Deadly Memos #2: Bill Gates Can't Take It Anymore

An excerpt from the introduction to Deadly Memos #2:

January 12, 1994

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To: Microsoft HR Leadership

From: Bill Gates

CC: Steve Ballmer

Re:?Talent

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Team,

I am writing to bring your attention to a dangerous phenomenon that is growing insidiously inside our business: mediocre talent.

Paul and I used to have a rule: Nobody made it into first round interviews without a 1500+ SAT score. That meant, of course, that the corporate holiday parties were never any fun, but at least I could sleep at night, confident that my engineers could write passable code. Now, every meeting I walk into has me wondering, “Where’s the IQ in this room?!”?

Let me give you an example. Yesterday, I was in a meeting with the Excel team to discuss some revisions to the statistics plug-in and it became clear that the newest engineer in the group didn’t understand the advantages of logging the independent and dependent variables in a regression! Can you believe that? I was enraged!

And then, to make matters worse, I started talking about the lessons we all took from Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments about the importance of overcoming our natural self-centeredness, and I could tell right away that most of the people in the room didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. What in the world is going on? Have we fallen so low that we can’t hire people with decent foundations in philosophy? I’m not asking for mastery of Kant here, just some basic grounding in the principles of leading a good life!

Maybe I could look past the IQ issue if our people were exceptional in other ways, like their willingness to work hard, but we seem to have slipped on that front too. When I leave the office around 10 pm each night, I am shocked by how few cars are in the parking lot. It seems like we just have a bunch of clock-punchers working here. Where’s the drive? Where’s the commitment? I don’t see much of it anywhere. The only exception I can think of is Melinda French down in product management. That gal is one of the few decent eggs we have—her car is always in the parking lot. Get me a hundred more managers like Melinda and then we’ll have a chance.

Everything started to go to pot when I stopped interviewing every candidate for every position. I know that was nearly ten years ago, but I swear we have been on an interminable slide ever since then. Now, I know it’s impossible for me to personally review every hire, but damn it, I need you all to start creating processes and standards that will get us back to hiring nothing but the best!

I’ll expect a plan and a proposed budget from you by next Friday on how we’re going to return to hiring excellence.

Best regards,

Bill

P.S. Let’s discuss our plans for Melinda. I have a few ideas I would like to explore.