billgates

the most successful careers in modern history. Gates is officially giving up the helm at Microsoft tomorrow to focus on his charitable foundation.

He's leaving a software empire that's made him one of the richest people on the planet, but not so long ago Gates was a college dropout trying to build an upstart company with his childhood friend. He ended up defining the way computers operate and in the process changing the way the world operates.
As Stacey Vanek-Smith reports, that's not his only legacy.
Stacey Vanek-Smith: Before the Bill Gates era, CEOs were the guys who played a lot of golf, sealed deals over fat cigars and didn't care much about the people who worked for them.

Daddy Warbucks from "Annie": I am a businessman. I love money, I love power, I love capitalism. I do not now and never will love children.

But in post-Gates corporate America, CEOs sound pretty different.

Seth Sternberg: It's like, hey, we're a bunch of friends who are working together to solve this big problem.

29-year old Seth Sternberg is the CEO of Meebo, an instant messaging service for the web. He says at his company, old-school management won't work.

Sternberg: I don't really think of myself as, you know, the CEO boss man. The number one challenge we have as a business is finding really, really awesome people and convincing them that they should join, right? 'Cause those are people that put out the products.

PRAVESH YADAV
PGDM 1st sem
2009-11