Auburn University Montgomery Bill Gates Was a Transformational Leader Essay

established the Microsoft Corporation in 1975. Gates’s passion and skill wereprogramming—he would work night and day to meet the extremely aggressivedeadlines he set for himself and his company. Eventually Gates had to bring inother programmers; he focused on recent college graduates. “We decided that wewanted them to come with clear minds, not polluted by some other approach, tolearn the way that we liked to develop software, and to put the kind of energy intoit that we thought was key.”

In the early days of Microsoft, Gates was in charge of product planning andprogramming while Allen was in charge of the business side. He motivated hisprogrammers with the claim that whatever deadline was looming, no matter howtight, he could beat it personally if he had to. What eventually developed at Micro-soft was a culture in which Gates was king. Everyone working under Gates wasmade to feel they were lesser programmers who couldn’t compete with his skill ordrive, so they competed with each other. They worked long hours and tried theirbest to mirror Gates—his drive, his ambition, his skill. This internal competitionmotivated the programmers and made Microsoft one of the most successful com-panies in the computer industry, and one of the most profitable. The corporationhas created a tremendous amount of wealth—many of its employees have becomemillionaires while working at Microsoft, including, of course, Bill Gates. Over thepast 20 years Gates has been one of the richest people in the world and had anestimated net worth of $87 billion in 2017.

Having done extremely well in the business world, Gates shifted his attentionin 2008 when he retired from Microsoft in order to focus on the Bill andMelinda Gates Foundation. This foundation was created in partnership withWarren Buffett and its purpose is to alleviate extreme poverty, eradicate disease,and improve health care across the globe. Using business practices to improvephilanthropic outcomes, the foundation has an endowment of over $35 billionand Gates has been very successful at getting others to donate to their cause.The foundation funds programs to control infectious diseases, such as malaria,HIV/AIDs, and tuberculosis; improve sanitation, nutrition, and family planning;prevent slavery and sex trafficking; help with agricultural development; and pro-vide financial services, such as microlending, to the poor. These programs aremaking a tangible difference in tackling some of the world’s biggest problems.