Was Bill Gates the smartest person at Microsoft?

I was an official at Microsoft during the '90s. Amid that time, better believe it, I'd state Bill was most likely the sharpest individual at Microsoft. 

Bill jumped at the chance to contract for IQ and encircle himself with high IQ individuals. Bill preferred having "high data transfer capacity" discussions with truly savvy individuals. 

Steve Ballmer is likewise incredibly shrewd (outscored Bill on the Putnam test). I'd put Steve nearby Bill. Nathan Myhrvold was one more of the most brilliant. 

Were there individuals who may have had higher IQs than Bill, Steve or Nathan? No doubt, I'd experience no difficulty trusting that given Bill and Steve's craving to enlist for IQ. Be that as it may, in a room of incredibly brilliant individuals, Bill and Steve as I would see it was the most astute. 

What truly separate Bill in my brain and the psyches of a significant number of my associates is the manner by which shrewd Bill was in such a large number of territories. He could delve profoundly into the most profound profundities of the most troublesome and arcane specialized regions, where just a bunch of others in the organization had a similar profundity and that was their specific territory of forte. He realized the item subtleties, all around. He realized the promoting plan just as anybody, however, the individual in control. He realized the business side, and so on. He's appeared in his establishment the capacity to dive deep in totally extraordinary zones, regardless of whether it's the science or the business side of NGO's. He's an unquenchable peruser and inconceivably quick student. 

Bill likewise had an uncanny capacity to ask the careful right, hardest, most keen or uncovering inquiries in BillG surveys. Bill would test your comprehension and you better hear what you're saying, or state "I don't have the foggiest idea, and I'll find the solution." There was no bullshitting Bill. Or on the other hand you paid an extreme cost and paid it just once or you were no more. 

It was exciting and lowering to work with Bill. For instance, I'd have a gathering with him to talk about some key issue I'd been thinking about for two or three months and took me that long to enter and concoct a proposal (and have the capacity to safeguard it). Bill would begin with a similar introductory information, and inside a few minutes, he'd commonly get similar bits of knowledge that it took me months to get. Furthermore, have new bits of knowledge I never got. I'm no Bill however I'm not dumb either. Bill is simply remarkably savvy. 

Same with Steve. Steve went poorly profound in fact yet he knew the numbers for the business you were running superior to anything you did, and for all the significant organizations in the organization. He has a photographic memory. I regarded Steve's insight as much as Bill's. 

PS. One thing I learned in my years at Microsoft, however, is that being shrewd isn't equivalent to being correct. 

PPS. There were individuals at Microsoft like Butler Lampson, Chuck Thacker, Jim Gray, Leslie Lamport — all Turing Award victors — and Charles Simonyi, and others (I'm certain I'm missing other people who have the right to be named) who are/were amazingly splendid and one could present a defense for as "the sharpest." Bill's broadness of splendor to me is the thing that truth emerges. 

PPPS. In the wake of composing this answer, I understood that another region of Bill's brightness is the manner in which he fabricated the organization. It's something that is not talked sufficiently about or that he gets enough acknowledgment for. Driven by Bill by and by, the organization put a ton into enrolling top ability directly out of school. At the time, in the 80's and mid-'90s, most tech organizations didn't select along these lines. He needed crude, savvy ability from the best schools more than understanding. He trusted brilliant individuals would make sense of it. He facilitated summer understudies at his home each late spring. Microsoft's school enlisting program was a tremendous vital preferred standpoint at that point. He additionally was liberal with investment opportunities, when most tech organizations were miserly and gave choices just to a world-class gathering. School graduates coming into Microsoft frequently didn't have a clue what investment opportunities were, yet they were given them. Yearly execution surveys accompanied extra stock stipends, as did advancements. For increasingly experienced individuals, compensations were underneath market (here and there agonizingly so) yet investment opportunities were liberal. Also, it worked out well for those at Microsoft during the '90s. So much stuff is underestimated now by the tech business.