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Bill Gates on Work-Life Balance: There Is No Such Thing in Your 20s

By Bill Gates · Investing · 1 min read

Gates memorized every employee's license plate so he could track who was in the parking lot. Then he grew out of it.

Key Points

Gates didn't believe in weekends or vacations in his 20s
By his 30s, he couldn't imagine how he'd lived that way
In software platforms, small differences magnify into winner-take-all outcomes

I knew everybody's license plate so I could tell you over the last month when their car had come and gone from the parking lot.

License Plates and Parking Lots

Gates: "I didn't believe in weekends. I didn't believe in vacations. I knew everybody's license plate so I could tell you over the last month when their car had come and gone from the parking lot."

He doesn't recommend it. He doesn't think most people would enjoy it. But that was his 20s at Microsoft.

I didn't believe in weekends. I didn't believe in vacations.

Then Something Changed

Gates: "Once I got into my 30s, I could hardly even imagine how I had done that. Because by then some natural behavior kicked in and I loved weekends. My girlfriend liked vacations. That turned out to be kind of a neat thing."

His 20-year-old self is disgusted with his current self. He used to swear he'd never fly anything but coach. Now he has a plane.

My 20-year-old self is so disgusted with my current self.

The Early Years Require Sacrifice

Gates: "It is nice if during those first several years you have a team that's chosen to be pretty maniacal about the company. I have a fairly hardcore view that there should be a very large sacrifice made during those early years."

Particularly in engineering. Particularly in platforms. Because in software, these are winner-take-all markets.

I have a fairly hardcore view that there should be a very large sacrifice made during those early years.

The $400 Billion Mistake

Gates calls losing the mobile platform to Android one of the greatest mistakes of all time. Android became the standard non-Apple phone platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.

Gates: "If you're there with half as many apps or 90% as many apps, you're on your way to complete doom. There's room for exactly one non-Apple operating system. What's that worth? $400 billion transferred from Company G to Company M."

Every night you think, am I screwing this up? And eventually we did screw a super important one up.