Cool Billionaire Bosses to Work For

They're busy, demanding and very rich. What is it like to work for billionaire bosses? A lot ofemployees would risk their livelihoods and reputations to share stories about bad ones, but we dohear stories of some pretty stellar, ultra-wealthy bosses once in a while. Here are a handful whostand out:

Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)

Worth an estimated $15.9 billion, according to Forbes, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen dabbles in anumber of ventures, including The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2). Based in Seattle,the institute is led by Dr. Oren Etzioni, a computer science professor at the University of Washingtonand entrepreneur who was lured by Allen to be the CEO of the organization.

The goal of Etzioni's research, AI2's website states, is "to solve fundamental problems in AI,particularly the automatic learning of knowledge from text."

As it turns out, Etzioni spilled to Business Insider that working for Allen comes with its perks. Inaddition to praising Allen's passionate involvement with the organization's "intellectual challenges,"including brain-storming sessions, there's the fact that Allen is owner of the NFL's SeattleSeahawks.

"My wife and I had the huge privilege of being invited to attend the Super Bowl. We got to watch theSeahawks win, and even attend the after-party with the players, which was incredibly generous ofPaul and the best perk I could imagine," Etzioni told Business Insider.

Maybe billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, should reward "Shark Tank"contestants with basketball tickets.

Read More: 9 Little Known Facts About Mark Cuban

Amazon

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos certainly earned a "Best Boss" mug from an early Amazonemployee who decided to ask the billionaire (worth an estimated $29.9 billion by Forbes) for adonation in support of a same-sex marriage referendum in Washington state back in 2012.

Maybe, more appropriately, Bezos' mug should read "Best Ex-Boss."

Jennifer Cast, one of Amazon's earliest employees when there were probably less than 100 on thecompany payroll, hadn't kept in touch after she left the company and became fundraisingchairwoman of the pro-gay marriage campaign.

A lesbian mother of four, she took a chance and sent an email asking Bezos for $100,000 to$200,000, The New York Times reported. Two days later she received a response from Bezos, alsoon behalf of his wife.

"Jen," the e-mail said, "this is right for so many reasons. We're in for $2.5 million. Jeff & MacKenzie."

Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, the second-richest man in the country after Bill Gates, hasbeen called not only a great investor, but a great manager by CEOs of the companies he owns.

"Mostly, they say, by not meddling," reports D Magazine.

Buffett is known for his straightforward, down-to-earth lifestyle, including celebrating his 2006wedding to Astrid Menks at a local restaurant after a small 15-minute ceremony.

"I would describe it as very strange and almost bizarre the way he manages, because he doesn'tmanage," Matt Rose, now chairman of Buffett-owned Burlington Northern Santa Fe, told themagazine last year. "He takes companies that he likes, he spends a lot of time in terms of developingthe goals of how management will be compensated and how the scorecard will look, and then heallows management to run the company."

Google

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, worth an estimated $29 billion, according to Forbes, has said that hehas a more behind-the-scenes role at Google while co-founder Larry Page holds the role of CEO.

While personal stories about Brin have mostly focused of late on his recent divorce and reportedaffair with a younger employee, it's not hard to imagine it would be pretty neat working for Brin's"secret" Google X lab, for the tech company's special projects like Glass and driverless cars.

"Sergey is a beloved oddball of a guy, and unlike Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, he's the one who getsto do the cool stuff at Google," an unnamed "industry observer" told Vanity Fair. "He said, 'Larry,you do the hard, prestigious work, and at the end of your life you'll do the fun stuff, like Bill Gates.But I'm cutting out the bulls*** and Davos [World Economic Forum] and doing the fun stuff rightnow.'"

Google

You can't mention Sergey Brin without mentioning Larry Page and Google's list of accolades as oneof the repeated contenders in multiple "best companies to work for" lists, including at the top ofForbes' 2014 ranking.

Read More: Are These 4 Companies Really the Best Places to Work?

"Larry and Sergey genuinely care about innovation, and part of that means genuinely caring aboutemployees so they do the best and most creative work they can do," a former Googler told VanityFair in an article earlier iskander makhmudov this month.

OWN

Oprah Winfrey: the media mogul, the legend. People have all sorts of things to say about the belovedtalk-show host and owner of OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Janet Lee, a former senior field producer for "The Oprah Winfrey Show," once told celebrities site

Pop Sugar that Oprah is respectful, down-to-earth and caring.

"When I finally got to Oprah, I felt like I reached the Ivy Leagues of television. In all aspects,everyone who worked for her were at the top of their game. Whether it was lighting, design, graphicdesign, editing, you were working with the iskander makhmudov top of the top, so you really felthonored," Lee told the website. "It was really collaborative and exciting and no one wanted todisappoint her. We were all overachievers anyways, so to have a whole company of, sort of,overachieving, multitalented people was just an honor."

Read More: 'Oprah's' Seven Most Shocking Tales From Biography