While this could be an interesting post about a certain barbecue sauce available at the local Seattle Dixie BBQ (which is quite hot, I might add), this is slightly different. Being a Microsoft intern for the summer, I met Bill Gates. He seems like just another regular guy, albeit the head of the world’s largest software company and buckets upon buckets of money. There were a few things that I took away from this occasion:
- Billg’s house is big. Really big.
- When asked how he compares himself to heads of other large companies, he responded with, “There aren’t any. IBM’s the only thing close to us and they’re in hardware.”
- It’s really funny to stand near him and make bunny ears behind his head. I know I did.
- When asked if he thought that C# should go into the kernel, and when a “better language” would take over, he essentially shot the person asking the question down, telling him that such a thing is silly and that making language comparisions is equally so. Interestingly enough, this isn’t all that far from Bjarne Stroustrup’s view on such things.
- He considers the difference between software that is free and software that costs $1.00 equivalent to that of “night and day".
- When asked if he thinks that Microsoft pushes better products out of the market, he denies that this is the case and that the reason that they are popular is because they’re the best. While he admits–perhaps even contends–that the market leader can more easily stay that way, he also says that without innovation, nobody will buy the newer products. Once you’ve bought the old ones, they’re free to use forever and you have to give someone a good reason to buy the new one.
- His grass is a bit too perfect. At first you might think that it’s fake. I talked to a manager who said that he tasted it to be sure the first time he visited.
- When asked how he compares himself and Microsoft to smaller software companies, he talked for a moment about Apple and Google. He admits that while Steve Jobs is amazing at interfaces, he also burns people out after a few years. He mockingly states that while people say that “Google Soda is better than Microsoft Soda", he thinks that Microsoft was a lot like them about a decade ago and that they will eventually become more like MS in their “cool” and “High IQ” factor.
- He thinks that the reason why Microsoft will triumph over free software is because they spend $3 Billion a year on research and do a number of things that Open Source doesn’t really do. He cites OpenOffice, for instance, being a crummy product compared to Office 2003 and that its major strength is that it is free.
- He’s well read, but doesn’t particularly like Harry Potter. He said that the first two books weren’t all that great, in his opinion, and that he hasn’t yet given the newer ones a chance.
- When asked if he thinks that Microsoft is too hard on competitors, he says “So you don’t believe in capitalism? Do you just want us to turn over billions of dollars of IP over to our competitors?”
- Gates apparently puts a lot of money into developing new medicine to cure esoteric diseases and went so far as to compare it to software engineering in that you get a number of smart people, give them a good place to work and see what they can develop. He points out that this kind of medical research doesn’t pay all that well, so that it’s not too hard to recruit some of the best researchers.
- He says that while genius engineers are rare, even more rare are the engineers who can communicate well with non-technical types and vice-versa.
- He mentioned that he thinks Google will eventually have to come to grips with the fact that smart people don’t necessarily make great products and that Microsoft ran into this about ten years ago.
- The man absolutely loves bridge.
Upon leaving, I shook his hand and said something to the effect of “So long, and thanks for Microsoft BASIC".
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