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Comment by 2muchcoffeeman | Hacker News Reader

What would Bill Gates have to do to finally shed his reputation as a business man?

Honestly, Gates seems like a pretty good guy from interviews he’s given and he’s doing something good with his money.

When you're as rich as Gates and Buffet you not only have a teams of people managing your money, you also have teams of people dedicated to managing your image.

So yes - Gates seems like a pretty good guy. And he'll have paid a lot of money to create that impression.

Zuckerberg doesn't seem to be running the usual PR operation - possibly because he's too young to be bothered, and possibly because he doesn't really care much.

Likewise Bezos. But you can be sure that if/when they turn to philanthropy, they'll consider the option of a similarly wholesome transformation and proceed if it seems likely to provide extra social leverage.

The alternative will be managed media invisibility, which is also an option at that level.

That's pretty cynical. Giving away your entire fortune to charity and convincing others to do the same isn't just PR, it's a genuine effort to make the world a better place. He was a cutthroat businessman and made millions at the expense of other businessmen, many of whom would've done the same to him if they could. I don't think being a hardass in the board room disqualifies you from being a generous and caring person in your private life.

> I don't think being a hardass in the board room disqualifies you from being a generous and caring person in your private life.

No, but it also doesn't somehow wipe away the actions he took to make that money.

He didn't just attack other businesses, he attacked open source, and would have destroyed it if he could have.

By all means, you can think whatever you like about the man. Gates has done some pretty slimy shit. Being nice now is nice, and I applaud him for it, but nobody is obligated to develop amnesia.

Further, there is no obligation to politely applaud the rich person picking and choosing who should benefit from their largesse. Nor in noticing the massive PR campaigns that go along with it.

He's buying what he wants with his money.

> He didn't just attack other businesses, he attacked open source, and would have destroyed it if he could have. By all means, you can think whatever you like about the man. Gates has done some pretty slimy shit. Being nice now is nice, and I applaud him for it, but nobody is obligated to develop amnesia.

I’m not asking you to forget what he did as a business man. But people grow by integrating new information and changing their minds. And Gates seems to be progressing in the right direction.

But all of you anti-Gates people are hell bent on defining him by his actions as the head of Microsoft. And being cynical about his motivations.

I’m grateful that he’s changed his ways and is making a positive contribution to the world. He really does seem to try and understand the issues he wants to tackle and not just hire people to do it for him.

> I’m grateful

Herein lies our difference of opinion. I consider it a positive thing that he's changed and grown. But grateful? Wealth-worship is gross and I'm not his dependent.

Again, he's buying what he wants to buy with his money.

Exactly right. He won the money game, he couldn't feed his ego with that anymore. Now he is feeding his ego with philanthropy. He literally couldn't spend it all on himself. So he sprinkles it around with his name attached. People don't cheer when I give pocket change to the homeless, yet it is a similar percentage of my net worth.

I met Bill G and had dinner with him when he published our software in the 80's. What you see is what you get with Gates. He's not a complicated guy. Smart, but uncomplicated. I liked that about him.

In my youthful days of Microsoft bashing, I learnt that many people couldn't distinguish between the man, the company, and the product. They also seemed to have trouble separating the motivation, the behaviour, and the consequence. In the end, I suspect that the reputation he acquired as a businessman was embellished.

I suspect that Gates will have trouble shedding that reputation since those people will have a hard time distinguishing between his past and present behaviour.

You don't have to "distinguish between the man, the company, and the product." You only have to read his open letter to hobbyists to see how they all intersect.

If you followed his MS days closely, like many in this community, I doubt you'd change your mind about him. But I imagine large part of the public knows about him mostly from his philanthropy. Heck I bet some people only know of him from whatever that 5G conspiracy was.

>If you followed his MS days closely, like many in this community, I doubt you'd change your mind about him

As in, he was a good fella on the net?

> What would Bill Gates have to do to finally shed his reputation as a business man?

I don't think he has to shed his reputation as a business man, if "being a business man" means maximising profits. He was great at that, and his activities were lawful, at least up to the point when he was judged to have acted in violation of anti-trust laws in trying to parlay one monopoly into another.

What he'd have to do to stem my disappointment in him as a leading fellow of the software development community of his day, is to acknowledge that after already earning his first 10 billion from DOS, Office and Windows, he actively worked to impede the progress of the internet, and hold back a generation of young non-millionaire developers, by "cutting off Netscape's air supply".

For many, it seems like his rehabilitation was bought with dirty money:

1. Earn a billion with brutal, unscrupulous business practices

2. Spend half of that charitably, keep the rest, and expect to be seen as a great philanthropist.

Suddenly his charitable works don't seem to offset his reputation so much.

Yup. I understand that Al Capone ran soup kitchens in Chicago.

It's a good thing we have a laundry list of his dastardly deeds so we don't go off what he "seems" like.

Key words: "seems like". Imagine you lived in the same area as Gates and every so often an acquaintance or colleague tells you a story of their encounter with Bill Gates. I have heard many of these stories. One is less likely to see such behaviour from him in public anymore if by chance he is seem in public and over the years one would expect his wife has "reigned him in". Most people are amazed by his interest in vaccines and Africa, and the foundation work, but how many know it is actually his spouse, formerly his employee at Microsoft,^1 who has the sincere interest in Africa and initially he just went along for the ride. When you have that kind of wealth, and so many others are dependant on your "generosity", naturally you have much more potential for control over what is written about you in the press. As such, the impressions you have from merely reading news stories are not exactly "organic", like hearing a story from someone you know. In the earlier days he had less control over what was written about him. Here is one from the archives that I think exemplifies Gates' personality quite well:

https://www.cringely.com/2013/02/25/accidental-empires-chapt...

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19920227&slug...

Recently, he was attacked online by conspiracy theorists. This prompted an interesting response from him. Perhaps it has also caused some to look closer at how much "control" he can potentially exert on the media these days.

https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-fu...

To take your question to an unnecessary extreme, what would Adolf Hitler have had to do in early 1945 to shed his reputation?

Once a nail has been hammered in place, even after removing it the hole in the wood is there to stay.

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