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Life after Gates

Mary Jo Foley
June 26, 2008


NEW YORK (Reuters.com) - Friday will be Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' last day in the office -- at least his last day as a full-time Microsoft employee. (Gates will remain Microsoft Chairman and remain involved in select projects at the company.) Gates has decided it's a good time for him to put his time, energy and money into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, dedicated to "innovations in health and learning."

It has been a long goodbye for Gates, not a hasty divorce. Gates & Co. have been working to make his transition to his new job as seamless as possible -- both image-wise and in terms of how the 90,000+ Microsoft employees worldwide do their jobs. Steve Ballmer took the CEO mantle from Gates back in 2000, and Ray Ozzie took on Gates' former "Chief Software Architect" title and responsibilities in 2006. Microsoft has wanted to make sure that its customers and shareholders notice little, if any, disruption in Microsoft's established business patterns and practices.

An orderly transition doesn't mean that "Life After Gates" will be just like "Life With Gates," however. Microsoft managers and developers, the company's partners and its competitors are all likely to feel the impact, sooner or later of a Microsoft without the hard-charging, detail-obsessed Gates at the helm. Up until now, Microsoft has been Bill Gates. Just like Apple, Microsoft is a company that has been indelibly branded by the personality and quirks of its leader.

Microsoft has operated well during much of its 33-year history as a partnership between the dynamic duo: The tech-focused Gates and the sales-focused Ballmer. Now that it's going to be Ballmer alone running the show, some of the more tech-focused Microsoft developers (known internally as "Bill's Guys") and products that Gates championed could end up falling by the wayside. Current Chief Software Architect Ozzie is seen by many in the industry as a tech visionary, yet Ozzie has said repeatedly that he is no Gates. And at least so far, Ozzie has shown himself to be unwilling to be the public face of Microsoft. He's been nowhere near as high-profile as Gates and is said to favor Apple-style secrecy over public pronouncements about what's in the technology pipeline. It's also still-to-be-determined whether Ozzie will morph into one of "Steve's guys" and how Ozzie and Ballmer will mesh without Gates as the middleman.


More at: Reuters

(Mary Jo Foley has been reporting on Microsoft since 1984, the first time she interviewed Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.)