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walbournToday was Bill Gates' last day as a full-time employee at Microsoft.
He's not really been that involved in the aspects of the company I deal with since before I started working there in 2004, and he hasn't technically been a corporate officer since 2006. While there was once a time when every new full-time employee meet Bill for dinner at his place, that tradition has been limited to interns only for many years so I've never actually met him or had any interaction with him at all. I've gotten two or three company-wide e-mails from him, and one of them was today. I've only seen him giving a few speeches at Windows launch events, and otherwise just interviews on TV.
The only time I recall having seen him live was when I went to a NT Developer Conference back in 1993 or so. At the time he didn’t have any visible security--it was before he was worried about being pied. It was a long time before he got an image consultant to get him to dress himself as a CEO instead of a nerd. I recall thinking at the time that all of his product speeches sound like a form-letter:
The home computer industry wasn't invented or even started by Microsoft or the IBM PC, but the home computer became a standard appliance in our daily lives because of their product. I got my start in home computing when it was a 'hobby' and spent my youth as an "Atari user". I didn't get my first IBM PC until college, but I have spent my whole professional career writing software for Microsoft platforms. The Internet would still be just an academic network connecting a few campuses together if there wasn't millions of machines to access it. BBSs and Fidonet were cool, but were limited to toys for geeks. Microsoft has brought the technology to millions upon millions of people, and made using a computer a mainstream experience.
I probably would not have liked working for Microsoft in the early days. It made many people millionaires and billionaires, but it also chewed up people's lives in a relentless machine of driven workaholic behavior. The software wasn't terribly well crafted, as "good enough" didn't require it, and the place was riddled with Type A assholes. There are still plenty of those people at Microsoft, but the place seems more 'professional' now. Certainly too corporate in many ways, but less a cult of personality.
Nonetheless, I do sense that Microsoft has fundamentally changed with his departure. We have far too many 'managers' and far too few 'leaders' at work these days. I still think it's stupid how many people view Bill as if he reviewed every decision, approved every product, or even knows a substantial portion of what a company of 96,000 people is up to on a daily-basis. He has been, however, the 'face' of Microsoft and perhaps more importantly the technical 'soul'. I respect that Steve Ballmer has been there since the beginning, but he is much more a business/sales guy.
Microsoft is fundamentally a technical company. Our marketing is mostly outsourced, and often laughably bad. Our dabbling in hardware has had 'mixed' results for everything except mice and perhaps keyboards. Developers are in mass in Redmond, with the sales people spread out across the globe disconnected from the "Microsoft mothership". While the majority of Silicon Valley's players are in the hardware business, Microsoft is one of few software-centric companies. Most of the players in the PC industry are actually hardware companies, and it is a distinction that I think few people even in the industry really appreciate.
It will be interesting to see how the new executive leadership handle the wheel of this particular ship, but there's no doubt it will be a different place in ways both subtle and dramatic.
He's not really been that involved in the aspects of the company I deal with since before I started working there in 2004, and he hasn't technically been a corporate officer since 2006. While there was once a time when every new full-time employee meet Bill for dinner at his place, that tradition has been limited to interns only for many years so I've never actually met him or had any interaction with him at all. I've gotten two or three company-wide e-mails from him, and one of them was today. I've only seen him giving a few speeches at Windows launch events, and otherwise just interviews on TV.
The only time I recall having seen him live was when I went to a NT Developer Conference back in 1993 or so. At the time he didn’t have any visible security--it was before he was worried about being pied. It was a long time before he got an image consultant to get him to dress himself as a CEO instead of a nerd. I recall thinking at the time that all of his product speeches sound like a form-letter:
I'm super excited about the launch of _(fill in product name here)_. _(fill in product name here)_ is going to revolutionize the way that _(fill in industry/market)_ does business!Over the years I've been annoyed by non-technical people praising Bill. He is absolutely an amazing shrewd business man, has had visionary insights and taken advantage of them, and been an 'industry leader' for three decades. On the other hand, he hasn't really written software since BASIC for the Altar. The initial PC-DOS was mostly the product of buying someone else's work and changing a few strings. Much of the first generation Windows is a limited implementation of GEM or early Mac as a facade over the venerable CPM-inspired PC-DOS.
The home computer industry wasn't invented or even started by Microsoft or the IBM PC, but the home computer became a standard appliance in our daily lives because of their product. I got my start in home computing when it was a 'hobby' and spent my youth as an "Atari user". I didn't get my first IBM PC until college, but I have spent my whole professional career writing software for Microsoft platforms. The Internet would still be just an academic network connecting a few campuses together if there wasn't millions of machines to access it. BBSs and Fidonet were cool, but were limited to toys for geeks. Microsoft has brought the technology to millions upon millions of people, and made using a computer a mainstream experience.
I probably would not have liked working for Microsoft in the early days. It made many people millionaires and billionaires, but it also chewed up people's lives in a relentless machine of driven workaholic behavior. The software wasn't terribly well crafted, as "good enough" didn't require it, and the place was riddled with Type A assholes. There are still plenty of those people at Microsoft, but the place seems more 'professional' now. Certainly too corporate in many ways, but less a cult of personality.
Nonetheless, I do sense that Microsoft has fundamentally changed with his departure. We have far too many 'managers' and far too few 'leaders' at work these days. I still think it's stupid how many people view Bill as if he reviewed every decision, approved every product, or even knows a substantial portion of what a company of 96,000 people is up to on a daily-basis. He has been, however, the 'face' of Microsoft and perhaps more importantly the technical 'soul'. I respect that Steve Ballmer has been there since the beginning, but he is much more a business/sales guy.
Microsoft is fundamentally a technical company. Our marketing is mostly outsourced, and often laughably bad. Our dabbling in hardware has had 'mixed' results for everything except mice and perhaps keyboards. Developers are in mass in Redmond, with the sales people spread out across the globe disconnected from the "Microsoft mothership". While the majority of Silicon Valley's players are in the hardware business, Microsoft is one of few software-centric companies. Most of the players in the PC industry are actually hardware companies, and it is a distinction that I think few people even in the industry really appreciate.
It will be interesting to see how the new executive leadership handle the wheel of this particular ship, but there's no doubt it will be a different place in ways both subtle and dramatic.
