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Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft EmpireBook

by Wallace & Erickson

Who uses, recommends or left Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Jason Evanish
Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company; former product lead at KISSmetrics who writes about leadership and product management.
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Starting out in a motel in Albuquerque, Microsoft had the most humble of beginnings only to become the most powerful company in the computer industry. This book is a great recounting of how it all went down until the early 90s. Unfortunately, Bill isn't someone you can learn from like Branson and Jobs; they always felt like real, flawed people to me. Bill Gates was a semi-genius, workaholic with a ruthless edge and a great skill at writing contracts. I suppose that's a lesson in itself.

His continuously-updated books page, where every book he reads gets a 1-10 rating and a "Why Read it" note; the book links carry his Amazon affiliate tag. The page carries no publication date for individual entries — its own metadata gives article:published_time 2012-12-16 and article:modified_time 2020-10-28, and books were added across that whole span. (undated page)

2020-10-28·jasonevanish.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

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