What do you think?
Rate this book
Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry--and Made Himself the Richest Man in America
The Washington Post called this book "impressive" and "meticulously researched," with "much of the drama and suspense of a novel." The New York Times and USA Today found it "definitive." The Seattle Times said Gates "should be required reading for any new hire in the personal computer industry." Since its publication, Gates has been cited and used as a source by dozens of books and articles.
Bill Gates is an American icon, the ultimate revenge of the nerd. The youngest self-made billionaire in history was for many years the most powerful person in the computer industry. His tantrums, his odd rocking tic, and his lavish philanthropy have become the stuff of legend. Gates is the one book that truly illuminates the early years of the man and his company.
In high school he organized computer enterprises for profit. At Harvard he co-wrote Microsoft BASIC, the first commercial personal computer software, then dropped out and made it a global standard. At 25, he offered IBM a program he did not yet own--a program called DOS that would become the essential operating system for more than 100 million personal computers and the foundation of the Gates empire. As Microsoft's dominance extended around the globe, Bill Gates became idolized, hated, and feared.
In this riveting independent biography, veteran computer journalists Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews draw on a dozen sessions with Gates himself and nearly a thousand hours of interviews with his friends, family, employees, and competitors to debunk the myths and paint the definitive picture of the real Bill Gates, "bugs" and all.
Here is the shy but fearless competitor with the guts and brass to try anything once--on a computer, at a negotiation, or on water skis. Here is the cocky 23-year-old who calmly spurned an enormous buyout offer from Ross Perot. Here is the supersalesman who motivated his Smart Guys, fought bitter battles with giant IBM, and locked horns with Apple's Steve Jobs--and usually won.
Here, too, is the workaholic pessimist who presided over Microsoft's meteoric rise while most other personal computer pioneers fell by the wayside. Gates extended his vision of software to art, entertainment, education, and even biotechnology, and made good on much of his promise to put his software "on every desk and in every home."
Gates is a bracing, comprehensive portrait of the microcomputer industry, one of its leading companies, and the man who helped create a world where software is everything.
Bill Gates is an American icon, the ultimate revenge of the nerd. The youngest self-made billionaire in history was for many years the most powerful person in the computer industry. His tantrums, his odd rocking tic, and his lavish philanthropy have become the stuff of legend. Gates is the one book that truly illuminates the early years of the man and his company.
In high school he organized computer enterprises for profit. At Harvard he co-wrote Microsoft BASIC, the first commercial personal computer software, then dropped out and made it a global standard. At 25, he offered IBM a program he did not yet own--a program called DOS that would become the essential operating system for more than 100 million personal computers and the foundation of the Gates empire. As Microsoft's dominance extended around the globe, Bill Gates became idolized, hated, and feared.
In this riveting independent biography, veteran computer journalists Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews draw on a dozen sessions with Gates himself and nearly a thousand hours of interviews with his friends, family, employees, and competitors to debunk the myths and paint the definitive picture of the real Bill Gates, "bugs" and all.
Here is the shy but fearless competitor with the guts and brass to try anything once--on a computer, at a negotiation, or on water skis. Here is the cocky 23-year-old who calmly spurned an enormous buyout offer from Ross Perot. Here is the supersalesman who motivated his Smart Guys, fought bitter battles with giant IBM, and locked horns with Apple's Steve Jobs--and usually won.
Here, too, is the workaholic pessimist who presided over Microsoft's meteoric rise while most other personal computer pioneers fell by the wayside. Gates extended his vision of software to art, entertainment, education, and even biotechnology, and made good on much of his promise to put his software "on every desk and in every home."
Gates is a bracing, comprehensive portrait of the microcomputer industry, one of its leading companies, and the man who helped create a world where software is everything.
534 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1992
About the author
Stephen Manes
34 books23 followersStephen Manes (born 1949) wrote the "Digital Tools" column that appeared in every issue of Forbes until recently when he took a break. He is expected to return in the future. He is also co-host and co-executive editor of the public television series "PC World's Digital Duo," a program he helped create.
Manes was previously the Personal Computers columnist for the Science Times section of The New York Times and a regular columnist for InformationWeek. He has been on the technology beat since 1982 as a columnist and contributing editor for PC Magazine, PC/Computing, PC Sources, PCjr, and Netguide. The now defunct Marketing Computers named him one of the four most influential writers about the computer industry and called him "a strong critical voice."
From April 1995 to December 2008, he also wrote the "Full Disclosure" column, anchoring the back page of PC World.
Manes is coauthor of the best-selling and definitive biography Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry--and Made Himself the Richest Man in America. He also wrote The Complete MCI Mail Handbook and programmed much of the Starfixer and UnderGround WordStar software packages.
Manes is also the author of more than 30 books for children and young adults, including the Publishers Weekly bestseller Make Four Million Dollars by Next Thursday! and the award-winning Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days!, which was adapted for the public television series Wonderworks. His books include the cult favorites Chicken Trek and The Obnoxious Jerks and have won a commendation from the National Science Foundation, International Reading Association Children's Choice awards, and kid-voted awards in five states. His writing credits also include television programs produced by ABC Television and KCET/Los Angeles and the 70s classic 20th Century-Fox movie Mother, Jugs & Speed.
Manes is currently serving his fourth term as an elected member of the National Council of the Authors Guild, the country's oldest organization of book authors. Born and raised in the hills of Pittsburgh, he now lives in hillier Seattle.
Manes was previously the Personal Computers columnist for the Science Times section of The New York Times and a regular columnist for InformationWeek. He has been on the technology beat since 1982 as a columnist and contributing editor for PC Magazine, PC/Computing, PC Sources, PCjr, and Netguide. The now defunct Marketing Computers named him one of the four most influential writers about the computer industry and called him "a strong critical voice."
From April 1995 to December 2008, he also wrote the "Full Disclosure" column, anchoring the back page of PC World.
Manes is coauthor of the best-selling and definitive biography Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry--and Made Himself the Richest Man in America. He also wrote The Complete MCI Mail Handbook and programmed much of the Starfixer and UnderGround WordStar software packages.
Manes is also the author of more than 30 books for children and young adults, including the Publishers Weekly bestseller Make Four Million Dollars by Next Thursday! and the award-winning Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days!, which was adapted for the public television series Wonderworks. His books include the cult favorites Chicken Trek and The Obnoxious Jerks and have won a commendation from the National Science Foundation, International Reading Association Children's Choice awards, and kid-voted awards in five states. His writing credits also include television programs produced by ABC Television and KCET/Los Angeles and the 70s classic 20th Century-Fox movie Mother, Jugs & Speed.
Manes is currently serving his fourth term as an elected member of the National Council of the Authors Guild, the country's oldest organization of book authors. Born and raised in the hills of Pittsburgh, he now lives in hillier Seattle.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 1, 2018
I recently watched Pirates of Silicon Valley, a questionably-acted movie based on the rise of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and found myself curious about the facts. Did a young Bill Gates really race bulldozers and ram his buddy's sportscar? Gates is an astonishingly detailed biography of not just Gates himself, but of the computer industry as it developed throughout the seventies, eighties, and early nineties. The book culminates with the release of the then-revolutionary Windows 95, an OS that merited even Rachel and Chandler from Friends pitching it. The evolution of computing hardware and software overshadow Gates himself, not surprising given that developing software was his singular obsession from high school on. This mix of biography and technical history makes itself more attractive as computer history than personal, but it still presents a more interesting Gates than "Brilliant, Nerdy Billionare". He really did race bulldozers, and they weren't his.
Gates is not a rags to riches stories, as young William Gates started off fairly comfortably: his parents sent him to a private school that exposed its older students to computer programming, and one of Gates' classmates there would become his partner in founding Microsoft later on -- Paul Allen. Both were enthusiastic members of a student club called the Lakeside Programmers Group, who were allowed free computer time -- back when computer users could be billed on how many seconds of computer processing they used -- in exchange for helping debug programs and and machines. Being both self-confident teens and curious about what they could do, Gates and his friends also found ways to cheat the billing cycle outside their arrangement -- and when Gates took on the challenge of creating student schedules, he somehow found himself the only boy in a class otherwise filled with girls.
Even before they were out of high school, Gates and Allen were making a name for themselves as programmers, and exploring the possibilities of this for their future. Their first huge coup was writing a language to use with the first consumer-marketed microcomputer, the Altair. The Altair was amazing popular considering it had to be assembled, component by component, by the buyer, and that the finished product was initially only capable of blinking its lights. Programming was done not with a keyboard, but by flipping toggle switches. Although Gates and Allen did attempt building their own computer, one pitched at municipal governments for managing traffic, their talents lay in software. Gates was both obsessive and aggressive: he had no objections to working eighty hours a week trying to iron out bugs, and expected that from whomever he hired later on. Gates hated to lose, and if that meant selling products he hadn't even built yet-- hadn't even planned yet -- to prevent someone else from making the pitch, he would. (Hence the reason for those eighty hour workweeks..) Gates' success came not just from his gifts with programming language, but because he and his partners were so intent on making sales: one of Gates' tricks was to use one product to sell another. His dream was a computer in every home, on every desk, running Microsoft software. It didn't matter who the manufacturer was: Microsoft did work for both IBM and Apple, as well as smaller computer companies which have fallen away, and Gates' goal was to create a hardware ecosystem where everyone was using a common software, with the effect that devices would be cross-compatible. A monitor made by one manufacturer -- IBM, say -- would be compatible with a computer made by another firm, like Hewlett Packard.
Gates delves into an astonishing amount of detail both on the technical hurdles and on the business deals that Gates made: there's an entire chapter on a font battle with Adobe, for instance. Readers do see the man behind the machine, however: Gates the crazy-competitive, Gates the parsimonous executive who regarded hotel rooms and first class as decadent, Gates the teenage millionare, Gates the spectacularly reckless driver, Gates the bellicose boss who liked people who stood up and yelled right back at him. Although Gates is not necessarily the ideal book for someone merely curious about the man, its depth of technical and business history would recommend to those interested in the microcomputer revolution. Oh, and the bulldozers? Gates literally saw them sitting in a rural construction yard, discovered the keys were in them, and decided to figure out how they worked. Then he and a buddy drove them around and raced, because that's what you do when you're twenty and it's 3 am.
Gates is not a rags to riches stories, as young William Gates started off fairly comfortably: his parents sent him to a private school that exposed its older students to computer programming, and one of Gates' classmates there would become his partner in founding Microsoft later on -- Paul Allen. Both were enthusiastic members of a student club called the Lakeside Programmers Group, who were allowed free computer time -- back when computer users could be billed on how many seconds of computer processing they used -- in exchange for helping debug programs and and machines. Being both self-confident teens and curious about what they could do, Gates and his friends also found ways to cheat the billing cycle outside their arrangement -- and when Gates took on the challenge of creating student schedules, he somehow found himself the only boy in a class otherwise filled with girls.
Even before they were out of high school, Gates and Allen were making a name for themselves as programmers, and exploring the possibilities of this for their future. Their first huge coup was writing a language to use with the first consumer-marketed microcomputer, the Altair. The Altair was amazing popular considering it had to be assembled, component by component, by the buyer, and that the finished product was initially only capable of blinking its lights. Programming was done not with a keyboard, but by flipping toggle switches. Although Gates and Allen did attempt building their own computer, one pitched at municipal governments for managing traffic, their talents lay in software. Gates was both obsessive and aggressive: he had no objections to working eighty hours a week trying to iron out bugs, and expected that from whomever he hired later on. Gates hated to lose, and if that meant selling products he hadn't even built yet-- hadn't even planned yet -- to prevent someone else from making the pitch, he would. (Hence the reason for those eighty hour workweeks..) Gates' success came not just from his gifts with programming language, but because he and his partners were so intent on making sales: one of Gates' tricks was to use one product to sell another. His dream was a computer in every home, on every desk, running Microsoft software. It didn't matter who the manufacturer was: Microsoft did work for both IBM and Apple, as well as smaller computer companies which have fallen away, and Gates' goal was to create a hardware ecosystem where everyone was using a common software, with the effect that devices would be cross-compatible. A monitor made by one manufacturer -- IBM, say -- would be compatible with a computer made by another firm, like Hewlett Packard.
Gates delves into an astonishing amount of detail both on the technical hurdles and on the business deals that Gates made: there's an entire chapter on a font battle with Adobe, for instance. Readers do see the man behind the machine, however: Gates the crazy-competitive, Gates the parsimonous executive who regarded hotel rooms and first class as decadent, Gates the teenage millionare, Gates the spectacularly reckless driver, Gates the bellicose boss who liked people who stood up and yelled right back at him. Although Gates is not necessarily the ideal book for someone merely curious about the man, its depth of technical and business history would recommend to those interested in the microcomputer revolution. Oh, and the bulldozers? Gates literally saw them sitting in a rural construction yard, discovered the keys were in them, and decided to figure out how they worked. Then he and a buddy drove them around and raced, because that's what you do when you're twenty and it's 3 am.
February 6, 2015
Good background stories on how Microsoft got started. I never knew that early Ms products were not written on PC s themselves, but actually created on PC emulators on a VAX or other mainframe. This allowed them to have software ready as soon as a new machine was available for the market. And stories about Gates' fast driving habits are fun. Too bad the book ends mid-90-ties, I think an 2nd part about the more recent period (revival of Apple, philantropic work) will be as interesting.
November 8, 2011
Witness the transformation! It was the theme of the day, the slogan for the biggest, splashiest software rollout yet concocted. It was emblazoned on posters, flyers, buttons. It sounded like the mantra of some bizarre religious cult— which in some ways it was. When you got right down to it, this whole Windows thing had been basically an act of faith, Bill Gates's faith in this vision of the future of computers— a faith that had taken him to the very top of the industry and transformed him into a national figure in the class of such inventor-promoter plutocrats as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Howard Hughes. As the throng of press, industry-watchers, analysts, and customers filed into the auditorium, the giant screen above the stage displayed only the classic C:\> prompt that signified dull old MS-DOS. That essential "operating system" software served as a sort of butler for other programs, controlled virtually every IBM PC and compatible ever made, and had long been the underpinning of the Microsoft fortune. Now Windows was designed to wipe that prompt off the screen and take DOS into the future. With Japanese long-term tenacity, Bill Gates had steered this pet project through half a dozen incarnations over seven itchy years to response that had been anything but deafening. It wasn't easy to get people excited about a program designed, like DOS, mainly to run other programs, and that was pretty much what Windows was. Yet as he waited near a loudspeaker pumping out the mindlessly hard-driving music common to porn films and business "events," the high-stakes poker player in Bill Gates knew he was about to turn up an ace.
G a t e s Dapatkan di sini
G a t e s Dapatkan di sini
June 23, 2014
This is still the definitive account about the rise of Microsoft. I really like how the author deals with the evolution of programming languages and how Gates redefined the whole idea of software. I can appreciate from this history just how hugely innovative Windows was. It provides a very favorable view of Gates and especially his technical skills. Yet, it also shows how rapid growth led to a corporate culture that in some ways stymied coordination and collaboration, embodied in the company's inability to meet release deadlines.
January 25, 2007
I picked this up in a Library in Big Sur, expecting to learn about Bill Gates, and instead found it was about the history of the PC industry. A fascinating history, and still a very relevant read, even though the history stops at 1995. There have been just a few developments since then!
July 7, 2009
This is one of my favorite books - I loved the story of how Microsoft came to be and how Gates manipulated everyone, including the Execs at IBM. If you enjoy reading about how companies are made, and the risks that are taken, this is a MUST read.
October 24, 2013
Brilliantly researched and written. A fair and objective insight into one of the most influential men of the 20th and 21st centuries. Highly recommended especially for those who grew up with the birth and rise of the PC.
October 16, 2024
This biography surprised me by offering more than just Gates' story. While Gates himself doesn't come across as particularly likeable, the book portrays him as the right person with vision, grit, and guile to build Microsoft, aided by Paul Allen and the very many talented individuals, at the right time.
The narrative captures the technological history of programming languages, operating systems, and application software from the late 1970s to early 1990s. It demonstrates that success doesn't necessarily come from being first, but from persistence, favorable deal-making, and relentless execution, even in the face of occasional failures.
I found Microsoft's evolution captivating—from offering derivative products like a programming language and DOS, to creating copycat applications for Mac, and finally embracing a GUI operating system with Windows. Despite Windows' initial inferiority, Gates' shrewd negotiations with IBM, Apple, and other OEMs ultimately led to Microsoft's dominance.
This book is as much a chronicle of an era as it is a biography, offering valuable insights into the early days of the personal computer industry.
Some memorable quotes for me:
- "Announcing the product that didn’t exist, developing it on the model of the best version available elsewhere, demonstrating an edition that didn’t fully work, and finally releasing the product in rather buggy form after a lengthy delay: the history of BASIC was one that would repeat itself at Microsoft again and again."
- "Gates understood that technical guys weren’t the only ones who had ideas to contribute… as Raburn remembered it, 'I was the only Apple user in the whole company. The view of people at Microsoft was that CP/M machines were real machines, the TRS-80 was an interesting toy machine, and the Apple II was a real toy.'"
- "IBM’s earlier small-systems efforts had failed in part because nobody was writing software or developing add-on hardware for them. By designing the PC around an open hardware bus not unlike the Altair’s or Apple II’s and publishing the specifications, IBM would encourage third parties to add value to the new systems." Additionally, "the 8088 [Intel’s 16-bit chip] could directly access a megabyte of memory—a million characters, a book’s worth of information—a sixteenfold advantage over the pamphlet-size 64,000-odd bytes of the 8-bit world… this huge expansion in memory capability would be perhaps the single most important factor in the IBM machine’s success."
- Microsoft had "a pretax profit margin of over 34 percent—a profit of $30 million in the last half of calendar 1985 alone."
- "IBM had seen Windows as an intermediate step between DOS and [its Presentation Manager.] Now, by overcoming the inbuilt limitations of DOS, Windows was positioning itself to undercut OS/2 and Presentation Manager. The only thing it was missing was ship dates."
- Excel’s first product manager would admit that at Microsoft, "We don’t do innovative stuff like completely new revolutionary stuff… One of the things we are really, really good at doing is seeing what stuff is out there and taking the right mix of good features from different products."
- Former Microsoft exec Alan Boyd, "Bill used to say to me that his job is to say no: that’s his job… Is Bill innovative? Yes. Does he appear innovative? No. Bill personally is a lot more innovative than Microsoft ever could be, simply because his way of doing business is to do it very steadfastly and very conservatively… He let’s things get out in the market and be tried first before he moves into them. And that’s valid. It’s like IBM."
The narrative captures the technological history of programming languages, operating systems, and application software from the late 1970s to early 1990s. It demonstrates that success doesn't necessarily come from being first, but from persistence, favorable deal-making, and relentless execution, even in the face of occasional failures.
I found Microsoft's evolution captivating—from offering derivative products like a programming language and DOS, to creating copycat applications for Mac, and finally embracing a GUI operating system with Windows. Despite Windows' initial inferiority, Gates' shrewd negotiations with IBM, Apple, and other OEMs ultimately led to Microsoft's dominance.
This book is as much a chronicle of an era as it is a biography, offering valuable insights into the early days of the personal computer industry.
Some memorable quotes for me:
- "Announcing the product that didn’t exist, developing it on the model of the best version available elsewhere, demonstrating an edition that didn’t fully work, and finally releasing the product in rather buggy form after a lengthy delay: the history of BASIC was one that would repeat itself at Microsoft again and again."
- "Gates understood that technical guys weren’t the only ones who had ideas to contribute… as Raburn remembered it, 'I was the only Apple user in the whole company. The view of people at Microsoft was that CP/M machines were real machines, the TRS-80 was an interesting toy machine, and the Apple II was a real toy.'"
- "IBM’s earlier small-systems efforts had failed in part because nobody was writing software or developing add-on hardware for them. By designing the PC around an open hardware bus not unlike the Altair’s or Apple II’s and publishing the specifications, IBM would encourage third parties to add value to the new systems." Additionally, "the 8088 [Intel’s 16-bit chip] could directly access a megabyte of memory—a million characters, a book’s worth of information—a sixteenfold advantage over the pamphlet-size 64,000-odd bytes of the 8-bit world… this huge expansion in memory capability would be perhaps the single most important factor in the IBM machine’s success."
- Microsoft had "a pretax profit margin of over 34 percent—a profit of $30 million in the last half of calendar 1985 alone."
- "IBM had seen Windows as an intermediate step between DOS and [its Presentation Manager.] Now, by overcoming the inbuilt limitations of DOS, Windows was positioning itself to undercut OS/2 and Presentation Manager. The only thing it was missing was ship dates."
- Excel’s first product manager would admit that at Microsoft, "We don’t do innovative stuff like completely new revolutionary stuff… One of the things we are really, really good at doing is seeing what stuff is out there and taking the right mix of good features from different products."
- Former Microsoft exec Alan Boyd, "Bill used to say to me that his job is to say no: that’s his job… Is Bill innovative? Yes. Does he appear innovative? No. Bill personally is a lot more innovative than Microsoft ever could be, simply because his way of doing business is to do it very steadfastly and very conservatively… He let’s things get out in the market and be tried first before he moves into them. And that’s valid. It’s like IBM."
January 28, 2021
A definitive history of Bill Gates and Microsoft. The Apple and Steve Jobs story get a lot of the limelight but the Bill Gates and Microsoft story is equally intriguing.
The book shines a light on Bill Gates childhood and the competitiveness inside his family which influenced Gates to a high degree and made Microsoft a software behemoth. Yet that same competitiveness also ensnarled Gates and Microsoft in an anti-trust battle with the federal government which they thought they could win despite evidence to the contrary.
The book shines a light on Bill Gates childhood and the competitiveness inside his family which influenced Gates to a high degree and made Microsoft a software behemoth. Yet that same competitiveness also ensnarled Gates and Microsoft in an anti-trust battle with the federal government which they thought they could win despite evidence to the contrary.
May 31, 2020
Good and thorough, but cumbersomely technical
The first third and the last third were what I’d hoped for in this book depth and insight into the origins, person, work, and legacy of Bill Gates. The middle third made me want to abandon the book, as it contained so much technical jargon on Microsoft’s work and competition that what would have probably been dramatic if told different only felt like wading through mud.
The first third and the last third were what I’d hoped for in this book depth and insight into the origins, person, work, and legacy of Bill Gates. The middle third made me want to abandon the book, as it contained so much technical jargon on Microsoft’s work and competition that what would have probably been dramatic if told different only felt like wading through mud.
February 18, 2023
Một cuốn sách rất thú vị về những câu chuyện inside của MS để thành 1 đế chế, mỗi giây, mỗi phút phục vụ hàng tỉ khách hàng và các loại dịch vụ trên thế giới. Có thể tại thời điểm tác giả viết cuốn sách và hiện tại thì MS đã có rất nhiều thay đổi về BoD, strategies, compensation package, nhưng mình tin rằng những giá trị cốt lõi như xem trọng chất x ám của công ty, văn hóa phải sai và được sai, bình đẳng giữa các bộ phận... sẽ luôn được chú trọng và làm vững mạnh hơn.
July 25, 2023
Excellent book on the rise of Microsoft and Bill Gates life before age 37. This is pre Gates foundation and pre marriage. The reality is he was very lucky to land in computer programming in the 60s and 70s. Then he was very industrious and worked like a dog to start several entrepreneurial endeavors. He was a ruthless copier of other products for Microsoft.
February 1, 2019
I have to admit I had no idea that Bill Gates was this notorious already in the start of the nineties, basically before the embrace-extend-extinguish era. Pretty fun to read a dated biography like this.
September 28, 2019
Mind numbing
Mind numbing detail page after page after page. Along the way I found a few interesting stories, but basically, I resorted to skim reading much of the book. I did not feel that I missed anything worthwhile.
Mind numbing detail page after page after page. Along the way I found a few interesting stories, but basically, I resorted to skim reading much of the book. I did not feel that I missed anything worthwhile.
July 12, 2019
Really good biography of Bill Gates and the story of Microsoft. Book was published in 1993, so don't expect a full and complete story.
July 8, 2011
Incredibly well researched and detailed book, almost to a fault. The 460 page tome spares nary a detail or characters from the life and times of Bill Gates and Microsoft... so much so that it becomes specific names, projects and programs start "compositing" themselves into one another, difficult to keep track of individually. Still, the writing is supurb, following a tightly chronological timeline, and effortlessly tying in detail and contexts from a wide variety of primary sources. The narrative flow never gets bogged down in too much bibliographical concerns, and at times feels like a well written fiction.
More than the writing, the account is a fascinating look at a fascinating life in technology. The authors clearly have respect for their subject, but honestly present Gates in all this many quircks and insecurities. Great business book profiling the very uncertain dealings and situations that seem so storybook today, without ever casting Gates in a heroic or stereotypical mold.
Good quote from epilogue:
"Business? Business was interesting, but it certaintly wasn't pure, and as Gates told one interviewer, 'The business side is easy - EASY!' Businessmen were interesting, but Gates had no illusions about their general level of brilliance. For him, it was no contest, the reason he could sell them on almost anything. As former IBMer Ed Iacobucci said, "Put a middle manager on one side of the table and Bill on the other, who can deal with technical issues: WHo wins that deal?""
More than the writing, the account is a fascinating look at a fascinating life in technology. The authors clearly have respect for their subject, but honestly present Gates in all this many quircks and insecurities. Great business book profiling the very uncertain dealings and situations that seem so storybook today, without ever casting Gates in a heroic or stereotypical mold.
Good quote from epilogue:
"Business? Business was interesting, but it certaintly wasn't pure, and as Gates told one interviewer, 'The business side is easy - EASY!' Businessmen were interesting, but Gates had no illusions about their general level of brilliance. For him, it was no contest, the reason he could sell them on almost anything. As former IBMer Ed Iacobucci said, "Put a middle manager on one side of the table and Bill on the other, who can deal with technical issues: WHo wins that deal?""
June 1, 2012
This is an excellent detailed story of the earliest days before Microsoft existed to its preeminence. To finally see the real path inside local Seattle that led to the beginnings is a real treat. Learn here why it wasn't necessarily a good strategy to learn computer science at the University of Washington in the 1980s under the assumption that it would lead to Microsoft. The truth about the invention of DOS and also the beginnings of the BASIC which was employed in early microcomputers is well covered. I recommend this as the book to read on the subject because it dispels a lot of myths and assumptions about early Microsoft, replacing them with facts.
April 9, 2008
This book gives many details about what Bill Gates was like in his younger days, and how he rose to the top. The reader will get an idea of what it was like to work for Microsoft in those early days. It includes everything from Bill's temper tantrums to his hygiene habits, as well as romances with ex-girlfriends and his wife. Although this book was written about 14 years ago, I still think it is the best biography of Bill Gates on the market.
December 21, 2023
This is a very good book for the history of Bill Gates and Microsoft.
January 8, 2015
Well researched book on early days of Microsoft.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews