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Last week, Bill Gates stepped down, officially and formally, as the head of Microsoft. Naturally there were many laudatory articles in the world press.

Publications and writers who, only recently, had called him pirate and compared his impact, unfavorably to a plague of locusts, fell all over themselves writing wonderful things about this rich, successful and world-changing man. I waded though a mound of that stuff, muck rake in hand.

Here is my pick of the best articles and posts, followed by a few comments of my own.

From the Economist: The meaning of Bill Gates
"When Bill Gates helped to found Microsoft 33 years ago there was a company rule that no employees should work for a boss who wrote worse computer code than they did. Just five years later, with Microsoft choking on its own growth, Mr. Gates hired a business manager, Steve Ballmer, who had cut his teeth at Procter & Gamble, which sells soap. The founder had chucked his coding rule out of the window. In becoming the world’s richest man, Mr. Gates’s unswerving self-belief has repeatedly been punctuated by that sort of pragmatism. But those qualities have never been on such public display as they were this week, when the outstanding businessman of his age stepped back from a life’s work."

From Bloomberg: Ballmer Is Left With `Google Envy,' Sinking Stock
"Shares of the world's largest software maker are down 22 percent this year, sales of Windows software are slowing, and an attempt to buy Yahoo! Inc. flopped. And Google Inc. is widening its lead over Microsoft in Internet searches, leaving Ballmer with a case of ``chronic Google envy,'' according to Jane Snorek, an analyst at Minneapolis-based First American Funds."

From Fortune: Microsoft without Gates
"The challenge isn't replacing Bill. That's already happened. Ballmer's big issues now: growth, Google, and those pesky Apple ads."

From Harvard Business Publishing: Bill Gates: Entrepreneur, Manager, and Leader
"Today marks the last working day for Bill Gates at Microsoft. So much has been written and spoken about him that another column appears redundant. Some people may even feel a tinge of happiness that they no longer have to contend with the ruthless businessman that Gates has been portrayed as. The purpose of this post is to analyze what can be learned by young people from perhaps the most successful entrepreneur of our times."

So, farewell to Bill Gates in his Microsoft incarnation. Mostly I think that the stories about his moving on have got it wrong. They praise him for his business success and call him a great entrepreneur. True, enough, but I think business is just another game to Bill Gates.

I've been around him, heard him speak at giant conventions and watched as he was interviewed. What seems to me to be the thing that turns on the light inside the man is technology and what it can do for people.

While other geeks talked about the wonders of technology itself, what always struck me about Gates is that he talked about what a difference that technology could make. That was his passion, more than business, more than getting rich, more than technology itself.

Now he's moving on and what's fun to watch is that now there's something else that lights Bill up. He wants to change the world in a different way. Now he wants to make a difference in the way we teach our children to read and the way we deal with disease and famine and pestilence.

That's what lights Bill Gates up these days and I think it will be a very good thing for the world.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

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Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

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For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

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