The Truth About Bill

The best Bill Gates profile I have ever read is in the August 16, 1999 issue of The New Yorker (a mostly white cover with a statue of a bottle of vin rouge). Ken Auletta is given 27 pages--hooray! Tina Brown is gone and her tiny-article fixation left with her!--to discuss the Microsoft antitrust case. Frankly, it looks like he's writing a book, and this is either a sample chapter or his narrative outline. In any case, his opening anecdote nails Gates better than any book length treatment I have ever seen (with the possible exception of The Plot To Get Bill Gates).

The part that rings most true is when Auleta asks Gates at a news conference about Microsoft arrogance. Gates confronts him and says "What do you mean `arrogant. ' "

Gates has made similar statements to me. Since I'm not as fast as Auleta, I wasn't ready with a response. Auleta was (or he's doctored the anecdote to make it appear he was) and describes Gates as chastened by his "people have the right to ask questions" response.

A few paragraphs later, a Department of Justice official describes Gates growing "angry, condescending, snide and petulant." It doesn't take much growth for Gates to make that leap; he's on the edge of all of those emotions every time I've ever seen him offstage. So much so that a colleague, offended by Gates' angry rejoinder to an intended piece of small talk, told him to "Take a chill pill." OK, fine, the man hates small talk. He doesn't have to get het up about it. And since small talk is a normal part of social intercourse, maybe he should get over it. But since there's no one to say no to Bill, his boorish behavior will never improve.

When you get your chance to spend a little time with the great man, turn it down. Spend it instead with Jobs or even Sculley. If you insist on a Microsoftie, spend it with Ballmer or Nathan Myhrvold. At least they're human (especially Myhrvold).

And run, don't walk, to the newsstand for your copy of the current issue of the New Yorker. No, they don't post content on their web site. (Yes they do, behind a paywall.