Bill Gates has frequently stated, "I never
took a day off in my twenties.
Not one."
He goes on, "When I was in my 20s and early
30s, my whole life was focused on work.
I didn’t take vacations or weekends off.
I was always the first in the office and the
last to leave...."
As for why, he states of starting a company,
"It is nice, if during those first several
years if you have a team that’s chosen to
be pretty maniacal about the company…
I have a fairly hard-core view that there
should be a very large sacrifice made during
those early years...
In the software world – particularly for
platforms – these are winner-take-all markets."
So is it really true he literally never took
a single day off?
And in more recent times, what does the occasionally
richest human on the planet do when he does
take time off?
As to the former question, as far as our research
shows, beyond Gates himself stating this on
more than one occasion, there’s never been
a single person who worked with Gates during
Microsoft’s formative years that has contested
this claim.
On the contrary, in Paul Allen's excellent
book, Idea Man, he frequently comments on
the fact that even in their teen years, he,
Gates, and some of their cohorts would have
to be almost literally pried away from the
computer terminal to go home and sleep, with
Gates being one of the most hard core of them
all in that respect.
This is something that only intensified when
they started "Micro-Soft" and no longer had
parents watching over them to make sure they
got proper rest.
In fact, Allen states he and Gates used to
frequently stay up working for a couple days
at a time, followed by sleeping for sometimes
as much as 20 hours straight.
To keep going during those long hours, Allen
also claims Gates had a habit of licking Tang
powder off his hands for energy.
With regards to his 20s, it's also noteworthy
here that it was when Gates was 19 that Allen
and he saw the cover of a January of 1975
edition of Popular Electronics magazine that
read: "World's First Minicomputer Kit to Rival
Commercial Models...
'Altair 8800'"
Why is this important?
When they read the details, it turns out Micro
Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS)
had used the new Intel 8080 chip in their
Altair 8800 computer kit.
This is what Allen and Gates had been waiting
for.
The pair had previously been intrigued by
potentially using the Intel 8008 chip to make
a general purpose home computer out of.
But given memory limitations, they realized
that a getting a BASIC interpreter to run
on it would have taken up nearly all the memory,
leaving almost nothing to run any useful program.
Thus, they shelved the idea, though the teens
did use the chip to develop their Traf-o-Data
system, which automated tracking certain traffic
data, with that company flopping when certain
states started offering for free the same
service their Traf-o-Data system performed.
When the Intel 8080 chip debuted in April
of 1974, they realized it could do what they
had in mind, but still tabled the idea as
there was no one who made an off the shelf
system that could use the chip the way they
had in mind.
You see, the chip itself wasn't targeted at
a general computer type market, but rather
to be used in various designated systems like
traffic lights, industrial robots, etc. Allen
initially tried to convince Gates they should
develop such a hardware system using it, but
Gates dismissed the idea, noting they were
software people; they knew little about the
hardware side, and anyway didn't have the
money for those sorts of projects.
They needed to find an opportunity that played
to their strengths.
Then the Altair 8800 came out- a $439 computer
kit initially meant to be a niche product
to make it easier and much cheaper for hobbyists
to build their own personal computer; instead,
it ended up kicking off the microcomputer
revolution.
To give you an idea of what a steal of a deal
this kit was, a similarly capable machine
at the time sold by Intel ran for about $10,000
(about $47,000 today).
Further, the 2 Mhz Intel 8080 chip itself
usually cost $360 ($1,700 today), only $79
less than the entire Altair kit.
MITS was able to sell the kit so cheap as,
among similar deals for the other components,
they had made a deal with Intel to allow them
to purchase the 8080s for only $75 each.
Seeing the potential, Gates and Allen immediately
wrote a letter to MITS' President, Ed Roberts,
using their former company Traf-O-Data on
the letter head to make it all seem more legit.
They claimed they were nearly done with an
implementation of a BASIC interpreter that
would run on the Altair 8800, and were wondering
if Altair would like to license it when they
finished it.
Roberts would later state that he called the
number on the letter and instead of getting
a business, got someone's home phone, with
the person who answered having no clue what
he was talking about.
Thinking they got no response, the pair went
ahead and called Roberts themselves.
Gates did the talking as he was the better
negotiator and knew more about the system
they were supposed to already be nearly done
with; but the pair agreed he would say his
name was Paul Allen, as Allen had a beard
and looked much older than Gates.
Thus, Gates would do the talking over the
phone as Allen, and Allen would take the lead
in person.
Unfortunately for them, Roberts was less than
enthusiastic, saying he'd received several
similar calls, but despite people's claims,
nobody was actually able to show that they
really had implemented such an interpreter
for the computer.
He then told them the first person to walk
through his door with a working BASIC interpreter
would get a contract.
With so many others apparently thinking the
same thing about the potential of this machine,
Gates and Allen knew they'd have to be quick,
subsequently working day and night over the
following weeks to create that software, with
Gates skipping classes and Allen showing up
to his job at Honeywell late and leaving early,
getting only a few hours of sleep a night
as they plugged away.
You might at this point be wondering how they
created such software given they didn't actually
have an Altair 8800- in fact, at this point
nobody did.
The picture on the cover of Popular Electronics
wasn't even showing a working machine, but
rather an empty case for the Altair 8800.
This turned out to be an advantage for them,
as, thanks to Traf-o-Data, they already had
a working emulator for the Intel 8008 that
Allen had developed.
Thus, they merely had to acquire the technical
manual for the similar Intel 8080, and then
tweak Allen's emulator to work for it and
the Altair 8800, with the whole thing running
on the PDP-10 mainframe computer.
At the same time Allen was doing this, Gates
headed up working on the BASIC interpreter
itself, and a hired gun, Monte Davidoff, developing
the needed math package.
Finally, in March of 1975, Allen headed to
New Mexico to demonstrate their "Altair BASIC"
to Roberts.
The problem was Allen forgot the bootstrap
program that contained the instructions to
actually load their software in correctly.
Thus, while traveling to New Mexico, he had
to handwrite the needed assembly code for
a bootstrap loader for the Altair 8800 from
memory.
Allen recounts what happened next in his book
Idea Man:
“The following morning with Ed [Roberts]
and Bill Yates hanging over my shoulder I
sat at the Altair console and toggled in my
bootstrap loader on the front panel's switches.
Byte by byte...
It took about 5 minutes and I hoped no one
noticed how nervous I was.
"This isn't going to work," I kept thinking.
I entered my twenty-first instruction, set
the starting address and pressed the "Run"
switch.
The machine's lights took on a diffused red
glow as the 8080 executed the loader's multiple
steps.
At least that much seemed to be working.
I turned the paper tape reader and the teletype
chugged as it pulled our BASIC interpreter
through.
At 10 characters per second, reading the tape
took 7 minutes...
At the end I pressed stop and reset the address
to 0.
My index finger poised over the "Run" switch
once again.
To that point I couldn't be sure of anything...
"There's just no way this is going to work."
I pressed "Run".
The teletype's printer clattered to life,
I gawked at the upper case characters.
I couldn't believe it.
But there it was, "Memory Size".
"Hey," said Bill Yates, "It printed something."
It was the first time he or Ed had seen an
Altair do anything beyond a small memory test.
They were flabbergasted.
I was dumbfounded.
We all gaped at the machine for a few seconds.
And then I typed in the total number of bytes
in the 7 memory cards- 7168.
"OK," the Altair spit back.
Getting this far told me that 5% of our BASIC
was definitely working.
But we weren't yet home free.
The acid test would be a standard command
that we'd used as a midterm exam for our software
back in Cambridge.
It relied on Bill's core coding and Monty's
floating point math, and even my crunch code,
which condensed certain words like "Print"
into a single character.
If it worked, the lion's share of our BASIC
was good to go.
If it didn't, we'd failed.
I typed in the command- PRINT 2+2.
The machine's response was instantaneous-
4.
That was a magical moment.
Ed exclaimed "Oh my God!
It printed 4!"
He'd gone into debt and bet everything on
a fully functioning microcomputer, and now
it looked as though his vision would come
true.
He couldn't get over the fact that Bill and
I had solved the puzzle without any of the
hardware.
That was astonishing to him.
But Ed wasn't as surprised as I was that our
8080 BASIC had run perfectly it's first time
out of the chute...
"Let's try a real program," I said, trying
to sound nonchalant.
Yates pulled out a book called 101 BASIC computer
games...
I typed in the [Lunar Lander] program.
Yates launched his lunar module and after
a few tries settled it safely on the Moon's
surface.
Everything in our BASIC had worked.
Ed said, "I want you to come back to my office."
Through a flimsy looking doorway I took a
seat at his desk...
"You're the first guy who came in and showed
us something," he said.
"We want you to draw up a license so we can
sell this with the Altair.
We can work out the terms later."
I couldn't stop grinning.
Once back at the hotel, I called Bill who
was thrilled at the news.
We were in business now.
For real.
In Harvard parlance, we were "golden".
I hardly needed a plane to fly back to Boston.”
And so it was that "Micro-Soft" was born shortly
thereafter on April 4, 1975.
Now, as you might imagine, at this point given
all Gates and Allen had going on, it's not
outside of the question to think that Bill
Gates probably always did have something to
work on every day from then on throughout
his 20s.
While that’s not exactly concrete proof
that he literally never took a single day
off, as noted, Gates was well-known for his
punishing, self-imposed work schedule, supposedly
working anywhere between 80 and 120 hours
per week, every week until his 31st birthday.
Gates’ secretary in the 1980s would also
reportedly frequently find him sleeping on
the floor of his office on a Monday after
he’d stayed at the office the entire weekend
working.
In one instance, he was literally just sprawled
out on the floor- no blankets, pillows or
anything.
She claims she actually thought he might have
passed out, but upon investigation, he had
apparently just laid down on the floor and
unceremoniously went to sleep.
Allen also recounts in Idea Man, during particularly
long working sessions, Gates could commonly
be seen putting his forehead on the desk mid-line
of code, nap for a few minutes, then snap
awake and get right back to work on the line
of code he'd stopped at without further pause.
Of course, incredible work ethic and things
to keep you busy with are one thing, not having
one single day out of 3,650 where a family
gathering, illness, travel, arrest (Gates
was arrested in 1977 for running a stop sign,
speeding, and driving without a license),
where no work was done is another.
That said, even in these cases, if they occurred,
presumably Gates was still thinking about
or managed to get a few hours of work in here
or there; and a travel trip for work still
can potentially count.
Whatever the case, it would seem from all
evidence at hand, whether it's literally true,
it certainly is probably close enough that
even Gates himself, known for his incredible
memory, can't remember taking a single day
off.
So that was Gates then, what about now?
Well, having a girlfriend and then a wife,
changes things, and it is no coincidence that
around the time Gates started dating the 23
year old Melinda French in 1987 when he was
around 31 that he appears to have let up considerably
on his breakneck work schedule.
He says of this, "Once I got into my thirties...
by then some kind of natural behavior kicked
in and I loved weekends, and my girlfriend
liked vacations, and that turned out to be
kind of a neat thing.
Now, I take lots of vacations.
My 20-year-old self is so disgusted with my
current self."
That said, Gates, being incredibly passionate
about saving as many lives as possible, still
maintains a busy schedule, adhering to his
mother, Mary Gates', challenge in a letter
to Melinda shortly before Bill and she were
married, and not long before Mary would die
of cancer.
The message to Melinda was this- "From those
to whom much is given, much is expected."
This letter is still something Bill and Melinda
have to this day.
Thus, even today, Gates' daily work schedule
is still incredibly regimented, planned out
by his assistants in 5 minute increments,
with it being noted by those who work with
him that one of Gates' biggest pet peeves
is people wasting his time.
This brings us around to what Gates does with
his off time now that he has it.
To begin with, Gates schedules a significant
amount of time to be a very hands-on father,
including lots of family vacations.
In fact, he even states his evening routine
usually includes doing the dishes as, to quote,
"other people volunteer but I like the way
I do it."
And if you're now thinking doing the dishes
seems rather ordinary for a billionaire who
could literally hire a team of Shaolin Monks
to perform a Buddhist water ritual before
bathing the dishes in the blessed water, followed
by having an army of custom made robots scrub
them clean and put them away, well, it turns
out much of Bill Gates' free time is peppered
with the rather ordinary, though occasionally
with an extraordinary twist.
Despite being a man who could afford to do,
well, anything within the realm of possible
for any human to do, Gates has noted that
his favourite hobby is reading, with books
also being the most common gift he receives
from friends and family, if you're wondering
what the answer is to the question of "What
do you get a billionaire for his birthday?"
As to what his favorite book is, he states,
"My favorite of the last decade is Pinker's
Better Angels of our Nature.
It is a long but profound look at the reduction
in violence and discrimination over time."
(And, just FYI, you can also find many, many
more book recommendations from him on his
website gatesnotes.com)
A voracious reader, while he laments in his
20s there wasn't really any time for reading,
since then, Gates skims various periodicals
each day and generally reads at least one
book a week, even when traveling, usually
on topics ranging from microbiology to tennis
and he has a personal rule to never start
reading more than two books at once.
Gates has reported that he frequently annoys
his wife by staying up too late reading a
book he can’t put down.
"I’m a night person.
If I have a good book, or I’m doing something
on the computer, I have a tendency to stay
up.
I never tell Melinda I’m tired the next
day or she’ll say it’s all my fault, but
she can often tell.
I’ll try to be energetic, and she’ll say,
“You stayed up too late again.”"
Beyond reading, Gates says another passion
of his during his free time is to take online
learning courses in a variety of areas.
As far as what he does when he gets out of
the house, Gates has noted that he enjoys
taking tours of things “like power plants
[and] garbage dumps” with his children.
Before you feel sorry for his kids, Gates
expands that places he’s taken them on private
tours of include the Large Hadron Collider,
Arizona missile silos and simply “Antarctica”-
all things we guess are a lot easier to arrange
to visit when you’re a multi-billionaire.
Gates also says that he enjoys playing bridge,
coding on his computer, and playing tennis-
all things, outside of coding, that your grandparents
probably also find fun and can afford to do.
As for bridge, he says, "My parents first
taught me bridge, but I really started to
enjoy it after playing with Warren Buffett.
It takes a mix of strategy and teamwork to
do well.
We always find time to play a few games when
we’re together."
Buffet himself says of the game, "It’s the
best exercise there is for the brain.
You have to look at all the facts.
You have to draw inferences from what you’ve
seen, what you’ve heard.
You have to discard improper theories about
what the hand had as more evidence comes in
sometimes."
Before bridge, Gates' favorite card game was
apparently poker, which he avidly played while
at school in Harvard, with Allen claiming
it wasn't uncommon for Gates to win or lose
hundreds of dollars a night playing.
At home, he and his family enjoy playing the
board game Settlers of Catan, which Gates
says, "...is a favorite in my family...
Melinda, our kids, and I have spent many hours
sitting around the table trading resources,
building roads, and strategizing to be the
first to reach 10 victory points."
In his youth, his favorite board game was
reportedly Risk.
Speaking of that, as a younger man, Gates'
interests were a little more extreme, at least
relatively speaking, and the billionaire was
known for regular skiing trips, both on water
and snow, which directly led to one of the
most famous videos of him on the web.
The one of him jumping clean over a chair
from a standing position in a 1994 interview
with CBS.
Gates has since explained that he began jumping
over chairs as an exercise to hone his ski
jumping abilities.
Due to his unassuming, bookish looks, Gates'
amazing hops often surprised people and he
is said to have greatly relished leaping over
chairs as a party trick.
When asked in 2013 during a Reddit AMA if
he still occasionally jumps over chairs, Gates
answer was simply, “Less than I used to”.
He goes on, to those who might like to try
similar stunts, "Be careful—it can hurt
if you don’t succeed."
Which, if we're being honest, is just a good
bit of general advice at doing anything in
life.
Speaking of skiing, Allen recounts that, in
their late teens, Gates actually snapped his
leg water skiing, and was supposed to remain
in a cast for six weeks.
However, getting the itch to go skiing again,
after just three weeks, he took off his cast,
revealing a black and blue leg, that nonetheless
managed to hold up to the water skiing he
once again immediately subjected it to.
It’s similarly noted that as a younger man
Gates would do donuts in his car, nearly totaled
a friend's Porsche 928 while speeding, and
used to like to run and then jump onto a banister
to slide headfirst down it as yet another
party trick.
In his elder years, Gates apparently still
skis, though he notes that he’s “not as
hard core” as he used to be and drives a
modest (for a billionaire) Mercedes, Porsche,
or, if with his family, a minivan.
Because yes, as alluded to, Gates takes being
a hands on father extremely seriously, and,
particularly when his kids were younger, could
frequently be found driving they and their
friends around to various places in said minivan.
Although, while that might all sound pretty
ordinary, he did say in one such instance
of a U2 concert, "We went to the concert with
my daughter and three of her friends, so there
were six of us and we took the minivan.
I drove."
So what's exciting about that?
When asked if he got invited to go backstage,
he simply replied no, but Bono was staying
at his house at the time.
Speaking of turning doing ordinary things
up to 11, while Gates generally plays tennis
in the more mundane way, every now and then
he does it instead by playing people like
Roger Federer.
Said Gates of this, "I wouldn’t say it was
the most relaxing tennis game I’ve ever
played, but it was a whole lot of fun."
This brings us to another oft asked question
about Bill Gates- outside of saving millions
of lives with it, what does he spend his money
on?
The answer, again, is surprisingly mundane
for a man worth more than some countries.
Gates, by his own admission, spends little
money on elaborate day to day things (though
he does admit to buying nice things for his
wife), and even owns and uses an off the shelf
run of the mill Microsoft computer.
In fact, from a recent interview we saw with
him, apparently the exact model this very
article was edited on.
That said, he does occasionally splurge, such
as that time he spent $30.8 million on Davinci's
Codex Leicester.
And, you know, there's the whole 66,000 square
foot mansion he has on Lake Washington, currently
valued at about $148 million, though he only
paid $2 million for the land initially in
1988 and $63 million to have the mansion built
that year.
That said, when you crunch the numbers on
inflation on that one, the presently valued
$148 million estate originally cost about
$139 million in today's dollars, so only slightly
beating inflation in value in the interim.
Factoring in property taxes and upkeep over
the years, as ever showing how house buying
isn't nearly as good of an investment in many
cases as is often assumed.
The house, however, often functions for business
uses as well, so kind of a work splurge as
well.
Similarly, his other big guilty pleasure is
his private jet, which he first bought in
1997.
Going back to the more mundane, Gates’ taste
when it comes to food are simple with his
favourite food being an ordinary cheeseburger.
And we're not talking a cheeseburger made
from cows blessed by the monks that do his
dishes, then butchered on site and prepared
by one of the world's finest robot chefs.
No, Gates' go-to burgers are from Burger King,
McDonald's, and In-N-Out, with the latter
apparently making his all time favorite cheeseburger.
His love of burgers is so well known that
a colleague of his at the Gates foundation,
Joe Cerrell, was once quoted as saying: “Hotel
rooms full of Diet Coke.
And cheeseburgers for lunch, no matter who
you are.
If you get the lunchtime slot with Bill, you’re
eating burgers.
Someone will always be sent to get bags of
McDonald’s..."
It's also noteworthy that during his time
as a full time worker at Microsoft, he was
known to frequent the same Greasy Spoon pretty
much every day for lunch.
For anyone curious, Gates apparently tipped
extremely well.
On that note, Bill Gates and fellow money
magnate Warren Buffet both have similar tastes
in food, and love of McDonald's.
Consider this little anecdote revealed in
the Bill and Melinda Gates 2017 annual letter
in which Mr. Gates states,
“Remember the laugh we had when we traveled
together to Hong Kong and decided to get lunch
at McDonald’s?
You offered to pay, dug into your pocket,
and pulled out…coupons!
Melinda just found this photo of me and “the
big spender.”
It reminded us how much you value a good deal.
That’s why we want to point you to this
number, 122 million.
Saving children’s lives is the best deal
in philanthropy.”
Speaking of which, according to the man himself,
one the of the most frequently asked questions
he receives is “how much money do you have
on you right now?”.
While the answer often varies, as it would
with anyone, according to Gates, his wallet
usually has a single $100 bill in it, if he
carries the wallet at all, which he notes
is infrequently- a common trend among the
ultra wealthy as we illustrate in our article-
What Does Bill Gates Carry Around in His Wallet?
But to sum up, in short, despite being one
of the richest men on the planet, Bill Gates
is a surprisingly down to Earth guy who enjoys
the simple and cheap pleasures of life.
Though, of course, as illustrated in the U2/Bono
anecdote, he sometimes enjoys all those simple
things in mildly extraordinary ways, such
as eating said McDonald's in a truly massive
mansion and flying off in a private jet when
he feels like traveling.
But, getting to the airport, well, apparently
that sometimes occurs in a mini-van driven
by the man himself.
