Synthesize from nothingīill's greatest skill, however, was his ability to see a mess and find the structure. In time I could recognize the face of someone who, it seemed, would rather die than say, "I don't know, but I'll find out and get back to you." 3. I learned to watch for the flittering eyes, the unsure tone, or the smell of desperation. It was hard to be in those rooms many times and not pick up some of that skill. That look of disappointment that told you, oops, perhaps I should retreat here. Later you could tell you were in trouble just from his facial expressions. The latter faded with time as he received feedback about how little the personal invective helped.īut Bill's ability to smell the odor of falsehood only seemed to improve with age. Questioning of one's parentage or education. His response to obvious bull was almost always "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." If it was egregiously wrong, he would throw in a personal insult or two. Pulling things out of thin air.īill wielded that cudgel with dexterity. There were the people who were strong enough to admit, in the face of the then-richest man on the planet, that "I don't know." And there were those who just started making things up. It seems that Bill learned early on that pressing for details until failure resulted in two kinds of responses. The people who, when cornered, just make things up. It was to identify the people who slung the bull. It was much more than just checking that the work was done. Smell the bullĪ big part of the reason for the drilling went far beyond fascination with the details.
Bill gates how to#
But both of us learned how to get to the details without making a mess in the process. Maybe it was having children, maybe it was working with ever larger organizations, maybe it was just getting wiser with age. As he got older, his passion for detail never left, just his method for getting there mellowed.īill and I are only six months apart in age and during the time I worked with him I watched both of us grow. As a younger man this drilling was aggressive and harsh. He was always curious, always wanted to understand, always drilling for more detail. In the years that passed, I saw Bill do this same kind of exercise time and again. Bill nodded and smiled, almost proud of himself. Bill shot in rapid fire more and more detailed questions, until they were discussing the movement of single bits and the size of the Intel 80386 instruction cache.Īs quickly as it began, the meeting ended. Bill focused immediately on Eric and what followed resembled a Star Trek mind meld. He quickly figured out the developer responsible was Eric Christensen, a pure genius. Our product, FoxPro, was many, many times faster than Cirrus, the Microsoft product it competed with (later released as Access). Pleasantries were rushed through quickly and it soon became clear the reason for the meeting. Gates has released a new book called How to Prevent the Next Pandemic in which he outlines steps the world should take to avoid another global outbreak.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. But for me there’s still healing that needs to happen.” “Friends is a different word for me,” French Gates said. We’re not married.”įrench Gates described her current relationship with Bill Gates as “friendly” but explained she is not friends with her former husband. We were partners, we kind of grew up together, and now that’s different.
He continued: “I know divorces are different, but it’s just a complete change. The kids, the foundation, the enjoyment we had. … We had a lot of amazing things in our marriage. In response to French Gates’s comments, Bill Gates said, “This was a very tough thing. “How can I get up? How am I going to move?” she would ask herself, she said. “I couldn’t trust what we had.”įrench Gates also revealed that she cried numerous times during her marriage, sometimes while lying on the floor. “There just came a point in time where there was enough there that I realized it just wasn’t healthy,” she said. In an interview with CBS in March, French Gates explained that numerous factors led to the couple’s high-profile divorce last May. Gates refused to disclose additional details about the affair, saying: “I don’t think delving into the particulars at this point is constructive, but yes, I caused pain and I feel terrible about that.”
It was sad and tragic, but now we’re moving together.” Gates added: “Melinda and I are continuing to work together. I feel good that all of us are moving forward now.” “I have responsibility for causing a lot of pain to my family. “The divorce is definitely a sad thing,” the 66-year-old billionaire and philanthropist said.
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