued to enrich himself by developing what are at their core expensive first-world gadgets (though how much he gave to charity is I believe not known). How much does it take before you have a "full l…
I think the general consensus is that a full life is more than 56 years.
Re: Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs
#20Great example of where I wish I had a downvote button. This article is fluff linkbait, but it is also on topic.
I agree entirely. This is what the flag link is for.
Here's why I've been confused about that I think:
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link.
Maybe we could get more flagging if you updated the guidelines or renamed it "junk".