[imagesource: Ryan Manning]
When Bill Gates was 13, his parents enrolled him in Seattle’s Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school, because they did not think he was being sufficiently challenged at the local public school.
It was there that he met Paul Allen, who would later co-found Microsoft with him.
While at Lakeside, a computer company offered to provide computer time for students. He was 13 when he wrote a program in BASIC computer language. Allen and Gates became good friends, bonding over their shared love of computers.
They were both booted from ‘computer time’ because they were taking advantage of software glitches to obtain free computer time.
Their privileges were restored when they offered to help find bugs in the computer company’s software. Gates then wrote a program for Lakeside to assist in student class scheduling. Later, he would use it to ensure that he was placed in classes with majority female students.
At 17, he developed “Traf-o-Data” which monitored traffic patterns in Seattle. He wanted to drop out of school at this point but his parents wanted him to go to Harvard.
The summer after his freshman year, Gates got a job with Allen at Honeywell. Later, he and Allen would write BASIC software for the Altair 8800, following which they were hired to work at MITS.
Less than a year later, Gates dropped out of Harvard and formed “Micro-Soft” with Allen.
So, as you can see, Gates didn’t have to do many job interviews before he started his own company, which would eventually elevate him to one of the richest men in the world.
Despite that, he’s pretty good at them, probably because he’s hired thousands of employees over the years and knows what to look out for.
There’s also a certain level of confidence that comes with being ‘Bill Gates’.
Per Forbes, during an interview for his new YouTube series called State of Inspiration, NBA star Stephen Curry asked Gates to play the role of a junior software engineer interviewing for a job at Microsoft.
He was asked three questions and handled them like a pro:
It’s the way that he answers the questions that really stands out.
Gates manages to talk about both his strengths and weaknesses simultaneously, using the latter to highlight the former – it’s an impressive rhetorical trick.
You’ll note that Gates does call attention to a weakness nor does he offer a trite response such as “I’m a perfectionist.” Instead he simply addresses the roles that he is not fit for.
He then makes a compelling argument for why he would improve a team.
In reality, if he applied for a job, I doubt anyone would have the balls to request an interview.
For a more detailed analysis of his answers, head here.
Following the job interview portion of the discussion, Gates answered some questions about COVID-19. He’s had to do this a lot lately.
The poor guy has spent most of the pandemic trying to make people see sense.
Keep fighting the good fight, Bill.
[source:forbes]
