Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace & Jim Erickson
This book was an interesting read on how Bill Gates came to become one of the software technology leaders in America. The story detailed how Mr. Gates was already recognized as a genius when he was a child, and how he developed his love for math into writing software code. The story went into great depth of how intense Bill Gates was as a person, and how he drove his employees and Microsoft to the top of the tech industry by his own sheer will and business savvy.
Reading this book gave me a different perspective from how Bill Gates was portrayed in the media. Especially contrasted with how I always perceived Steve Jobs of Apple to be compared with Mr. Gates. The media seemed to constantly portray Bill Gates as a bloodthirsty businessman. I can now recognize that not only is Bill Gates a math genius, he is also a very skillful and accomplished entrepreneur.
My favorite part was one of the interviews with other tech leaders in the industry, and how they described Bill Gates and his approach to business. An anonymous person stated that Bill Gates, although blessed with tremendous intelligence, has the strength to be able to admit his mistakes, which is a very rare quality in the business world. Everything in the business world is about image and ego, yet because Bill Gates can quickly assess where he is wrong and change direction, he "...remains very agile in a business sense."
This is a lesson I would like to apply to my own life and how I approach things. To constantly evolve and change for the better, I believe I would have to continue to search facets of myself that still need refinement or correction, and shift things in the right direction. And just because I believe something to be right one day does not mean that I cannot admit that it was wrong tomorrow. Over and over I see examples of stagnation and rigid thought processes because of ego and image in my current environment, and so I am inspired look for ways to constantly reassess the way think. This book has been one in a line of many that I believe have helped me to do that.
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