Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last I checked, Bill Gates was the richest person in the world. And that was something like a few weeks ago.
I find that hard to believe. Weren't there a few oil sheiks with more money?
[deleted]
A vote for Bill Gates as interim Microsoft CEO
51–60 of 78 posts
Re: A vote for Bill Gates as interim Microsoft CEO
#52If I were him I would never-ever take that position as a CEO ever again. He is basically living the dream right now without debts to Microsoft - like unfinished duty or bad rep - and a clean name (founder of MS, steered himself and MS into billionairity yet giving away all his money now). Unless it is guaranteed Microsoft will climb out of the hole it is in when Gates gets on top, it can only hurt him in terms of pre…
Agreed, the best he could hope for is to become the next Michael Dell.
Re: A vote for Bill Gates as interim Microsoft CEO
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally serious. Much of Apple's meteoric rise in the 2000s was because of the Steve Jobs brand, and Apple 2000s is the success you want to copy. All the above listed are the biggest names in tech today. There are others, Gates, Ellison, Zuckerburg, but I don't consider them as talented as the ones I listed.
Let's look outside the startup world for second. Managing large, sprawling corporations is nothing like starting a company with a few products. I'm not saying it's harder, but it requires a different skill set. Neither Musk nor Graham have a proven history managing large and diversified companies. MS doesn't want them, and I seriously doubt they'd even be interested in the job. It'd be like recruiting Lebron James to…
PG hasn't been running a startup, but managing hundreds of them.
A large company is just a large number of small groups.
A startup is a small group.
PG is someone who has proven effective at managing to give a big ROI from managing quite a few small groups. Hence he is eminently suited to running a large corporation.
Re: A vote for Bill Gates as interim Microsoft CEO
#54If I were him I would never-ever take that position as a CEO ever again. He is basically living the dream right now without debts to Microsoft - like unfinished duty or bad rep - and a clean name (founder of MS, steered himself and MS into billionairity yet giving away all his money now). Unless it is guaranteed Microsoft will climb out of the hole it is in when Gates gets on top, it can only hurt him in terms of pre…
what hole is microsoft in?
The one that prompted this proposal in the first place?
Re: A vote for Bill Gates as interim Microsoft CEO
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last I checked, Bill Gates was the richest person in the world. And that was something like a few weeks ago.
I find that hard to believe. Weren't there a few oil sheiks with more money?
Forbes has him at number two, with Carlos Slim from Mexico still as number one.
Regardless, I think it is pretty apparent that money is not his bottleneck.
Re: A vote for Bill Gates as interim Microsoft CEO
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally serious. Much of Apple's meteoric rise in the 2000s was because of the Steve Jobs brand, and Apple 2000s is the success you want to copy. All the above listed are the biggest names in tech today. There are others, Gates, Ellison, Zuckerburg, but I don't consider them as talented as the ones I listed.
Let's look outside the startup world for second. Managing large, sprawling corporations is nothing like starting a company with a few products. I'm not saying it's harder, but it requires a different skill set. Neither Musk nor Graham have a proven history managing large and diversified companies. MS doesn't want them, and I seriously doubt they'd even be interested in the job. It'd be like recruiting Lebron James to…
[deleted]
Re: A vote for Bill Gates as interim Microsoft CEO
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alright, all great things for a startup guy but I don't think they're the qualities required for the CEO of a multibillion sprawling company. They have no need to popularise or use lisp, no need to sell companies and I'm not convinced this is bigger than eg /r/technology? Not that that's a bad thing, but it's a bold claim to say this is the biggest tech news forum. Way more importantly though, PG hasn't turned creati…
Microsoft's problem has been growth, and that's because they appear to always miss capitalizing on the new thing (web,search,mobile,social,tablets) - all things a startup guy is most talented at. They lack vision, a guy who has vision himself and can herd cats (visionaries) is the best thing for them. PG's about as good as anyone at that.
I'm sure I've missed one but I can't think of a dominant force in any of them fields that YC have invested in. I don't know about every investment, and like I said I've surely missed one, and I'm sure their portfolio has come closer than Microsoft to them markets, but if I were looking to find someone capitalising on them I can't think of any YC company immediately. Any ideas?
Edit: To be fair, Dropbox beat Microsoft to making cloud services popular. Microsoft do have a successful web services sector now though. Also I guess Reddit count for social, they have a very solid niche - but they wouldn't benefit under a company like Microsoft. They admitted it was a miracle Conde Nast didn't destroy their brand.
Re: A vote for Bill Gates as interim Microsoft CEO
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is pg actually a tech talent? No offense to pg, but my understanding of the man is he is a good investor, not necessarily a technical genius or a kickass CEO.
Come on now, really? http://www.amazon.com/On-Lisp-Advanced-Techniques-Common/dp/...
the top review was by the man himself, Peter Norvig. That's very high praise indeed. I'd read it if it weren't about Lisp, a language that is bad for all the same reasons it is good.
Re: A vote for Bill Gates as interim Microsoft CEO
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's look outside the startup world for second. Managing large, sprawling corporations is nothing like starting a company with a few products. I'm not saying it's harder, but it requires a different skill set. Neither Musk nor Graham have a proven history managing large and diversified companies. MS doesn't want them, and I seriously doubt they'd even be interested in the job. It'd be like recruiting Lebron James to…
PG hasn't been running a startup, but managing hundreds of them. A large company is just a large number of small groups. A startup is a small group. PG is someone who has proven effective at managing to give a big ROI from managing quite a few small groups. Hence he is eminently suited to running a large corporation.
YC startups are independent and autonomous, the only people running them are their own CEOs.
Re: A vote for Bill Gates as interim Microsoft CEO
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I really think you're underestimating Bill Gates. The days of disruption stopped for Microsoft when he left. For example, I bet that Bill Gates would have foreseen the iPhone as a really big threat from day one and we would now be marveling at one of his famous internal angry emails that changed Microsoft's direction (leaked because of a new anti-trust suit, no doubt). Bill Gates is no Steve Jobs, but he's a heck…
> Bill Gates would have foreseen the iPhone as a really big threat from day one and we would now be marveling at one of his famous internal angry emails that changed Microsoft's direction Just like he foresaw the Internet as a big threat, right?
As far as web applications dominating and taking over market share from the Windows ecosystem? Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine
> Sun Microsystems, the creator of Java, sued Microsoft in October 1997 for incompletely implementing the Java 1.1 standard.[2] It was also named in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust civil actions, as an implementation of Microsoft's Embrace, extend and extinguish strategy
You can bet all the money in the world that Gates would have been acutely aware of the App Store. The App Store is, after all, Apple doing to the handheld market what Microsoft did to IBM and the PC. Which is, establishing themselves as a gate-keeper for all things mobile.