Good Bye Bill Gates

Posts are flying around the blog-o-sphere about a once in a lifetime event. The most successful man in the computer industry is finally stepping down from an active role running Microsoft. That’s right, this week is Bill Gates’ last as an active member of the Microsoft team.

I met Bill a very long time ago. I was extremely lucky to have been a college intern at Microsoft working on Excel 2.0. When I graduated from college, I had two job offers; one from Microsoft in their tools group and the other from Software Publishing Corporation working on Harvard Graphics. If you looked at my LinkedIn Profile, you’ll see that I opted to stay in the bay area.

I went to an intern party at Bill’s house, before his complex had been built. I met many of the founders of MS. I heard Charles Simoni talk that summer about how programmers lose their touch over time. He said when he was younger he could remember every item in every room in a house of 30 rooms.

I even have a button some where that has “Save the blibbet!” on it. The blibbet was the first MS logo (sort of like the AT&T globe) and the button was part of a protest against changing it. At one point, I worked in a fish bowl office of interns with a bird’s eye view of Bill’s office over looking the courtyard.

I have no regrets on my decision to go to SPC. I like more variety in my life and would never have fully bought into the Microsoft way of life.

Sometime later, I ran into Bill Gates a second time at the Intuit merger company meeting. Bill Gates, Scott Cook and Bill Campbell were on the podium. Bill G and Scott were really into the merger. Bill C seemed very hesitant. I, of course, had the (nerve or stupidity, you pick) to ask about how Intuit customers would feel about getting help from MS as a company given that Intuit had built a reputation of being the Mr. Rogers of technical support.

Scott answered with something about how you can’t become a 100 million customer company by being a scum bag. To which I stupidly replied, “I didn’t say he was a scum bag.” The audience roared at this as they thought I had “implied” the scum bag part. I apologized personally to Bill Gates afterwards and he said it was no big deal. Bill Campbell told me it was a great question. And I spent the rest of the party joking that I had become a legend and unemployed at the same time.

I actually have a video of this somewhere in the house, probably next to my save the blibbet button.

What I can tell you is that Bill Gates programmed BASIC on an airplane for the first home made computer, before there were personal computers, Windows and the Internet, and at a time when most of us were impressed with the convenience of calculators. He had vision, acumen and drive that to me, is unparalleled in the computer industry. I respect those qualities and all that he has achieved so far. The man deserves a statue in the front of the computer hall of fame right next to Woz and Jobs and the rest of the early wizards.