Gates: I won't be back

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 6 Jun 2008 at 13:50

Bill Gates has ruled out a messiah-like return to Microsoft should the company hit troubled waters.

Gates will leave his full-time job at Microsoft in June, spending just one day a week at the company he founded.

And Gates says there's no chance of him following in the footsteps of Steve Jobs and Michael Dell and returning to the helm in the future, during a candid interview with the Wall Street Journal. "I am done with that," he says of his full-time post.

The interview also exposes a bitter row between Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer that "paralysed business-strategy decisions" at the company at the turn of the century, when Ballmer assumed the CEO role.

Gates confesses he had difficulty relinquishing control of the company, leading to friction between the pair. Matters came to a head at a board meeting in early 2000, when Gates stormed out following a slanging match with Ballmer.

"I had to change," Gates says. "Steve is all about being on the team, and being committed to the mutual goals. So I had to figure out, what are my behaviours that don't reinforce that? What is it about sarcasm in a meeting? Or just going, 'This is completely screwed up'?"

The pair claim their differences were resolved after their fellow board members and their wives arranged a conciliatory dinner in February 2001.

And now Ballmer says he no longer depends on the man who started Microsoft and brought him to the company in 1980. "I'm not going to need him for anything," Ballmer says of Gates. "That's the principle. Use him, yes, need him, no."