Bill Gates appeared on a podcast called Armchair Expert, which is hosted by Dax Shepard. Bill Gates admitted that tech firms need to get critical opinions during Congressional hearings. He also spoke about Steve Jobs and titled him a “genius”.
“If you’re as successful as I am or any of those people are, you deserve rude, unfair, tough questions. The government deserves to have shots at you. That type of grilling comes with the super successful territory. It’s fine,” the Microsoft founder told Shepard.
While addressing the issue, Gates referred to the hearing took place before the House Judiciary Committee on July 29 where the CEOs of Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple were questioned about their policies and business as a part of ongoing investigation.
The podcast was wide-ranged where Gates discussed various topics such as Microsoft, his competitions, and the foundation’s ongoing vaccine work. He explained that being a popular tech entrepreneur and becoming a part of popular culture was difficult to handle.
“It was crazy because I was nerdy and not very sociable, then to be rocket-shipped into this realm of ‘what does he say about this, what does he say about that, what he says is semi-interesting’ was like, whoa, what happened,” Gates explained.
Talking about Steve Jobs, Gates compared himself to the “Genius” and said he wasn’t “tough” like Jobs. “Jobs was a genius, what he did, particularly when he came back to Apple… no one else could do what he did there. I couldn’t have done that. He was such a wizard at over-motivating people— I was a minor wizard so I couldn’t fall under his spell— but I could see him casting the spell,” Gates joked. “I was so jealous.”
“I’m not that great socially, I don’t know how to cook and I’m very embarrassed I don’t speak any [other] languages fluently,” Gates spoke about his personal shortcomings. In case you haven’t heard the podcast, check out here.
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