Steve Jobs, funder and CEO of Apple Inc., and Bill Gates, funder of Microsoft are perhaps the two most essential figures that gave rise to our digital age. Though being arch-rivals to each other, the two had a starkly similar past. Neither of them completed his bachelors degree, while both of them took on the Personal Computer industry at its rudimentary stage, and transformed it to become the industry that affects the human race vastly.
The two, on the other hand, are very different in one fundamental aspect. While Jobs is an artist, Gates is an engineer. Being a Mac user I like to think that Jobs shaped the computer industry with his vision, and Gates set his foothold by taking the bits of Jobs vision and spreading to the world. In a documentary of this history, Pirates of Silicon Valley, the actor who played Steve Wozniak, the co-funder of Apple, commented that Jobs has definitely been to weird places, and seen different things. In his commencement speech to the Stanford University graduation 2005, Jobs recounted briefly of that history. In the three stories he shared, he told the major events in his life. While the first story revolve largely about how Apple came to be (and briefly, his resentment to Gates and his gang), the second and third story resembles closely the points brought up in Ecclesiastes. Jobs funded Apple in early 80s, but at a certain point the visions in the company diverged, and he was fired from Apple by the board. To him, it was a traumatic time, in which he lost his bearing, and suddenly felt like being hit by a brick in the head. That event, however, made clear to him what is really important. The rest, as Qoholet insightfully wrote, are all vanity. He held to his his vision, accepting the world as it is, and proceeded to create NeXT and Pixar, with the former now core of Apple's technologies and the latter the most successful computer animation company in the world.
Gates, on the other hand, has not been known to have gone through that tribulation. However, an article "Bill Gates' eleven lesson to life addressed to High School students", attributed to him has been circulating for years. Though it was eventually confirmed as an urban legend, it is worth noting for its resemblance to the central message in the book of Ecclesiastes. Life is as such, and there's nothing new about it as long as it's under the sun. Get used to it.
Two interesting, contrasting studies in leadership styles and results. I think Steve Jobs is the better example for having been cast out of the company he founded.
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