Bill Gates and Elon Musk are not even remotely comparable. Yes, Bill Gates can program. Elon Musk is incredible at making money, that has never been in doubt (though I guess we'll see what the future holds if he continues his meltdown), but he's just an entrepreneur. Bill Gates has done a lot of shitty things too, and also came from a position of great privilege, but at the very least he does have other tangible skills.
You're overthinking it. If it's all a publicity stunt to sell more ads, it failed more or less immediately as companies became increasingly worried about what kind of content their ads would appear next to. Any schadenfreude-bump is temporary and definitely inadequate to make up for the tangible damages.
I don't think I agree. Musk is not just some VC who chose to invest in Tesla and Space X. He did lead those company into successful businesses. No one thought Tesla would make it and hence who almost every single other established automative giant did not invest in electric cars and let Tesla have the first move advantage. For Space X, he took on Bezos' Blue origins who had much more money than him 5 years ago and did better than him. Gates does not have similar range of diverse products or companies he has pioneered as a leader. Since Windows and Office Suite, it is the cloud business that has allowed MS to stay competitive and that was the brain child of Satya. Besides even if Gates was a programer, he did not invent the Windows OS, it is a well known story that he bought the IP from Xerox. Just like electric cars, Gates' wealth was result of his vision of computers becoming a universal need for businesses and individuals alike
But doesn't this whole thing about the Musk-hate remind you the Gates-hate in the 1990s?
Same is true for Gates, Bezos, Jobs etc. Very few if any example exist of an individual "inventing" a product that then turns them into a successful businessman. Even Zuckerberg, might have coded the initial platform of Facebook himself but it was not an innovative product by any means. Even established companies like Google had similar platform (Orkut) at that time, it is just that Zuckerberg had a better business strategy than them to succeed.
Musk has invited all hate on himself in last year or so. Before that he was perhaps one of the more beloved billionaires given his start ups where in "cool" spaces like Electric cars, which liberals loved, and rockets. Unlike Bezos or Zuckerberg who got a lot of hate. He since then, inserted himself in popular political discourse for no reason which eventually culminated in the shit show of last 2 weeks.
The company that Gates founded and built will in all likelihood last beyond his own lifetime, and probably with a greater value than it had the day he stepped down from being its leader. That's quite an accomplishment in itself because it takes more than just having 1-2 good ideas.
To be fair, Gates hasn’t been involved in Microsoft for roughly 20 years, so not fair to blame him for MS not being more creative in these years.
You really are a young 'un if you're revising history for us. Bill Gates might not have been as 'technically smart' as the Apple guys but he knew how to keep the behemoth computing monopoly and shoo away the opposition.
I don't remember Gates ever knowing so little about things he pretended to know about and then getting publically humiliated over and over on them. Also, whilst plenty of people though he would fail, that was a much bigger task Gates was undertaking and one that genuinely changed the world and how we access information. Musk has bought twitter and proceeded to show he knows very little about what it even is, let alone what runs it. That all being said, I get your thinking here.
I just mentioned that Gates does not have as diverse portfolio as Musk which is evidently true. MS had a monopoly on operating systems until Jobs in his second stint with Apple turned it around. MS would always have stayed a relevant company in some regard since Operating systems are a tough nut to crack but they had become stagnant before Satya Nadella pushed Azure to take on AWS, establishing it as the second most popular cloud platform in the market.
Muskrat said:
Fair enough, there was suspicion as there is of all billionaires. Back when having one billion was a big thing. There was also admiration that he kept providing us with products that were more than useful. His employees didn't tend to hate him too much either.
Men have done stupid/expensive things all throughout history to get the attention of women, but this one might take the prize.
Make me wonder what kind of ideas do you have about how Microsoft is doing?
That's true also. It was the Balmer era where MS rested on their laurels and let start ups like Google dominate a new space.
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
In April this year, his favourability was 80-20. Now it is 43-42. Back then he was still insulting Warren/AOC/Bernie, talking about pronouns, doing dogecoin nonsense, etc. Buying twitter really messed his image.
Ah thanks. Didn’t get a chance to check Twitter for it.
For me the biggest difference was that in the 1990s Gates was involved in multiple huge corporate wars. Microsoft vs Apple, Microsoft vs Netscape, Word vs Wordperfect, Excel vs Lotus 1-2-3, Windows vs Linux, Microsoft vs US Department of Justice.
I was replying to the previous post that said MS might be history - even if they may be history it doesn't take away what Gates achieve before. For what it's worth I thought MS did lost its way somewhat in the 00s what with the Zune and Mobile phones. But they made a successful comeback especially with Azure.
I don't agree. There was no hate for musk in tech world before Twitter fiasco. In fact some of his biggest fan bois were from tech world. If you were frequenting Blind forums you would have seen that. Gates was hated because he had a monopoly on a product that was not even cutting edge and used to be littered with bugs for its new product releases. They were notorious for pretty much releasing beta versions for users before ironing out the issues with updates.
Absolutely, and I have very little (or zero) respect for any of Gates, Bezos, Jobs, Zuckerberg, and all other tech billionaires. I am not saying they're great and this one is awful, it's just that this is the Elon Musk thread, and I'm pushing against the surprisingly common belief that Musk is an engineer, a scientist, that he was somehow directly involved in making the rockets, or the cars, or whatever. And by directly involved I don't mean as a CEO, because obviously he was that. But many people who worship Elon seem to think he's literally on the floor getting his hands dirty, and that's why he deserves more respect than the others. One guy in this thread called him the new da Vinci, for crying out loud.
Many called the end of Windows and Microsoft because of dislike of Gates and his business practices.
Also, the Gate foundation has done some phenomenal work in the areas of infectious disease, so he is able to point to that philanthropy as well in recent years, but I remember Gates being hated quite a bit. Musk's view of philanthropy is sending a submarine too late to people who never wanted/needed it.
I always find the notion that any business owner is somehow discredited unless he/she invented the relevant technology a bit silly. That’s not how these things work. The vast majority of start-ups in every sector involve teamwork between the nerds behind the tech and someone who knows how to build a business around it. Without that business acumen the invention is quite literally worthless.
I agree with this sentiment. I will say he was influential and critical in the sucess of his businesses though. You don’t need to be a engineer or scientist or whatever to be critical to success. Especially not for a social
There are some very problematic things about Bill Gates and even his foundation, which I think people forgot once he left Microsoft (and once we started getting new, more obviously obnoxious tech billionaires). But that's neither here nor there as far as this thread is concerned.
Sure, what's your point? You'll find people taking both sides of any question, no matter how obvious the answer is.
Thats the thing, he u-turned after a few hours and wants people to jump on the next flight.
No the point in my post was that it was related to hate/dislike which is the same here in alot of cases.Sure, what's your point? You'll find people taking both sides of any question, no matter how obvious the answer is.
Someone counted out Gates, and he succeeded, and now people are doubting Musk, but like Gates he'll succeed? That doesn't seem like a very strong or convincing argument.
Gates having a monopoly allowed him to create a mediocre product that would sell anyway. They still have their OS on the vast majority of computers. I ran windows 95 as long as possible because it was still the best version in many ways, for me anyway. Like Gates and Musk, I'm no scientician. I avoided learning code because I foresaw a lonely life with back problems.
Of course had I know I'd end up there anyway I may have taken the money too...
Elon had been able to approximate charism, Gates never could, he didn't charm anyone, so that's a big difference. I don't recall a cult of personality around Gates. But to be fair I wasn't paying a lot of attention to opinions in the tech space, just what other nerds thought and the bit of news that want mainstream. I'm 42, so only turned 18 in '97.
I have to admit I turned for way too long a blind eye to how shitty he is as a person because I was really excited by all the stuff SpaceX did, being a bit of a space geek this was really exciting to watch. I always excused his shite attitude with him being simply one of those nerds with an edgy sense of humor. But the mask as well and truly come off and showed he is just another shite bully who uses and abuses his power and thinks he is above everyone else.
