This profile of Bezos sounds a lot like the Bezos Steve Yegge wrote about here <a href="https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX" rel="nofollow">https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesv...</a> and here <a href="https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzVeRq" rel="nofollow">https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV...</a><p>From the article:<p><i>“He had no background in control theory, no background in operating systems,” Jones says. “He only had minimum experience in the distribution centers and never spent weeks and months out on the line.” But Bezos laid out his argument on the whiteboard, and “every stinking thing he put down was correct and true,” Jones says. “It would be easier to stomach if we could prove he was wrong, but we couldn’t. That was a typical interaction with Jeff. He had this unbelievable ability to be incredibly intelligent about things he had nothing to do with, and he was totally ruthless about communicating it.”</i><p>And from Steve's second post:<p><i>Trust me folks, I saw this happen time and again, for years. Jeff Bezos has all these incredibly intelligent, experienced domain experts surrounding him at huge meetings, and on a daily basis he thinks of shit that they never saw coming. It’s a guaranteed facepalm fest.</i><p>Steve's posts give a much better account, though, since the control theory guy doesn't say what the argument was about, and why Jeff was right. Steve goes on to desribe his presentation to Jeff on what an engineer should know, how he hacked the presentation to make it intersesting for Jeff by removing enough from the presentation that Jeff had to mentally fill in the gaps, and what Jeff pointed out that Steve didn't add (machine learning or data mining).<p>A CEO that appears to know everything is a common theme in large founder-controlled companies:<p>Steve Jobs: <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/eric-schmidt-on-steve-jobs-10062011.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/eric-schmidt-on-steve-j...</a><p>Bill Gates: <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html</a><p>Stephen Wolfram: <a href="http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/starting-long-term-company/" rel="nofollow">http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/starting-long-ter...</a> Start at "I insist on really understanding everything." (Wolfram Research isn't a large company but that appears to be partially by choice)<p>James J. Hill (railroad magnate): <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=1itXgy8gAHYC&lpg=PP1&dq=james%20hill%20detail&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=detail&f=false" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=1itXgy8gAHYC&lpg=PP1&dq=jam...</a>