The Microsoft Story: Career Lessons from Bill Gates' Path to Tech Dominance
“Yes, our revenues are bigger than anybody else's. But if we don't run fast and do good things”, Bill’s voice trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished.
He continued, “Believe me, staring out the window and saying, ‘isn't this great?’ is not the solution. You've got to keep driving hard.”
This was an excerpt from the book “Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire” published in 1992.
Good day, my readers! 🫡
This is Career Geek here. On this week’s episode of career spotlight, I present to you Bill Gates. 👏
In the realm of technology and innovation, few figures stand as tall as Microsoft’s founder and CEO, Bill Gates.
Bill's aggressive business tactics and assertive demeanor have drawn criticism over the years. Some observers have labeled him as arrogant.
A relentless innovator and strategic thinker. His leadership at Microsoft was characterized by a commitment to excellence, pushing the boundaries of what technology could achieve.
Today, I proudly present you 2 important lessons that we can all learn from Bill.
Sit back and enjoy! 🙂
Obsessive Drive
From a young age, Bill displayed an intense, almost manic focus on computers and programming. As a teenager at Lakeside School, he would spend hours in the computer lab, often neglecting other aspects of his life.
Mary Gates, in describing her son, said that he pretty much did whatever he wanted since the age of 8.
"Even as a child Bill had an obsessive personality and a compulsive need to be the best. Any school assignment, be it playing a musical instrument or writing papers, whatever, he would do at any or all hours of the day. Everything Bill did, he did to the max. Everything he did, he did competitively and not simply to relax. He was a very driven individual."
This single-minded dedication continued into his college years at Harvard. Bill would often go for days without sleep, working around the clock on programming projects.
As a friend of Bill’s recalls:
"How he had coped with the lack of sleep, I never figured that out.
I would wimp out after 18 to 24 hours, but his habit was to do 36 hours or more at a stretch, collapse for ten hours, then go out, get a pizza and go back at it."
Bill's obsessive drive was not limited to coding. He was also a relentless salesman for Microsoft in the company's early days. Something he was perhaps not given enough credit for.
He alone made countless cold calls, convincing hardware makers to use Microsoft's products. Intel, Motorola, Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard.
He approached every client with the zealotry of a true believer from the day he first articulated the Microsoft mantra: 'A computer on every desktop, and Microsoft software in every computer’.
This led Bill to secure one of the most pivotal partnerships in the history of Microsoft - the IBM partnership. 🏋️♂️
The IBM partnership
Microsoft was founded in 1975. This was a partnership in the early 1980s.
Back then, Microsoft was a rapidly growing start-up but still very tiny compared to what IBM was. IBM’s revenue was 1,000 times larger than Microsoft.
Steve Ballmer (Microsoft’s 2nd CEO and employee number 30) referred to IBM as "the sun, the moon, the stars” of the computing industry. ☀️🌕⭐
In July 1980, IBM was preparing to launch its first personal computer, the IBM PC, and sought a software partner to provide an operating system. At that time, Microsoft was a small company with just 40 employees, primarily known for its programming languages like BASIC. Initially, IBM approached Microsoft to create a BASIC interpreter. However, during discussions, it became clear that IBM also needed an operating system.
Recognizing the opportunity, Bill and his partner Paul Allen proposed using an operating system called 86-DOS, developed by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products. Microsoft negotiated a deal to license 86-DOS.
For $50,000, Bill bought all rights to 86-DOS previously owned by Seattle Computer Products. It was the bargain of the century.
Microsoft bought it, added modifications to it and re-packaged it as PC-DOS.
One mini lesson here 💡
You don’t always have to invent something from scratch. Iterate if you can, don’t invent.Microsoft delivered the operating system to IBM as PC-DOS for a one-time fee of $50,000.
While this fee was relatively modest, the deal's significance lay in the prestige and market access it provided Microsoft.
After the IBM partnership, Microsoft became the de-facto operating system option for over 70 firms within a year. Many of whom were cloning IBM's hardware such as Compaq, Tandy/RadioShack, Hewlett-Packard.
Humility at the Right Time
Bill was known be arrogant and brash among his circle of acquaintances.
Said Paul Grayson, co-founder of Microfgraphix: “There's only one person with fewer friends since Saddam Hussein. And that is Bill Gates.”
Said another description of a 30 y.o Bill Gates: “He was a very clear thinker, but he would get emotional. He would browbeat people. Just imposing your intellectual prowess on somebody doesn't win the battle, and he didn't know that.”
Despite all these, Bill knew when to be humble and seek help.
Steve Ballmer
One of the friends he makes at Harvard is a bloke down the hall from him named Steve Ballmer. Everybody knows Steve.
Steve was unbelievably analytical. He was the guy that outscored Bill on the Putnam exam – a prestigious mathematics competition in the US.
He's super social, he's super outgoing. He's in a final club, which is a big thing in the social scene at Harvard. He's gregarious. He's everything that Bill is not.
Anyone who's ever met Steve or seen a video of Steve, you understand this man has a presence.
Video: Steve Ballmer's famous "developers, developers, developers" speech in 2000
Bill believed that Ballmer could complement him very well and bring valuable business acumen to Microsoft, especially as the company began to scale.
However, Bill faced some resistance from Paul Allen, his co-founder and business partner.
Initially, Paul was hesitant about bringing Steve on board, possibly due to concerns about equity distribution and the dynamics of the founding team. Bill was insistent, arguing that Steve's skills were essential for Microsoft's growth.
To facilitate Steve's entry into the company, Bill agreed to reduce his own share of Microsoft. When Steve was hired in 1980, he was offered a salary of $50,000 along with a stake of 8%.
All from Bill’s own pocket.
Missing Out On The Internet (Temporarily)
Bill was also capable of reversing strongly held views and decisions.
The last event we are going to talk about was how Bill completely missed the internet, which is surprising given how pivotal the Internet was and how smart Bill Gates is.
Bill initially underestimated the significance of the internet in the early 1990s. Microsoft was heavily invested in its Windows operating system, Office productivity suite at the time and his vision for television.
Yes, you heard it right. Television. 📺
Gates thought TV would be the future. Bill was planning for the eventual marriage of the computer and the entertainment business. He meets with various media executives such as Michael Ovitz. He thinks the future of the way people are going to access the information highway is not going to be on the Internet. It's going to take place on the TV. He even wrote a book about it titled, “The Road Ahead”.
The odd thing was Bill didn’t even own a TV. He always thought it was a waste of time and preferred to spend his time reading.
By the time Microsoft began developing its own browser, Internet Explorer, in 1995, Netscape had already gained significant market share. Microsoft was playing catch-up in a rapidly evolving market. Netscape had 5 or 6 million people using their browser.
Nevertheless, Bill was humble enough to acknowledge his oversight and make a complete reversal in his views of the Internet.
In 1995, Bill sent a famous memo to Microsoft's executive staff titled "The Internet Tidal Wave."
In the memo, he wrote:
"I have gone through several stages of increasing my views on the Internet's importance. Now I assign it the highest level of importance. I want to make clear that our focus on the Internet is critical to every part of our business.
The Internet is the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC was first introduced in 1981."
Microsoft moved very aggressively into the internet browser space in 1995. Perhaps too aggressively.
This era came to be known as the “browser wars”.
One of the things Microsoft did to compete with Netscape, was forcefully bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, effectively leveraging its operating system's market dominance.
Microsoft's aggressive tactics led to an antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1998. The lawsuit alleged that Microsoft had used its monopoly power in the operating system market to stifle competition in the browser market.
The lawsuit lasted a few years, beginning in May 1998 and concluding with a ruling in Nov 2001. The stress of the legal battle, combined with the public perception issues and the lengthy proceedings, likely took a toll on Bill personally and professionally.
On Jan 2020, in the midst of the lawsuit, Bill stepped down as Microsoft CEO.
He spent 25 years in that position.
Ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. Bill Gates
Thank you so much for reading up to this point. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Bill & Microsoft.
I hoped you enjoyed reading this too. If you did, please subscribe for more career spotlights.
Take care and till next time! 🫡