Bickering Billionaires‏

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576232051635476200.html Woven throughout the book is a bitterness Mr. Allen expresses for not receiving more credit for his work throughout his career and more shares in Microsoft. Billionaires who think they are underpaid. Gotta love it. Mr. Allen also reveals that his decision to leave Microsoft was prompted largely by his growing disenchantment with the behavior of Mr. Gates, whom he portrays as a confrontational taskmaster who clashed with Mr. Allen's low-key style. Mr. Allen says he eavesdropped on a discussion in the Microsoft offices in Bellevue, Wash., between Mr. Gates and Steve Ballmer, now the company's CEO, in which he heard the two men talking about Mr. Allen's recent lack of productivity and how they might dilute his equity in the company by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. Mr. Allen said he burst into the room and confronted Messrs. Gates and Ballmer, both of whom later apologized to him and backed down from their plan. "I had helped start the company and was still an active member of management, though limited by my illness, and now my partner and my colleague were scheming to rip me off," he says in the book. "It was mercenary opportunism, plain and simple." (Bill Gates is a jerk, who would have figured that) I'd thought that our partnership was based on fairness, but now I saw that Bill's self-interest overrode all other considerations. My partner was out to grab as much of the pie as possible and hold on to it, and that was something I could not accept." (Yet as owner of the Seattle Seahawks this is exactly the same thing he is doing to the NFL players. Trying to grab a bigger piece of the pie. When he does it is is OK)