Bill Gates was known to be blunt with his feedback. He still is. But I can see his justification for it. He is knowledgeable and MSFT is a huge company, so directness is needed.
I am not Bill Gates. I am not Steve Jobs. I am not Wozniak. I am mercifully not Larry Ellison. I do not have [Google,Amazon,Facebook]'s problems. I do not have Google's customer base. I do not have Google's money. I have pretty normal problems, which require pretty normal to slightly extraordinary solutions. Anything these people are willing to discuss in public is an old solution to old problems. When I do have their problems, better solutions will likely exist, in the literature if not in reality.
I'm not a hero, or a prophet to save the world.
I'm just a child who - delusion, illusion, assumption, pick a word for me my master - believe "man can change the course of history"
Oh sorry master, I sense you said - this is God's work, you are a small, poor individual, do not be a hero -. Accept the truth you say.
But master, what if I'm a potential of progress, or a spark of a delusion.
Employees with too much self esteem are more expensive. 1990's Microsoft was run like Neverland, with all the cruel behaviors of a bunch of middle school children with no adult supervision. Whether he knew it or not, feeding their egos in a not-quite healthy way makes people easier to control for a useful period of time. We are the greatest, only we don't quite believe that's true so we have to be very, very loud about it.