gates

Bill Gates is responsible for the “biggest mistake of all time” that cost Microsoft 400 billion, according to the co-founder of Android

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Nobody is perfect. Not even the great tycoons who have taken technology companies to the peak of success. One of these examples is Bill Gates who during an interview recognized What has been the biggest mistake he has made in his time running Microsoft. And the co-founder of Android did not hesitate to mock him through social networks several years after this confession. Today we all associate the Android operating system with Google, which is the company behind it. But in its beginnings Android was in limbo between Microsoft and Google. This is where Bill Gates’ mistake was, who did not decide to bet on this operating system, causing Google to keep it and get the great performance it has today. Android co-founder gives a different version of Gates’ “biggest mistake” It was a few years ago during an interview with Julia HartzCEO of Evenbrite, where the Microsoft co-founder acknowledged that the biggest mistake he has made ““It’s the mismanagement that I got involved in that caused Microsoft to not be what Android is.” This mismanagement caused Google will develop Android before Microsoftand achieved the great success it has today. In addition to the many benefits that Android leaves today for being the operating system with the largest market share, 72.46% global share according to statistics from the end of 2025. That is why a bad decision and problems with antitrust laws meant that this operation was not closed. Although he tried to do something similar with Windows Phone, it didn’t turn out well as we have already seen. For Bill Gates there is only room for an operating system other than iOS on the market. And this is something that figure at 400,000 million dollars that he lost with this bad decision 20 years ago. He related it in the following way: The biggest mistake of all was the mismanagement I got into that caused Microsoft to not be what Android is, meaning Android is the standard platform for non-Apple phones. In reality, it is a winner-take-all market. If you have half as many applications or 90% of them, you are on your way to total ruin. There’s room for exactly one non-Apple operating system, and how much is that worth? 400 billion dollars that would be transferred from company G (Google) to company M (Microsoft). For Gates, this is one of the biggest mistakes in history, and he has no doubt that if he had reached the mobile market before Google, Microsoft would be the company that would be dominating today. Their mistake was leaving Google with Android “free” until it developed Windows Phone. The best part of this story comes when the co-founder of Android appeared last year to comment on these words through your X account. In a publication he details that his goal when developing Android was to prevent Microsoft from controlling phones “as it did with computers, stifling innovation.” Click on the image to access the publication. With this concern that Microsoft could control the mobile world, the co-founder of Android affirms that “Sorry Bill, but you’re more responsible for the $400 billion loss than you think.” On this topic Steve Ballmer also spokethe charismatic former CEO of Microsoft, who admitted that this mistake by Microsoft was motivated by overconfidence and “arrogance” focused on the supremacy of the Windows brand. This led them to underestimate the competition and assume that they could dominate any new market by imposing their ecosystem, but evidently this was not the case. Images | Wikimedia Commons (UK Government) Via | Windows Central In Xataka | “In five years they will have to pay taxes”: Bill Gates has pointed out the elephant in the room of AI and humanoids A version of this article was published in 2025 in Genbeta

When asked “how much do you expect to earn” in a job interview, Bill Gates gives the definitive advice to get it right

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It doesn’t matter how much you have prepared for a job interview or whether you have an impressive resume, because when push comes to shove, in that face-to-face job interview, it is quite common for us to have our nerves on edge. Because beyond meeting the requirements, that first impression matters a lot. Furthermore, the job interview is a minefield full of trick questions where a false step can be very costly. Given that there are questions that hide more than what they say, you move along a fine line in which you have to try to answer honestly, bet on diplomacy and at the same time extract information and leave no room for doubt to get the job but not at any price. If there is a thorny question, it is ‘How much do you expect to earn?‘. Well, a person as influential and experienced as Bill Gates has a recommendation so as not to get the answer wrong. This is how Bill Gates gets out of the quagmire of ‘How much do you expect to earn?’ If you are asked about your salary expectations, the scenario is the following: if you say a value above what the company has programmed, you may be left out of the selection process, but if your proposal is too low, it may also happen that you get a job with a salary lower than what you would like and that at the same time sounds like underestimating the value of your work and experience. But Bill Gates has been there before and is clear about what to respond. And not just now, but it was in 2020 when the tycoon and billionaire behind Microsoft offers a way out of that thorny issue. More specifically in one of the interviews from the ‘State of Inspiration’ serieswhich pitted Gates face to face with basketball star Stephen Curry. For Bill Gates, the best response to not closing doors and looking good is not to offer an exact figure and to focus on the future, diverting attention from salary to long-term value. I hope the options package is good. I can take risks and I think the company has a great future, so I prefer to get stock options even over cash compensation. I’ve heard other companies are paying too much, but treat me fairly and strengthen the options. This is the move proposed by the tycoon, since in this way you reflect, on the one hand, your confidence in the company’s future project and, on the other, how you want to contribute to its success by applying your skills, so that the chances of achieving the contract are increased. This should soon stop being a problem. However, it is worth remembering that on June 7, 2026 comes into force the European Remuneration Transparency Directive (EU 2023/970). This is a salary transparency law by which companies are obliged to report the salary before the first interview. Therefore, although Gates’ advice may be useful for companies that break the law, or when you are interviewing at a startup that is not European, in theory within Europe we will soon no longer need to go around to get an idea about the salary we are going to receive. In Xataka | Bill Gates has been talking about AI for years. Now he thinks we are making the same mistake as with the arrival of computers Cover | Editing by Rubén Andrés (Unsplash (Arif Riyanto), Flickr (The Aspen Institute)) Via | The Economist

50 years later, the Soviet fire of the “Gates to Hell” is going out. And it’s not good news

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In 1971, in the heart of the Karakum Desert, a group of Soviet engineers observed how the ground was sinking under his feet after a failed drilling. What came next was not an immediate evacuation or closure of the area, but rather an improvised decision that, according to who witnessed itseemed like a quick solution to a specific problem. That choice, taken almost as another technical procedure, would end up having consequences that no one at that time was able to anticipate. The eternal fire goes out. During more than half a centurythe Darvaza crater has burned relentlessly in the middle of the desert, becoming an almost permanent image of inexhaustible fire that seemed to defy any natural logic. However, the most recent data show a clear change: the intensity of the flames has fallen drastically in recent years, losing more than 7% of its strength. What for decades was a constant spectacle begins to weaken, altering the perception of a phenomenon that many considered eternal. The origin between legend and Soviet heritage. The birth of the crater is still shrouded in all kinds of stories and uncertainty, although the most widespread and feasible version points to the accident. during Soviet drilling in search of gas in the sixties or seventies. According to this theory, the ground collapsed when it reached a pocket of natural gas and the engineers they decided to set fire to the site to prevent the release of toxic gases, convinced that it would be extinguished in a short time. Thus, what was going to last weeks lasted for decadesfed by an underground network of gas that never stopped flowing, giving rise to one of the best-known anomalies of the energy legacy of the former Soviet Union. From remote curiosity to global icon. Over time, the crater went from being a geological oddity to becoming a almost mythical destiny for travelers and explorers, despite the difficulties in accessing Turkmenistan. Its image, a gigantic burning cavity in the middle of nowhere, has fueled so much adventure tourism like internal propagandato the point of being used by country leaders as a symbol of power or control. The experience of approaching the edge and feeling the direct heat of the fire has reinforced its reputation as a unique place in the world. The attempt at control and doubts about its decline. For its part, the Turkmen government has years trying to control emissions from the crater, and attributes part of the recent weakening to new drilling nearby plants intended to extract gas. However, the independent analyzes They suggest that the loss of intensity could have begun before these interventions, which opens the door to natural causes that are not yet fully understood. This nuance introduces a key and dangerous uncertainty: it is not clear whether the end of the phenomenon responds to human action or to a change in the geological system itself. The unexpected twist: less fire does not mean less problem. Yes, because although At first glance, the reduction of the flames could seem like good news from an environmental point of view, the reality it is more complex. Fire acts as a mechanism that transforms methane (much more powerful as a greenhouse gas) into carbon dioxide, reducing its impact in the short term. If the flames subside, more methane could be released directly into the atmospherewhich would make progressive shutdown a potentially bigger problem. A fragile balance that is still active. Despite its weakening, the crater remains activewith visible flames and constant emissions that remind us that the phenomenon has not disappeared. The huge amount of gas accumulated underground suggests that the fire will not be completely extinguished in the short term, maintaining that strange balance between natural spectacle, industrial legacy and environmental problem. Thus, half a century later, the symbol of eternal fire begins to change, although its disappearance does not necessarily imply a more favorable end for the rest of the planet. Image | Stefan Krasowski, Tormod Sandtorv In Xataka | China’s first pipeline network is 4,000 years old and something revolutionary: it was built without the need for kings or nobles In Xataka | About to close, this remote mine in the Polar Circle has found a 2 billion-year-old yellow diamond that weighs 158 carats

Hundreds of billionaires pledged to donate their fortune. The philanthropic era of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett has come to an end

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In 2010, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett teamed up on an unusual project: convincing hundreds of millionaires that They didn’t need half his fortune and they owed billions of dollars to philanthropic projects. Sounds crazy, right? Well they got it. However, the model promoted by these two regular figures in the top 10 with the greatest fortunes in the last four decadesappears to be reaching a tipping point. They are coming tax reforms and moral incentives are not supported by the always convincing fiscal incentives. The golden age of philanthropy among millionaires could be in its final stages. Gates and Buffett’s original plan. The project The Giving Pledgelaunched by Gates and Buffett 15 years ago, invited hundreds of the world’s billionaires to sign a non-binding pledge promising to donate at least half of their fortune to charitable causes during their lifetime or after their death. Since its creation, more than 250 billionaires from 30 countries have signed this commitment, adding a combined fortune close to $600 billion in potential donations. according to calculations of Business Insider. Despite the magnitude of the figures, in recent years the viability of this model of collective philanthropy has been questioned. Warren Buffett himself recognized in his last letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that its plan to engage and motivate the ultra-wealthy “hasn’t worked,” assuming the idea of ​​a golden age of mass philanthropy may be coming to an end. According to a recent report of the Institute of Political Studies, of the 256 signatories of the commitment to donate half of their fortune, only nine have fulfilled their promise. Open doors to philanthropy. The approval of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act, a fiscal package that imposes a 10% tax to foundations with more than $5 billion in assets, has significantly altered the philanthropic plans of many billionaires. The withdrawal of tax incentives makes donations They are no longer such a priority for great fortunes. According to what he told Fortune Kathleen McCarthy, director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society“The insidious thing about this is that it will seriously affect the large liberal foundations like Gates, Ford and Soros”, which contributed millions of dollars to social, health and educational projects. “Whereas conservative foundations are much smaller and will pay a much lower rate,” McCarthy stressed. New ways to donate. This new scenario, which alienates large foundations from the front line of giving, is pushing philanthropists to look for alternative ways to give and modify their strategies. “Billionaires will begin to look for alternative mechanisms when they realize that they are being forced to close their foundations,” explains McCarthy. Practices like direct donation practiced by MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, and her Yield Giving foundation are gaining ground. Your strategy: donate the money directly to the organizations that develop the projects. Without intermediaries or segmentation of funds. According to a report of the Center for Effective PhilanthropyScott has already awarded more than $19.25 billion to 2,450 nonprofit organizations. This is how Bella DeVaan, from the Institute for Policy Studies in the article Fortune“I think she sets the trend and is an ethical reference in the way of donating money, as Gates has been.” Buffett’s family legacy. Although the era of massive philanthropy seems to end, Warren Buffett has not stopped giving. With Buffett’s retirement as head of Berkshire Hathaway, the investor has delegated part of his fortune in donations to the charitable foundations of his three children and his late wife. Annually, the veteran investor has been distributing billions in the form of actions to strengthen the family legacy and ensure that its wealth benefits society. However, in his latest donations from the millionaire a striking absence has been noted: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already does not appear among its beneficiaries. In Xataka | The True Legacy of the Duty Free Founder: How Chuck Feeney Inspired Bill Gates and Warren Buffett Image | Flickr (Fortune Live Media)

We have a stationary high-impact storm at the gates of Spain. And that will translate into 30ºC in November

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We only have to look at a map these days to realize that we have a pretty significant storm heading our way. It will impact the entire western part of the peninsula and will leave more than 300 l/m2 on the Galician coast. However, it doesn’t seem like it. It doesn’t seem like it at all. But that’s how it is. Storm Claudia (which is the name of the third high-impact storm of the season) will bring rain and cold and wind; but just before that it will bring us a significant thermal rebound. Today, Wednesday, there are many areas of the country with 25 degrees and the nights will not be especially cold (it will not freeze anywhere). Bilbao is going to be 25 degrees and cities like Granada or San Sebastián are close to 30. How is it possible? Naturally, as explained in AEMETthe wind tends to leave the anticyclones and move towards the storms. “In this movement it suffers a deviation to the right of its trajectory so that the exit is not in a straight line but in a wide curve that rotates clockwise.” That is, storms rotate. When we talk about rivers of moisture (or connections with the Gulf of Mexico), we talk about this type of thing: air currents with a lot of humidity that are integrated into Atlantic storms thanks to this turn. The curious thing is that, in that turn, Claudia is pushing the southern air directly into Spain. AEMET What we can expect. Heat. At least, during Wednesday and throughout the country. During Thursday, the most classic effects of the storm (and that includes the cold) will begin to be seen in the west of the peninsula. We are talking about temperature drops of eight or ten degrees. For the weekend, most of Spain will have maximum temperatures below 15 degrees. And then the party begins. In a matter of hours we are going to see a lot of rain, a lot of wind and a considerable sea storm arrive in Spain. The first impact will be in the Canary Islands, but it will be the west of the peninsula the one who will bear the brunt: with winds of 110 kilometers per hour and accumulations of up to 350 liters. They are expected waves of up to four meters on the coasts of Galicia. Image | TropicalTidBits | SrGPicker In Xataka | It’s going to rain in Galicia. It seems normal but it is something more: the prelude to a total change in the weather in Spain

We already know which will be the most expensive data center in the world. If Bill Gates paid it, it would be almost zero

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Already in 2024 we saw that infrastructure spending for AI was being insane. The trend has not relaxed, quite the opposite. Big tech continues to burn money as if there was no tomorrow (literally) and most of that spending is going to most valuable asset in the AI ​​race: data centers. How much do they really cost? Data centers in numbers Epoch AI has published Frontier Data Centersa complete database about data centers being built in the United States. Through satellite images, public documents and permits, they have obtained information about the estimated construction cost, as well as energy consumption and computing power. The award for the most expensive data center goes to Microsoft Fairwater, whose total cost It could reach $106 billion when completed in 2028. To put it in context, Bill Gates’ fortune is estimated to be 107 billion dollars. It would be fair to pay it. The forecast for Microsoft Fairwater even surpasses Meta Hyperion, the data center that It will be as big as the island of Manhattan which would cost 72,000 million. Next on the list is Colossus 2, by xAIwhose estimated cost is 44 billion dollars. It is closely followed by Meta Prometheus with 43 billion and the Amazon and Anthropic data center in New Carlisle with 39 billion. Epoch AI has collected more data, such as how much computing power each facility will have. This data is measured using the NVIDIA H100 GPUs for reference. They have also calculated the energy demand and who will be the main user of each of them. Below we leave you a table with the key information: Estimate DATE ESTIMATED cost ($) computing (EN gpUS H100) energy demand intended primary user microsoft fairwater September 2027 106 billion 5.2 million 3328 MW OpenAI meta hyperion January 2028 72 billion 4.2 million 2262 MW Goal xai Colossus 2 February 2026 44 billion 1.4 million 1379 MW xAI meta prometheus October 2026 43 billion 1.2 million 1360MW Goal amazon new carlisle June 2026 39 billion 770,000 1229 MW Anthropic oracle stargate July 2026 32 billion 1 million 1180MW OpenAI microsoft fayetteville March 2026 29 billion 920,000 1065MW OpenAI/Microsoft amazon ridgeland September 2027 32 billion 630,000 1008MW Anthropic Dizzying climb Looking at the case of Microsoft Fairwater, and always according to Epoch AI’s forecast, in March 2026 the investment will be $18 billion. A year later, in February 2027, it rises to 35,000 million, just four months later it shoots up to 71,000 million, to reach 106 billion in 2028. The price increase is dizzying and responds to several factors. The first is that the computational cost of training models has been increasing. For example, GPT 4 cost OpenAI over 100 million and rumors before the release of GPT-5 pointed to training rounds of 500 million each. Epoch AI also did an analysis on this and they estimated that the cost of training has multiplied by 2.6 year after year. On the other hand, there is the demand for GPUs, necessary for training the models and the most expensive component of all. An NVIDIA H100 GPU costs 25,000 dollars and its successor, the NVIDIA B200 also known as Blackwell, could be between 30,000 and 40,000 dollars. And this is just the GPUs, many are needed more components to get a data center up and running, such as power generators, high-speed networks or refrigeration, among others. The initial bottleneck was the shortage of GPUs, but it has been overcome by a more fundamental constraint: there is not enough power for so many chips. data centers They consume a lot of energy, Seriously, a lot. To put it in context, in 2024, data centers were already the 4% of United States electricity consumption and it is expected that Demand will double in the next five years. Nobody wants to live near a data center for one reason: mass consumption is raising energy prices up to 267% in nearby areas. Power supply has become a new choke point for the industry. Microsoft is already considering producing its own energy by creating nuclear power plants and others like Google and Amazon are considering taking data centers into space. Image | Microsoft In Xataka | AI data centers are an energy hole. Jeff Bezos’ solution: build them in space

Bill Gates was obsessed with knowing how long his Microsoft employees worked. So I looked at the parking lot

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All the millionaires who have triumphed in the field of technology They tend to be people of remarkable intelligence, who over time have developed skills that, to the rest of humanity, They seem curious to us at the very least. Jeff Bezos developed an almost unhealthy obsession with optimize time in meetings and Elon Musk He can’t stand anyone opposing him when he has made a decision. Bill Gates, for his part, is known for being especially inquisitive with his employees, developing his own techniques that bordered on toxic to control whether his employees were in the office or already they had gone home. If the boss doesn’t leave, neither will the employees.. In 2016, the founder of Microsoft made some surprising statements on the BBC about how it controlled which employees worked the most hours. One of the things Gates valued most when he ran Microsoft was the commitment and dedication of his employees. “At that time I was quite extreme with work. I worked on weekends. I didn’t really believe in vacations,” he told the British network. The millionaire has an excellent memory for data, which is why he was able to memorize the license plates of his employees’ cars and relate them to their owners to know who was in the offices when he arrived and who had left before him. His partner Paul Allen corroborated Gates’ confession in an interview with Vanity Fair. “Microsoft was a high-stress environment because Bill drove others as hard as he drove himself. He was becoming the foreman who hung around the parking lot on weekends to see who had arrived.” In-person presence is not enough. In addition to being a somewhat toxic attitude towards their employeesGates soon realized that this was not the most effective system to monitor your staff. Verifying the unreliability of this system helped Gates to recognize that presence is not the best indicator for measure employee performance. An approach that, perhaps, the current managers of some companies should review when it comes to design return to office policies. “The Fireproof” Gates. Paul Allen tells in his interview with Vanity Fair a Gates anecdote with an employee who had worked 81 hours in four days to get a project done: “Toward the end of the work week, Gates asked Greenberg what he would be working on the next day. Greenberg notified Gates that he planned to take the next day off, to which Gates responded, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ Gates couldn’t understand it. “He never seemed to need to recharge his batteries.” However, as Gates himself acknowledged when analyzing his own behavior, Working long hours has nothing to do with being more productive. Burnout takes a toll on productivity and can end up being counterproductive to your company’s interests. Furthermore, the company grew so much that it was increasingly difficult to learn all the car license plates. ”In the end, I had to relax when the company reached a reasonable size.” Burned worker syndrome. Overloading employees in this way with eternal hours is one of the main causes of sick leave and resignation among employees. The World Health Organization (WHO) includes the Burnout worker syndrome in your International Classification of Diseases This syndrome affects 10% of workers and in its most severe forms can cause more serious disorders in between 2% and 5% of workers, leading to depression and anxiety. The 2022 Labor Market Guide prepared by Hays detected that more than 30% of the workers surveyed stated that, after the pandemic, the feeling of burnout among employees had increased, being one of the main reasons for many of them to join the company. silent resignation. Take care of employees to improve productivity. Work culture has evolved significantly since the days when Gates was at the helm of Microsoft. Companies increasingly value work-life balanceand they recognize that employees need time to rest and recharge. Even Gates himself has changed his stance on vacations, recognizing the importance of rest for mental and physical health, as he stated in a talk about Alzheimer’s in your YouTube channel. In Xataka | Bill Gates has been a famous “workaholic” but he knew who to hire to solve problems: the lazy ones In Xataka | Bill Gates liked to step on him: his Porsche 911 discovered him on a 2,000 kilometer trip and the police also discovered him Image | Commons

“I told Musk not to donate his money, it would end up in organizations chosen by Bill Gates”

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Peter Thiel is one of the most influential and controversial names in the technology world, known both for his business success with projects such as PayPal or Palantir, and for his unconventional ideas. about education either religion. Recently, Thiel has generated a lot of debate after Reuters had access to recordings of a series of private conferences in which he warned Elon Musk about where his fortune could end up if he donated it to the wrong people. Peter Thiel and his influence in Silicon Valley. Peter Thiel is a key figure in Silicon Valley, being one of the founding members of the so-called “PayPal mafia“, a group of businessmen who revolutionized technology and currently accumulate great economic and political power. Their role as mentor and investment partner of other majors in the sector, like Mark Zuckerberghas allowed him to control venture capital funds that drive many decisive companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of the figures with whom Thiel has had a particularly complex relationship is Elon Musk, with whom he founded the company PayPal. In transcripts seen by Reuters of Thiel’s private talks, he explained how he warned Musk against donating his fortune to Bill Gates through The Giving Pledgean agreement by which millionaires agree to donate a large part of their assets to social causes. Thiel told his audience: “I told (Elon Musk) that his money would end up in the hands of organizations selected by Bill Gates.” In response to this message, the millionaire said that Musk responded: “What am I supposed to do, give it to my children? It would be worse to give it to Bill Gates,” is recorded in the leaked transcripts. Then Musk ruled out Gates. A few years ago, Bill Gates and Elon Musk held a series of meetings in which Gates proposed a series of impact investments in which the founder of Space X could be interested in investing philanthropically through the Gates Foundation. Within the framework of this approach, the founder and his son Rory They even visited the Tesla factory in Austin. However, when Musk’s donation commitment seemed to come to fruition, the South African millionaire suddenly changed his mind and he sent Gates away in bad waysblaming him for how incoherent that someone who claims to fight against climate change would have short positions (at losses) of a company like Tesla, which worked to reduce fossil fuels. From that moment, the relationship between Musk and Gates they have been like water and oil. Thiel’s story in which he advised Musk to distance himself from Gates, and the abrupt breakdown of philanthropic talks with the Microsoft founder could be related. The fear of global power and the figure of the “Antichrist”. According what was published by Guardianthe transcripts also revealed other concerns of Thiel, who in his workshops warned about the risk of the emergence of a figure of global power, which he figuratively called “Antichrist”, who could emerge from the dominance growing of artificial intelligence. According to Thiel, this entity, which represents a form of power, could be presented as a solution to face global crises such as the climate change or nuclear threatsbut in reality it would end up limiting individual freedoms and promoting a uniformity of thought. As and as pointed out Fortunethis concern is based on his personal interpretation of the biblical text and what he considers the danger of developing science without a solid ethical basiswhich could generate a global system that demands obedience in exchange for order and security. Technology will set you free. Peter Thiel argues that large technological fortunes should not be donated to charitable causes, but rather, in his words, “large technological fortunes should be used to protect human freedom” from the risk of a centralized global system that controls the flow of capital and innovation. The millionaire warns that, if governments and international institutions control investments and innovation, could curb creativity and human potential under the pretext of global security. The Twitter purchase on the part of Elon Musk, his involvement in the Trump campaign and his subsequent role in DOGEshow that Thiel’s words have influenced Musk to reconsider his commitments and think about how to protect the legacy of his fortune in the face of these concerns. In Xataka | Some millionaires didn’t like the ideology of universities, so they created their own university: an “Anti-Woke” Image | Flickr (Gage Skidmore, Statsministerens kontor)

Bill Gates has been a famous “workaholic” but he knew who to hire to solve problems: the lazy ones

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Bill Gates is one of the most decisive figures in the evolution of technology of the last 40 years. Found one of the most innovative companies of his time can only be achieved through a lot of work. However, Bill Gates himself has stated that he can be a little lazy at times. The technology magnate has been away from the first line of command at Microsoft for some time, and he dedicates all his time and fortune to the philanthropic work carried out since foundation he created with his ex-wife Melinda Gates. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invests in projects that encourage development, education and well-being of people in developing countries and at risk of social exclusion. One of his recent hobbies related to raising awareness about these socially conscious investments has been to create the Unconfused Me podcast in which he chats with personalities related to the scientific, teaching or business fields. In one of his last talks with San Khan (founder of Khan Academy) the magnate confessed that In his school days he was quite lazy. With an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 160, Bill Gates He has always had a knack for mathematics.. However, the millionaire himself confessed in his autobiographical book ‘Source code: My beginnings’he always tried to do as little as possible in class to pass the law of least effort. In eighth grade, his teacher reproached him for his attitude: “How can you be so lazy? You could be very good at this,” the teacher told him. “But we’re not doing anything interesting. I had this idea that the less effort you put in, the cooler you are.” Bill Gates states that, that teacher was crucial in his life since thanks to him his attitude towards learning changed since the teacher provided him with books and resources that encouraged his interest to continue moving forward and achieve a goal. Put a lazy person to solve a problem Bill Gates took his attitude towards effort to the extreme in the early years of Microsoft, when was able to remember car license plates that were parked in front of the Microsoft offices and relate them to their employees to know, at a glance through the window, which employees were still in the office and which had already gone home. In a so competitive scene As is the case with technological innovation, it is surprising to come across a phrase attributed to Bill Gates: “I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” However, in it we can see represented the Bill Gates lazy and unmotivated in his school years. In reality, it’s not that Bill Gates is excited about being surrounded by sloths, but rather the meaning of his statement aligns with what he learned from his eighth grade teacher: the important thing is to have a clear objective. If your goal is not to overwork, then you will find a way to get the job done as easily as possible. The motivation to do something has been so important in Bill Gates’ career that even people around him have used it as a tool to prevent the technology magnate from neglecting his duties at the helm of Microsoft. In Xataka | Bill Gates was so obsessed with driving a Porsche 959 that he managed to change the laws that prevented him from doing so Image | Flickr

Bill Gates had a tendency to procrastination until he found an infallible remedy: Japanese companies

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Bill Gates is not only famous for his work at the head of Microsoft, but for its enormous commitment and Requirement in the workplace. This demand reached such extremes that he was even able to Memorize cars registration that they had parked in front of the Microsoft headquarters to know which employees were still in the office and those who had gone home. However, the founding millionaire was not always so diligent with his tasks and, as confessed in his latest autobiographical book ‘Code Source: My beginnings’I had the bad habit of hurry the time to study just before the exam. However, over time, and some help from the Japanese, he learned that postponing the tasks was not viable if he wanted to take Microsoft to fruition. Gates’s youth in Harvard Bill Gates reported in his book how his university years in Harvard were marked by the habit of skipping classes and postponing any academic responsibility. His strategy was to study thoroughly only a few hours before exams, a dynamic that he shared with Steve Ballmer, his partner in Harvard and Microsoft command successor years later. “Steve and I paid very little to our classes, and then” we “furiously” Magnate in his book. Both felt comfortable challenging the limits and seeking to approve with the lowest possible effort investment. Gates came to recognize that they faced each exam as an experiment to check how far the good results could go with the minimum effort. This habit of delaying the tasks did not stay at the university, and soon moved to its professional beginnings after the Microsoft foundation. In his 1996 book, “Way to the future“Gates publicly admitted that That bad habit to postpone the tasks until the last moment became a real problem when the company grows. With his attitude, the millionaire not only slowed his work, but also had an impact on Productivity and motivation of the rest of your team. Delaying decisions began to directly affect the morals, mood and results of those who worked with him. “After Paúl Allen and I founded Microsoft, I discovered that developing the habit of delaying things had not been the best preparation to direct a company,” Gates said in his book. Gates himself estimated that he needed “a couple of years” to overcome what he called an “insane cycle”, in which he was lagging behind and generated an unavailable environment for his collaborators. The impact of Japanese customers Although in those days Gates was already beginning to be aware of his problem with procrastination in his tasks, he finished convincing when Microsoft began working with Japanese clients. In his book he pointed out that the relationship with Japanese companies played a crucial role in the process of changing habits. These companies, known for their discipline and iron control of the deadlines, did not tolerate delays. “Among the first Microsoft clients were Japanese companies so methodical that, as soon as we delayed a minute with respect to programming, they sent someone by plane to watch us, as if we were children. They knew perfectly that their man could not help us at all, but remained in our office 18 hours a day to show us how much the subject cared,” the millionaire wrote. “ Gates remembered that delaying with Japanese companies was “somewhat painful” so that external rigor and the pressure of having a vigilante all day attached like a shadow, was the revulsive that Gates needed to modify your time management. The millionaire assured that the process to leave the procrastination behind required a deep Review of your personal routines and professionals. Gates demonstrated that, although the transformation was not immediate, the Derived learning of those demands and rigor of its Japanese customers It was decisive to redefine both its personal development and Microsoft’s work culture. In Xataka | Bill Gates was so obsessed with driving a Porsche 959 that he managed to change the laws that prevented him Image | Flickr (Statsministerens Kontor)

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