I doubt it. The next Bill Gates isn't hoping to get noticed by some company. He's out making something and/or hustling for deals like the actual Bill Gates did. The next Bill Gates is most definitely NOT languishing unnoticed in some intern pool waiting to be discovered like some Hollywood wannabe starlet.
Even today Woz is not regarded as CTO material for a large company.
Mad scientist with lots of cool toys? Definitely.
Stick him in a suit and make him give presentations to the board? Definitely not.
Woz should be the guy in the basement in the lab coat who occasionally makes the lights in the building flicker with some bitchin' tesla coils... the guy that the CTO goes to in order to find out what is going to be important in tech trends, and who occasionally coughs up a wonderful invention that revolutionises everyone's life.
I think it is important to note that Woz is still listed as an Apple employee as an engineer
And the statement "Somewhere in that pool of rejected interns is the next Woz..." would be far more realistic than "Somewhere in that pool of rejected interns is the next Bill Gates..."
The Woz type and the Bill Gates type are different by miles.
i doubt future-bill-gates would have the patience to apply and wait for big company internships. he would probably be spending that time hacking, hustling, and creating his own software business.
But to actually be the next Bill Gates he or she will have to not get picked. Then 30 years from now the story will be "If only I'd gotten that intership at Google I'd never have started this amazing company. What? You've never heard of Google? Well let me tell you about how it used to be..."
