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Comment by jernfrost | Hacker News Reader

Refreshing to see somebody who is not an asshole succeed. Too many people seem to have concluded that success can only be achieved by being some variation of asshole whether it is Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Balmer or Larry Ellison.

Mind you I am a huge fan of Steve Jobs, despite the fact that I think he also was kind of an asshole. People are complicated I don't think Steve succeeded because he was an asshole but due to the other qualities he had not related to being an asshole.

And people of course change. Bill Gates seems like a much nicer man today than he was when he ran Microsoft. I guess much the same happened with Steve Jobs. He was a better person in his older years than in his younger.

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Stephen Jay Gould often talked about how some evolved features happen not because they're beneficial to a species' success, and despite them being outright detrimental, but simply because they are linked to some other feature that is beneficial; they're necessary side effects.

Arseholery seems to fall into exactly that category. It's not helpful per se, but associated with many traits that obviously contribute to success, including clarity of vision and confidence in one's opinion against others' advice, and the ability to persist against all odds.

Nadella seems to be of another fabric entirely; he's not afraid of having a plurality of voices sing at the same time, he's more a conductor than a general.

What he's pulled off so far is amazing; lets hope it lasts.

A coworker once described to me how he thought people misinterpreted Jobs' success.

Jobs didn't succeed because he was an asshole, he succeeded despite being an asshole.

You sometimes see people trying to emulate Jobs and thinking they need to be an asshole. His take was that they completely missed the reasons for Jobs' success.

He was definitely an asshole though, especially early on.

How is (or was?) Bill Gates an asshole?

You need to read the "fuck counter" story. I woldn't work for someone like this:

>"Bill doesn’t really want to review your spec, he just wants to make sure you’ve got it under control. His standard M.O. is to ask harder and harder questions until you admit that you don’t know, and then he can yell at you for being unprepared."

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...

This hardly makes Bill Gates look like an asshole

> He had my spec in his hand!

> I noticed that there were comments in the margins of my spec. He had read the first page!

> He had read the first page of my spec and written little notes in the margin!

> Considering that we only got him the spec about 24 hours earlier, he must have read it the night before.

> He was asking questions. I couldn’t stop noticing that he was flipping through the spec and THERE WERE NOTES IN ALL THE MARGINS. ON EVERY PAGE OF THE SPEC. HE HAD READ THE WHOLE GODDAMNED THING AND WRITTEN NOTES IN THE MARGINS.

> He Read The Whole Thing! [OMG SQUEEE!]

I've talked to people who met Bill in person and by all accounts be was smart, driven, pretty nerdy, and reasonable.

Cool, thanks!

He exploits a loophole where he avoids paying his fair share on the BILLIONS he gives to charity. </s>

Seriously though, it's harder to find bigger philanthropists then the Gates.

Ask Kyril Faenov if you think Satya can be an asshole.

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