Another consequence may be that Bill’s personal brand, his billionaire-of-the-people shtick, will invite a tough reappraisal. Essential to his bespectacled, do-gooder charm was that it felt authentic and accessible. A 2019 Netflix docuseries even sought to take viewers Inside Bill’s Brain. Released just a month before Melinda purportedly began consulting with divorce lawyers, the glowing three-part ode to Bill’s folksy genius presents him as a devout partner who guzzles Diet Cokes and is incessantly scratching his messy hair over how to save the world.
Now, however, the show only serves as a jarring reminder of how much engineering went into the overhaul of Bill’s persona, especially as contradictory evidence—such as his apparent habit of being dismissive of his wife in meetings—comes to light. Asked in one episode of the series whether Melinda ever called him out on “his shit,” Bill gave an answer that’s lost its endearing awkwardness in retrospect. “A lot of it, sure. I hope she doesn’t know all of it,” he said, laughing. “No, I’m just kidding.”
In 2017, in his foreword to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella’s autobiography “Hit Refresh,” Bill Gates wrote of the importance of legacy. “As the title of this book implies, [Satya] didn’t completely break with the past—when you hit refresh on your browser, some of what’s on the page stays the same,” Gates wrote.
His point was that as much as Microsoft had reinvented itself in the many years since Gates ran the software giant, its source code still retained parts of his DNA. The same could be said for the broader technology landscape. Gates had reinvented himself as a philanthropist, yet he also remained a legend among startup cofounders and unicorn CEOs, a statesman in Silicon Valley at a time when many of its once-mythologized leaders are deceased, disappeared, or disgraced.
Gates, who stayed on Microsoft’s board until last year, was both an inspiration for top execs—“I knew that part of rediscovering the company’s soul was to bring Bill back, to engage him more deeply in the technical vision for our products and services,” Nadella has written—and a rare voice of reason in a tech industry. But since the Wall Street Journal reported that some of Microsoft’s directors wanted him to step down in 2020 due to an investigation into a decades-old office fling (a spokesperson for Gates said the relationship ended amicably and that his resignation had nothing to do with the affair), will the rest of big tech want to hit refresh again on Gates’s involvement too?
For years, he was respected enough to smack around techies usually indifferent to outside criticism. Before it was cool, Gates chided the Valley for neglecting thorny societal problems in favor of building apps and gizmos. (“When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose you’ll look up and see that balloon, and I’m not sure how it’ll help you,” he once cracked, referring to Google’s internet-beaming Project Loon.) He’s tried to temper the arrogance of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who inherited the mantle of most-loathed geek, and, last summer, chastised Elon Musk for speaking out of school about the pandemic.
With an asterisk on Gates’s appeal now, it’s likely his ubiquity of tech activism will be less meaningful. Musk, for one, already writes off Gates’s taunts. “Billy G is not my lover,” Musk tweeted in July. Imagine what Tesla’s Memelord will resort to if Gates picks another fight with him amid his tabloid-worthy scandals. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s redemption story is strong enough under Nadella that Gates’s soul isn’t required anymore. If anything, it seems more likely that near-term corporate events will feature cameos not from Gates but Steve Ballmer, his once-maligned CEO successor who has since turned into the loveable-goofball owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Gates has long bristled at questions about his legacy. He has sworn he’s never had “some end-of-life goal,” and has called self-memorializing “a stupid thing.” For a 65-year-old who listens to history lectures on the treadmill and owns Leonardo da Vinci’s journals, it’s not quite believable that Gates hasn’t reflected on how future generations will look back at his life’s work. But as he said in 2005, as his second act was just taking off, “It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t motivate me. If we’re all forgotten or remembered, it doesn’t change what we do every day.”
This article was posted by Bloomberg News.