Letter from Bill Gates

Jan 26th, 2009 2:13 PM UTC
By Chris Scott

Bill Gates just circulated his first annual letter about his work at the Gates Foundation. It provides some great insight into the Foundation’s past work and their plans for the future.

Bill Gates shakes hands during an AIDS prevention discussion with male sex workers. The meeting was sponsored by a collaboration between AVAHAN and ARM (Assoc. for Rural Mass India), Indian Community Welfare Assoc., TAI hotel, India, December, 2005. credit: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/ Prashant Panjiar.

Excerpts below, full letter here

Bill Gates:

This past July, I went from being full-time at Microsoft to being full-time at the foundation. I took a few weeks off for some family time, including a trip to Beijing for the Olympics, but I was anxious to keep myself mentally challenged and so the pause between jobs was brief.

Many of my friends were concerned that I wouldn’t find the foundation work as engaging or rewarding as my work at Microsoft. I loved my work at Microsoft and it had been my primary focus for over 30 years. I too would have worried if I had paused and thought about it enough. My job at Microsoft had three magical things. First there was an opportunity for big breakthroughs—including changing computers from being expensive and only for big companies to being inexpensive and empowering to individuals with a wide range of great software for almost any task. I wanted a personal computer with great software for myself and everyone else. Second, I thought my skills would let me help create a special company that would be part of a whole new industry. I felt I belonged in the software business, having thought about the engineering and the business possibilities maniacally from age 13. Finally, the work let me engage with people who were smart and knew things I didn’t. The day-to-day work always involved new problems and new ways of drawing out the best efforts from other people. We were always taking risks—some of which didn’t pay off and some of which did. Most people don’t have even one job that has all those elements, and my friends thought I wouldn’t be able to avoid comparing my new work to what I had had at Microsoft.

TAGS: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Policy News