Bill Gates best job interview answers and COVID-19 update | State of Inspiration w/ Stephen Curry

Hi, I'm Bill.

How you doing, Bill? Stephen, nice to meet you. Thank you so much for doing this. [MUSIC] I know you've been, you know, first in line trying to answer a lot of these questions and lead in this moment. It's a pleasure to sit down and just have a conversation. People have seen you do a lot of these interviews and talk about things that, you know, you're passionate about and how you can best serve the community at large, not only here in the US, internationally. Wanted to highlight your Goalkeepers initiative. I want to do something a little lighthearted and fun. I don't know when the last time that you've done a job interview. A lot of kids out here that are either coming right out of college or planning to enter the workforce soon, obviously in this uncertain market, but we wanted to give them a little advice on answering those typical job interview questions that are important in terms of trying to set up your future and getting into the career that you want to get into. If you don't mind, I want to ask you, you know, a couple of the— you Google the top 10 interview questions and see if you can give us some insight. Is that all right?

Love to, yeah.

Let's say you're interviewing for a junior engineer position at Microsoft, sitting in a boardroom or on video call in 2020. Why should we hire you?

You should look at the code that I've written. You know, I'm kind of crazy. I write software programs way beyond any classes that I've taken and think I've gotten better over time. So take a look at how ambitious I've been there. I do think I can work well with people. I might criticize their code a little harshly, but overall I like to be on a team. I like ambitious goals. I like thinking through how we can anticipate the future. Software is cool and I want to be involved.

How would you define your strengths and your weaknesses? How you can, you know, incorporate those into a team kind of aspect?

Well, I'm not somebody who knows a lot about marketing. You know, I wouldn't enjoy being a salesman. For a position where you're actually creating the products and thinking through what those features should be, I'm fascinated by that. I followed the history of the industry, read about the mistakes that have been made. So product definition, product creation, very strong. If you have a team that understands the customers, the sales, the marketing, I'm not gonna bring that, but I would enjoy working with them.

So I know we're obviously in a pandemic and there's a lot of uncertainty of the future in a lot of different industries, but we wanna value, you know, the talent that we have on our team. So I wanna make sure that they're appreciated on the other side. What would be your salary expectations for this job and something that you'd be comfortable with?

I hope the option package is good. You know, I'm able to take risk and I think the company has a great future, so I'd prefer to get stock options even more than cash compensation. I hear some other companies are paying a lot, but treat me fairly and emphasize the options.

I like the little leverage play there. That was nice. That'll be helpful. Just a couple of sound bites of how you can come into those situations confidently speak about, you know, your strengths in a way that you have a lot to learn and a lot to offer to hopefully, you know, your future company. So thank you for doing that. I'm sure, hopefully, a fun experiment for you, but for a lot of these young people that are going to be coming into the workforce, hopefully they can take something away from that. Your Goalkeepers 2020, you know, report that came out, for those that don't know about your foundation, what you've done with Goalkeepers, dedicated to accelerating progress towards the 17 specific global goals for sustainable development, and obviously the north star of ending poverty and fighting inequality all around the world. I want to talk about I wanna talk about where you say COVID-19 has impacted not just us here at the Mexican in the United States, but globally. And I think you said something about in what, the 25 weeks that we've been dealing with the pandemic, it set our globe back 25 years. Can you kind of elaborate on the effects that you're seeing, especially in the low-income countries?

One amazing positive thing is that in most years in these developing countries, there actually is gradual but very positive progress. That is, since the year 2000, we've cut the number of kids who die before the age of 5 in half. Literacy rates are going up, malnutrition's going down. So normally when we deliver this report to the United Nations that has these ambitious goals called the Sustainable Development Goals, normally we're documenting that slow but steady progress and highlighting the countries that are doing the best and talking about some of the heroes who have either invented things or toiled out in the field making that progress. This year, sadly, our report was pretty much a downer. Things that we look at, like how many kids are getting vaccines, because of all the disruption to these health systems, it's dropped all the way back to where it was 25 years ago. You know, and so we were climbing up like this, and now we've dropped down a lot. And that means lots of diseases like measles, they'll be— Measles.— a rebound in deaths. And so if we just look at the COVID death number, although it's a very important number to look at, in no way, for even the rich countries, does it capture the negative effects, the tragedy of what's going on. Things like mental health or the educational deficits or other diseases that messing up the health system is making more prevalent. It's much more difficult to dimensionalize that.

But—

We wanted in the report to let people know that particularly in the poorest countries, things like hunger, poverty, getting the life-saving medicines, this has been a gigantic setback.

Absolutely. I know here domestically, obviously it's been an accelerant in terms of even some of the systemic and kind of generational issues that we've all unleashed the right resources in the right places. But can you kind of comment on the patterns that you've seen here domestically in terms of You know, overall health, the job crisis, looking at education now, especially that kids are either back to school with their certain safety protocols or doing distance learning, things like that, and how that's affected the mass majority here in the States.

Almost any dimension of inequity, race differences that we see in the United States that are still troublingly large, the difference between the wealthy and the not so wealthy, this pandemic has made those differences even worse. You know, we can see it through schooling. If you live in a small house, you don't have a great internet connection, you go to a public school that's not doing online learning very well, you're falling behind and that will have lifelong effects. Whereas if you're out in the suburbs at a well-funded public school or even more extreme at a private school, they're probably doing a good job at the online learning. You probably have a great internet connection. You probably have a room that you can get away and get you know, peace and quiet to try to concentrate on your studies. The jobs that are well-paying are— many of those are the jobs where we can sit at home and just use Teams or Zoom and continue to be paid for that work. Whereas if you're a waitress at a restaurant, you know, doing a tough job, working hard, not well paid even when you do it, you're not even getting the hours. So you're not getting the opportunity to work. And so we didn't prepare well for this pandemic. I was one of the voices that warned that something like this could happen. But even I didn't appreciate how inequitable this would be, including the death rates and the infection rates in inner-city communities being so much worse than the average.

In this generation, right, we're talking the social media era, and I know there's a lot of parallels to, obviously, the Spanish flu, 1914, but in terms of what the difference is now and how information is spread, false information, how it's kind of fragmented to create a stir in certain communities versus others, and it's very targeted in that respect. How much do you worry about, you know, how people are sourcing their information, even regulations over how that information is shared and whether there should be some involvement, whether from the government or what have you, in terms of how that is disseminated throughout our community? Because information is obviously power, especially in the response to this pandemic. Things change so fast. How much do you worry about that and what's your perspective on it?

Well, the digital revolution, internet, social media, all of that, in certain respects, it's made it easier for us to see what's going on. Medical researchers are publishing articles every day, and all over the world, people can immediately see what the new thinking is there. Tracking the disease statistics, I click on the Johns Hopkins website every morning and see, okay, which countries are having a tough time with cases or, or deaths. Thank God for the internet. Work at home, you know, our ability to connect up with each other is driven by that. But it also has meant that a lot of very surprisingly interesting conspiracy theories that are false, sadly, they spread a lot faster than the truth. You know, so the idea that, did somebody intentionally cause this thing? Completely false. Even in some cases accusing me of having some connection. Yeah. That can be dangerous because it means, you know, your willingness to believe, is the vaccine something I should take? Should I wear masks? You know, if you go for these simple but wrong theories, getting people to work together and protect each other so we can get out of this as soon as possible, that's really at risk. You raise the question of how should the government deal with that? It's very difficult. Ideally, citizens are just well-informed and they know which publications are very careful about what they say, and we don't have to engage in censorship. Censor. Censorship. But so much of the almost crazy false information is out there that looking at the companies like Facebook and saying, okay, what is their role in that? You know, when somebody says masks don't work, which is wrong, or they say just take hydroxychloroquine and you'll be totally safe. What is their responsibility for catching those things, particularly when they get up to large numbers? That is being debated. And, you know, I think we'll come out of this with those companies feeling a stronger sense of responsibility and actually understanding having the public debate about about how they need to help here.

When it comes to that information, I know especially just the awareness of how this pandemic has affected Black and brown communities across our country in a disproportionate amount. I think the CDC said, what, 2.6 times more likely for a Black person and 2.8 times for a Latinx community to contract this disease. From your vantage point, knowing issues that have been prevalent long before this pandemic, but that have only been accelerated, how can we curb this? Put the right resources in the right place, put those communities in a much more at ease in terms of the light at the end of the tunnel.

There's a lot of things we still need to do. You know, communities of color still have far less access to testing diagnostics. And that's really unjust because as you say, they're not only more at risk of infection, they're way more at risk of getting very sick and even dying. And so the fact that the testing resources, who gets the quick results. It's not in these inner-city communities where a lot of the burden is. That's an injustice that should be fixed. Likewise, as we do the vaccine trial, we've got to make sure that people who volunteered are very diverse so that we have enough representations from the groups who are being hit hardest and we understand, is it safe? Is it effective in those groups? You know, not just the average statistics there. You know, we wouldn't have predicted that the burden would fall so heavily on people of color. And we're still confused about that. Is it partly the jobs they do? Is it partly comorbidities? Is that they live in larger multigenerational households? You know, we need to get to the bottom of this because that has to be part of our understanding this disease and how we, you know, reduce this incredible burden. But it is very sad that at the same time we see racial injustice through policing, and we're, you know, talking about that, we have this raging pandemic that is messing up these communities and setting them back both on an absolute and relative basis for education, their health. And so hopefully the awareness we get out of these tragic facts drives us to solve specifically the COVID-related problems and looking at the broader gaps. Thank you.

You're taking a very data-forward approach to pretty much everything, right? And that's what's supposed to spark ideas and resources and alternatives to the current reality we live in. But how do you approach those conversations where somebody on the other side might not even acknowledge the systematic or the disproportionate access to resources and healthcare in certain communities? That's like, you know, kind of a top-level point of view and you want to kind of break it down to this is where we need to go, but we're starting here. Like, how do you bridge that gap where it doesn't get contentious, but you're trying to level the playing field so that we can be productive in where we're trying to go as a, —entire country.

It is a challenge that if you live in the suburbs or, you know, if you're lucky to have been as successful as I've been, it's easy to lose sight of these differences. Now, I like to look at numbers a lot, and so when I look at the numbers, I'm just amazed, whether it's the quality of the inner-city education, the dropout rates. Oprah did a thing where she had kids from an inner-city school go look at the suburban school and vice versa, and they were just stunned that the building and everything was so completely different. I think, you know, even for me, I have to go, you know, whether it's the inner city in America, talking to people who live there, or outside the US, we have this same thing, you know. The situation in Africa, you know, it's overwhelmingly Black population, is so much worse than people are probably aware of. And so hands-on visits, whether it's to the schools or the clinics, I think that is necessary to hear the voices of people who've been hurt And then, you know, there's a lot of good movies now. There's a lot of good books. I was just reading The New Jim Crow, which is pretty eloquent and forceful about the justice system and the role that it plays in perpetuating bad conditions. And, you know, it takes a lot to try and put yourself having empathy for other people. So we all have to push harder on this.

I love that. And I think approach to that is obviously deploying technology in the right aspects to move and in the most optimal way. Like, what role do you see technology and innovation playing in our recovery as a whole? You talked about your early surveillance program in Seattle and how we can buff up contact tracing and just overall, like, integrating, you know, digital technology into certain policy and healthcare initiatives. Kind of self-explanatory. I would love to hear just from a technological mindset of what role does it actually play in us, you know, getting through this pandemic in the best way possible.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] There's the technology innovation to end the pandemic, and there's a lot of drugs and other therapies that we need to reduce the death rate. We need more volume of testing so that if you're back in school, you can be tested multiple times a week to make sure you're not starting a chain of infection. And then we need the vaccine, which is the most important thing. It's fantastic you've been talking to Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci and I have been working together for more than 20 years, And most things we work on are really obscure because malaria, TB, the infectious diseases that he's so expert in, normally because they're in poor countries, they don't get much attention. So we've gone from getting very little attention where his work was obscure to now a public figure. And, you know, he's handling it very well. He and I talk about the progress on the vaccines, and he and I are both very hopeful that by early next year, We'll have multiple of these vaccines. At first, we won't have all the supply we want, but over the course of next year, we should have very good supply. So that vaccine piece, doing that right, you know, being honest about what we know and the timeframes is important. And, you know, thank goodness he's involved with that. And our foundation, including the global picture of getting vaccines, not to just the US, but everyone is there.

Thank you.

We're using telemedicine a lot more. Before the pandemic, it was 1% of doctor visits. It got all the way up for some health systems to the majority of visits. Actually, even once we get the pandemic done, we see an opportunity for that to improve the quality of healthcare and reduce the cost, which is very important. I'd say online learning, which can be a lot better. This is gonna force us to get the courses right, make them work for students of all types. You know, online can be more flexible, particularly going to college and trying to do a job at the same time. I think online learning is one of the few things that can bring costs down and improve flexibility. So hopefully, although the whole thing's a tragedy and a huge setback, some of these areas of innovation, like online learning, telemedicine, get accelerated so that, you know, 3 years from now we can say, "Wow, we made over 10 years of progress. This stuff really works." Absolutely.

I'm optimistic and hopeful as those resources are being deployed and as that new perspective is being initiated that we curb kind of the natural pattern of most of those resources are gonna go to the affluent, the higher earning communities and whatnot. Being on the ground in the inner city communities, hearing from people's experience about where their needs can be met on a much more consistent and impactful basis, that all those things you just kind of spoke on will be as more widespread than they've ever been. Especially as these conversations are starting to happen more widespread. So just on that front, how would you describe what our new normal is going to be? 'Cause I think as you talked about vaccines, the timeframe that it's gonna take to not just get to a point where they're being deployed, but also the distribution and how you prioritize that, using masks even when vaccines are being initiated and all those type of things. What does the new normal look like for our society coming out of this whenever that is?

Very hopeful that the first half of next year that we get that vaccine approved and we're getting it out to the people who need it most so we can increase in-person schooling, which, you know, the younger you are, the more important that is for you and your parents to be in the, the school itself. I think by summer, if things go well, we will be starting to go back to normal, that we'll have enough coverage of the vaccine that even public events can start resuming. Been interesting watching sports events with no crowds where they kind of synthesize the crowd noise somehow, sometimes very cleverly, sometimes it's a bit strange. So at the end of 2021, I hope the US is, you know, trying to close the gaps we've created, catching up on education or vaccination or getting more resources into inner city areas. From that point forward, we don't know, will people go to their office as much as they used to? Or maybe half as much? Will they take business trips as much as they used to or maybe half as much? You know, will telemedicine be kind of revolutionary and not have our medical costs going up? Or online learning not having our tuition prices going up? I tend to err on the optimistic side. Our foundation, we're engaging in backing innovators in those areas. So I do think it'll be a lot different. I don't think it'll be exactly going back to what we had before, but it'll be— Mm-hmm. Fixing the deficits and seizing on some of these new approaches.

Kind of the last question, I know you, you deal with a lot of big world issues, right? And you have been so consistent with lending thought and time to world health issues. Now we're dealing with climate change that is, you know, right in front of us. Even thinking about how the pandemic has, in a short timeframe, exposed some of the travesties of how we just move through life in general and open up a lot of people's eyes. It's kind of a two-parter, but what has been kind of some of the learnings around the pandemic and people's daily lives being altered and changed, whether they're commuting to work and just the overall traffic, you know, around public spaces, things like that? How do you approach such big ticket issues and create a system of approach that puts you in a position to be most impactful and most game-changing in those pursuits? Because I think anybody can leave a name and voice to it, but it goes way deeper than that. I just kind of would very curious about how you approach that.

Well, I'm very lucky that, you know, backing great scientists or engineers, you know, I love doing that. My whole career has been about that. So whether it's a vaccine for HIV or malaria or better way of doing math curriculum so that it appears more relevant and interesting, I love that I get to back those things. When you have a tragedy like this pandemic, there is always the possibility you're going to narrow your community that you care about. You're going to think about yourself, your family, not the whole country, including those who've been, been somewhat left behind. Likewise, there's a risk looking at Africa and other developing countries and saying, "No, we need to help them out because difficulties there of not enough food are really extreme, and small amounts of the budget, less than 1%, can help them out." Likewise, if You don't want to just think about the here and now. You also want to think about the future. After all, the government failed us by not anticipating this pandemic. There were voices like mine in TED Talk and other venues that kind of said, "Hey, get ready. We don't know when, but it's coming." Sadly, that didn't happen. Another thing we trust government to get us ready for is climate change. That's coming in It won't be as easy as creating a vaccine to solve it. And so right now, in terms of people's sympathy, being broad, you know, being willing to address other problems even though they're not here right now, I am actually seeing a lot of positive voices. People saying, "Make sure the recovery is a green recovery." Europe has done a lot on that. And so— and actually, the dialogue in politics about, you know, "Does climate change matter?" is stronger today than it's ever been. So this closing in and only worrying about the short term I'm not seeing that. Of course, your audience, which is very young, will be the key to saying, "Let's not just look at this short term. Let's start the investments that deal with inequities. Let's start the investments that can make sure climate change doesn't come in and have even more tragic results than this pandemic does." Young people thinking about policies, getting involved, I think I'm seeing an uptick. I hope that's sustained. Because they're, you know, they're the ones who will really do the innovative work.

Absolutely. And that's why I'm so grateful to have you, you know, in this setting where you present hope. I think you talked about earlier, you tend to be optimistic, and if you don't have hope, you're hopeless. And I think for us as a collective to continue to have these conversations, to get the right information, to start forming the right perspective of what we need to do now and in the future to, obviously, like you said, not just look out for ourselves, but for everyone, I think it means a lot. So I thank you for your time, for all your work, for your family, your foundation. Thank you so much. And hopefully this goes a long way to, you know, getting us out of this pandemic.

No, it's been a lot of fun. And I hope I can come see you in person not too long from now.

Absolutely. I look forward to it. I appreciate it.

All right, great.

Thank you very much, Bill. This is awesome. Freaking Bill Gates, man. Okay.