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<p>Well, I don’t know about the last two. Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, yet commentators have invariably remarked about his bland personality and weak social skills, and even he’s admitted as much. Hard-working, motivated, ambitious, inventive, intelligent? Sure. But nobody considers Bill Gates to be an archetype of somebody with a winning personality or social skills. </p>
<p>Gates says. “So my freshman year I show up, and it’s all graduate students, and two days into the course I tell the professor, Hey, you know, this thing is wrong … My social skills weren’t that great.”</p>
<p>*He didn’t have social skills, but then again, he wasn’t running for prom king.</p>
<p>…Gates’ social skills still aren’t all that great. He may omit to shake your hand when you meet him. His voice has one setting: high and loud. He still has that much remarked-upon habit of rocking back and forth while he’s thinking, and he sometimes jumps up, rather startlingly, to pace while he’s talking. *</p>
<p>[Bill</a> Gates Goes Back to School - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1630188,00.html]Bill”>http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1630188,00.html)</p>
<p>Or consider the notion of likability. Many rich people not only are not likable, but their very dislikability seems to be a core reason for how they became rich in the first place. For example, while the most common word usually used to describe Steve Jobs is ‘genius’, the second most common word is one that rhymes with ‘brass hole’. Granted, Jobs has mellowed significantly since he became sick, but Silicon Valley is replete with stories of Jobs’s abusive and vindictive leadership style (not to mention how he denied paternity of the daughter he had with his girlfriend - even claiming in a court document that he couldn’t be the father because he was sterile - and hence consigning them to live on welfare despite the fact that he was already wealthy. </p>
<p>*…let’s face it, Jobs has a track-record of demeaning others and taking credit for their work. </p>
<p>Malone – who once wrote a book about Jobs and his company – points out “there will always be things about him that are unforgivable – cruelties and manipulations (especially to Steve Wozniak), early crimes (illegal telephones, ironically), megalomania, and an unquenchable need to take credit from others (Do you know who led the original Mac team? Invented the iPod? Devised the new iPhone? I don’t think so) – and that no achievement will ever erase.” *</p>
<p>[Steve</a> Jobs as the Poster Child for the Upside of *******s - Bob Sutton](<a href=“http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/01/steve_jobs_as_t.html]Steve”>http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/01/steve_jobs_as_t.html)</p>
<p>* Also not surprising were the many stories about Jobs as a demanding and hot-tempered leader.</p>
<p>“Everyone has their Steve-Jobs-the-******* story,” said one attendee, who asked not to be named.</p>
<p>One former manager, for example, recalled that Jobs told an entire team of engineers they would be losing their jobs right after they came back from Christmas vacation. “What a thing to do before the holidays,” the employee said, shaking his head in disbelief.</p>
<p>“Everyone dreads getting caught in an elevator with him,” said another.</p>
<p>Yet another former employee remembered how Jobs “ripped me a new one” for failing to deliver a project that met his high standards. Jobs sidelined the employee, who quit the company a couple of months later after working there for nearly a decade. *</p>
<p>[Apple</a> Memories Not Sweet as Pie](<a href=“http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2003/09/60441]Apple”>http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2003/09/60441)</p>