14 DAY TRIAL // Steve Jobs was the only one who could save Apple, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said in a recent interview, according to Bloomberg.
Gates discussed Jobs’ leadership skills in an interview for CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” explaining that the former Apple CEO, who died of cancer in 2011, succeeded “even when he failed.”
The Microsoft founder points to the NeXT debut as the living proof that Steve Jobs was the right man for the job, emphasizing that despite the 1988 computer “completely failed” and “was such nonsense,” the Apple chief executive “mesmerized those people.”
Gates also praised Steve Jobs for the way he motivated people, despite the fact that the Apple founder occasionally turned into what the Microsoft billionaire describes as an “a**hole.”
“I have yet to meet any person who” could rival Jobs “in terms of picking talent, hyper-motivating that talent, and having a sense of design of, ‘Oh, this is good. This is not good,’” he said as per Bloomberg.
“He brought some incredibly positive things along with that toughness.”
Gates tough with employees too
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who created Apple together with Steve Jobs, previously described his former colleague as “very Trumpish,” pointing out that he often avoided arguing with him just because he wanted to avoid conflicts within the company. He revealed Jobs often said what he described as nasty things about company employees.
Meanwhile, Bill Gates, who is no longer actively involved at Microsoft, continues his charity work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he founded together with his wife back in 2000.
Gates revealed in the interview that he was also tough with other employees in his early days at Microsoft.
“[We had]a self-selected set of people who were mostly males, I’ll admit, and yes we were pretty tough on each other. And I think sometimes that went too far,” he said.