The advice of Bill Gates to his young me while Microsoft will be 50 years old

Happy birthday to Microsoft.

The technological giant is 50 years old this month. Although he has revolutionized personal IT and becomes one of the largest companies in the world today, there are things that one of his leaders could have done differently if he could go back in time.

Microsoft’s co-founder, Bill Gates, recently talked about the advice he gave his youngest on a podcast featuring the three CEOs who directed Microsoft in the history of 50 years of the company: himself, his successor Steve Ballmer, and now Satya Nadella.

“Well, there has been a lot of learning about the growth of the business and bringing different skills sets, how to manage people,” he said. “I certainly thought at the beginning that engineering skills meant that you would be in other things. It turned out to be false. So we had to really constitute teams in a more mixed and diverse skills than what I expected.”

Gates also said that he would have advised his young person to be more politically warned.

“You know, I could tell my youngster, watch out for the government,” he said. “I could have a little battle with them. I didn’t expect that. I was naive enough not to get involved in Washington, DC, as soon as I should have.”

Microsoft was the subject of a massive antitrust case in the 1990s brought by the United States Ministry of Justice and several states, which allegedly alleged that Microsoft became a monopoly.

In 2000, a judge concluded that Microsoft had violated antitrust laws and that Microsoft had been sentenced to the division of two companies. A court of appeal subsequently threw the judge’s order, and the Ministry of Justice has given up efforts to separate Microsoft. The DoJ and Microsoft settled in 2001.

Gates has already thought about his young person. He periodically does “Request something” sessions on Reddit, and in 2017, a user asked him: “If you could give the 19-year-old gates, what would he be?”

Gates replied: “I would explain that intelligence is not unique and not as important as I was thinking at the time. I would say that you could explore the world in development before getting into his forties. I was not very socially at the time, but I’m not sure there are advice that solves this problem – maybe I had to be annoying and simply grow.”