Bill Gates released his first memoir earlier this year, aptly titled “Source Code”. Going into great detail about his Pacific Northwestern upbringing, Bill describes a childhood so uniquely empowering that it seemed inevitable that it would be him to start one of the world’s most impactful technology companies.
Coming into this book, I knew little about Bill Gate's background or about the early days of Microsoft. By the time I was born, Gates had given his CEO position to Steve Ballmer and Microsoft was already a thriving multi-billion dollar global conglomerate. As a result, I knew more about him as a philanthropist than the cutthroat businessman my work colleagues perceived him as.
So to better understand the circumstances of his success, I bought his book. Priced at only $14 and with all the proceeds going to charity, it was actually pretty cheap. Though probably because he does not lack for money.
I think it doesn’t make much sense to do a literary critique on someone’s biographical account so I will just recommend this book outright. Bill provides intimate insight into his upbringing, sparing no details about his encounters with psychedelics or his early relationships with women. Despite the nature of his work being inherently technical, I think Gates does a good job explaining it to a non-technical crowd without relying on abstractions/analogies to do it.
I. An American Golden Age in the Pacific Northwest
Bill Gates was a nepo baby. His mother, a prominent Seattle socialite, descended from one of the first banking families in the West. While his father did come from a more working-class background, he would end up becoming an influential partner at one of Seattle’s prominent law firms. Both graduated from the Unviersity of Washington, where they first met.
The Gates family was heavily involved in local politics and their own community, bringing a young Bill in contact with other well-to-do lawyers, engineers, and doctors. Case in point, His next-door neighbor would become the governor of Washington, whose gubernatorial campaign was partially organized by Gate's mother.
His school environment was equally as impressive. His math teachers were former Boeing engineers, and his highschool chemistry teachers held Stanford PhDs. This was in stark contrast to the public school he attended before, where Bill complained about being bored and intellectually unstimulated. Now, there were no restrictions on what Bill could learn nor was he limited by the knowledge boundaries of his teachers.
And while the rest of the world was still recovering in the wake of WW2, Americans were enjoying unparalleled prosperity. America was the de-facto economic power of the world, pumping out new technologies like televisions, passenger planes, computers, and other electronics. Many of which were being researched and manufactured in the PNW by companies like Boeing.
At a time when computers were still wildly expensive and in their infancy, Bill’s private school had crowdfunded the purchase of a computer. The concept of programming was so new that there wasn’t even a dedicated teacher who could teach it, meaning the kids had to self-teach via any code samples or manuals they got their hands on. This also meant that the kids had almost unlimited freedom to write programs on the computer. This experience alone would probably have put him in the 99th percentile of people with software experience by the time he went to Harvard.
It was this combination of personal family wealth, and general American prosperity that leads me to believe that Bill Gates had an upbringing unmatched by very few in the world. It's hard to imagine that even a British crown-prince would’ve gotten the same educational/technical opportunities at the time.
Reading about his childhood really stressed to me just how far ahead of the world America seemed at this time. While Bill Gate's situation was unique and American educational access was still heavily racially segregated, white middle-upperclass America enjoyed large educational advantages compared to the rest of this world.
It was these advantages that would give Americans the tools/context they needed to go on and later found the technology companies that define the Information Age and fuel rapid economic growth.
II. Bill Gate's Work Ethic
One of the most famous quotes attributed to Bill Gates is “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it”.
You would think Gates’ preference for “lazy” people would arise out of some shared commonality. Reading this book, you will quickly see that it is not the case.
Bill Gates is/was an extreme workaholic.
Many sections of his book talk about him spending his nights and weekends coding in computer labs. Subsisting off of nothing but pizzas and sodas, an 18-years-old Bill Gates was regularly coding for 14+ hours and sleeping in the lab just so he could wake up and code more.
He also had developed a knack for business quite early, having already entered into contracts for programming work in middle school. While he let his older friends, who he believed would help them appear more serious and mature, take the lead in client relations, Bill was heavily involved in hashing out the details behind the scenes.
One instance from the book describes his company being stiffed on payments from vendors and bleeding cash from personal travel expenses. Instead of hoping that his partners would sort this out, Bill abandoned his studies to chew out his twenty-something friends and pursued owed payment himself.
He was also not afraid to have difficult conversations. When he felt that his ownership in the company was unfair compared to the effort he was putting in, he would bring up the topic of redistributing shares. What started as 50/50 arrangements would become 66/33, would become 75/25.
And to be fair, Bill was putting in the majority of the work. What was striking to me, was him having the courage to potentially burn friendships over just settling what he perceived as unfair. Especially at a young personally and in his professional career.
Although he nevers gives entrepreneurial advice in this book, his personal experience seemed to be shouting at the reader “If you really want to succeed in business, you have to be willing to work for it”.
An 8-hour work day may not be enough. You have to be prepared to work 16+ hours a day for weeks on end to succeed and beat out the competition. And if you don’t want to, there may be a Bill Gates equivalent out there who is willing to.
That’s why tech entrepreneurship is sometimes a tough sell to me. I enjoy spending my free time pondering and frolicking, not hustling and competing with savants.