Bill Gates is one of the most respected and passionate business leaders in history. Together with Paul Allen, he founded Microsoft – a company that has had a lasting impact on the software industry and the Big Tech companies themselves. Microsoft now has a market capitalization of 3.1 trillion US dollars.
During his time building Microsoft, Gates famously did not believe in vacations and worked on weekends. The same intensity is said to have flowed into the philanthropic foundation he founded with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates, according to an excerpt from Billionaire, nerd, savior, king: Bill Gates and his quest to change our world by Anupreeta Das, published by Business Insider last week. The Gates Foundation was founded in 2000 and has an endowment of $75.2 billion as of December 2023. French Gates left the Gates Foundation in May with $12.5 billion in his luggage.
Working at the Gates Foundation is described as stressful – and employees are terribly afraid of Gates, says Das, financial editor at The New York Times.
“What strikes many about Gates is the fear he inspires about a number of things,” Das wrote. A combination of factors “deter those who work for him,” Das wrote, from the fact that his foundation operates without shareholders or stakeholders, to his intimidating “brilliance and celebrity” to the “arrogant behavior” he displayed at Microsoft.
Gates Ventures, Gates’ personal office, disputes the picture Das paints of the Gates Foundation.
“The book relies almost entirely on second- and third-hand rumors and anonymous sources and contains highly sensationalist allegations and outright falsehoods that ignore the actual documented facts that Mr. Gates’ office has presented to the author on multiple occasions,” a Gates Ventures spokesman said. Assets.
What it’s like to work at the Gates Foundation
Gates’ meetings with Gates Foundation executives and staff to discuss plans, budgets and strategies were compared to a royal court – a spectacle that one former participant described as “almost comical,” according to the book excerpt.
The meetings were “usually held in a large room with a set seating plan,” Das wrote. “Strict etiquette was observed. A former executive who attended many of the meetings said they felt like a king holding court, as if Gates were Louis XIV and the staff were courtiers bowing before him at Versailles and asking for their ruler’s favor.”
Gates Foundation staffers “frantically” prepared presentations for these meetings and “prepared for possible questioning by Gates.” As detail-oriented as Gates is, these interrogations were inevitable. He would notice even the smallest or slightest deviation from a coherent story in reports.
“He is the scariest person in the world to give advice or instructions to,” a former foundation employee told Das. “He will skim a page and then respond with something like, ‘What you say in the footnote on page 9 does not match the footnote on page 28.'”
But it wasn’t just the big presentation days that caused excitement at the Gates Foundation. In fact, “the low hum of fear was a constant presence within the foundation,” Das wrote. Fear could be triggered by a single email from Gates asking about a grant proposal or a task to be completed.
“After Gates was taken out of the chain, there may have been as many as 100 emails among employees trying to decipher what he meant, why he meant it, and how they should proceed,” Das wrote.
Yet many Gates Foundation employees literally fawned over Gates because of his influence in the tech and philanthropy worlds. Gates Foundation employees fell into three categories, Das wrote: “consiglieres who defer to Gates; young aspirants who are impressed by him; and skeptics who find Gates domineering and eventually leave the foundation.”
The Gates Foundation responded to a request for comment on the organization’s work culture with the following content: Assets:
“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has an unparalleled 25-year legacy of working with partners to save and improve millions of lives around the world,” a Gates Foundation spokesperson said. “With the deep commitment and leadership of our leaders and board of trustees, we are committed to tackling the greatest challenges in global health and development.”
The work culture at the Gates Foundation may not surprise anyone familiar with Gates’ habits as head of Microsoft.
“I didn’t believe in vacations. I didn’t even believe in weekends,” Gates said in a 2023 commencement speech at Northern Arizona University. “I pushed everyone around me to work very long hours.” He also admitted to keeping an eye on Microsoft’s parking lot every day to “keep track of who was leaving early and who was staying late.”
Still, Gates is the best example of the dilemma facing leaders: to be loved or feared. While Das’ book takes a look at the work culture at the Gates Foundation, Gates believes his behavior is no longer as intense as it was during his time at Microsoft.
“As I grew older – and especially as I became a father – I realized that this intensity was not always appropriate both for doing the best work and for living a great life,” Gates said in his 2023 commencement address. “Don’t wait as long as I did to learn that lesson.”
