What Drives Bill Gates?

Recently there has been a backlash about accessibility of the Internet.  The free and open ideology with which the Internet was developed has been challenged in the past few years due to the commercialization of the World Wide Web.  Microsoft has been at the core of this issue lately, and at the heart of it all is Bill Gates, one of Microsoft’s founders and now CEO.   Bill Gates is currently the richest person alive, by far, yet one thing still drives his company and their seeming ruthlessness: Gates’ desire to win.  All the people who know him best—his parents, his wife, and his good friends—all recognize his competitive attitude and desire to win as the driving forces behind Microsoft and throughout his life.  According to Gates, however, he has no such attitude nor is winning the prevailing attitude at Microsoft.  Gates believes that there is no winning situation, that Microsoft is merely creating new and better programs because they must, in order to stay competitive and on top of the industry; he is encouraging good business and trying to improve the lives of consumers by making better products.  Who Bill Gates really is, we may never know, but examining his past may help to understand him.

Throughout Gates’ adolescence, his intelligence was apparent.  He argued with his parents about various issues and was usually right.  At school, he would spend most of his time on a computer writing small programs.  On family vacations, they would have competitions, both mental and physical, and though Bill was a solid athlete, his ability to think, to examine, and to deduce was clearly his strength.  His parents saw these gifts and vowed to encourage him in any ways that they could, mostly by giving him freedom.  In high school, he and a friend (Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder) had access to a computer at a local business provided that they tried to find and fix bugs in the system.  Gates often sneaked out of the house to stay out all night at the business playing on the computer.  Toward the end of high school, Gates and Allen formed a company with a few other friends writing computer programs for local companies.  Though they were not overly successful, it was a firm beginning.

Gates and Allen parted after high school when Gates decided to go to Harvard for further schooling. Again, his intelligence and hard work ethic shined.   He took an interesting approach to his classes; he would skip the classes in which he was enrolled and cram for each exam for a few hours, and he would audit the courses that he planned to take the next term.  In his sophomore year however, Allen moved in with Gates at Harvard and coerced him to drop out of school to form a software company, they later named Microsoft.  The company, though Allen left it long ago, became the most successful software company in the industry.  Its near-monopolistic control over the software industry has spurned a recent debate about the Internet, Microsoft, and its intentions for the future; behind this company is Bill Gates.  Though he may never admit to being so, he has an amazing desire to be the best. Microsoft employees often feel this pressure.  They are always competing, not just against other companies, but also against each other—their friends and co-workers.  It is this driving force that has propelled Microsoft to the top of the software industry.  With the current antitrust trial against Microsoft pending, the future of the company is uncertain.  A decision in either way could have immense implications.