Almost Perfect

It was nice of the author to put this up for free when it fell out of print, and I'd say that if you are interested in the history of IT/computing in the 80s and early 90s, it's a worthwhile read. The PDF is a brisk 115 pages, and while he's not a great author, Willard ‘Pete' Peterson doesn't write badly enough that it's a slog to get through. I also appreciate that he does admit – in several places – that a good amount of his good fortune arose from the luck of being in the right place at the right time, something most rich people ignore even though the main cause of wealth is being born into it, be that Tucker Carlson's being born into the Swanson dinner fortune, Bill Gates coming from millionaire lawyers, or Warren Buffet being the child of a 4-term Congressman.

That said, if the other reviews haven't clued you in, Pete is...not a nice man. I don't exactly think he's arrogant like some other reviewers said, but rather he comes off as a pretty big hypocrite without ever quite realizing he is one. Everything he claims to stand for, his actions never actually reflect, and hilariously he never puts two and two together meaningfully even when his own daughter calls him out on it. He's very much the worst sort of capitalist: autocratic, without real ethics, and convinced that profit is the sole good and sole factor in running a company. He talks a lot about his belief in flat corporate structures, and it gets a bit grating when everything he actually did makes it very clear he saw himself as king and high priest alongside the two other owners of the company that eventually ousted him. To give him some credit, a few of his biggest blunders – including the classic “if I leave, they'll come crawling” bluff – he does admit were mistakes.