Even as an 18-year-old, Bill Gates received several job offers from tech companies, giving him the option to leave Harvard and pursue a career before co-founding Microsoft, CNBC Make It reported.
Bill Gates acknowledges that the job offers from companies like Honeywell and General Electric were a significant "ego boost," confirming his aptitude for computer programming. However, he also recognizes that accepting any of those offers could have diverted him from the path that led to his billionaire status and Microsoft's rise as a $3 trillion company.
This phase of Bill Gates' life is detailed in his new memoir, Source Code, published earlier this month. The book traces his journey from childhood to the early days of Microsoft.
As a freshman at Harvard, Gates drafted a resume to gauge interest from potential tech employers. He outlined the programming work he and his high school friends had done for Seattle-area tech firms, including a traffic flow analysis program he developed "in partnership with Paul G. Allen," his future Microsoft co-founder, he writes.
"I listed every computer I had worked on, and every major program I had written," Gates recalls, adding that he wasn't seriously looking for a job but was curious to see what opportunities might arise.
At the time, Allen was struggling at Washington State University and considering dropping out to work full-time, Gates writes. Allen encouraged him to leave college and start a business together, but Gates was hesitant, wanting to complete his education and wait for further advancements in personal computing.
Instead, Gates suggested that Allen move to Boston so they could brainstorm in person and possibly take tech jobs to save money for a future business.
"We could both work in Boston as programmers or systems administrators-jobs that would give us access to computers, income, and time to work on a side project," Gates writes. However, he acknowledges that "leaving college and hurling yourself into the job market was a dicey prospect."
The first company to respond to Gates' job application was Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in Maynard, Massachusetts, the maker of the PDP-10 computers he had learned to code on in Seattle. DEC flew Gates to its headquarters from Boston-his first-ever helicopter ride, which he describes as "cool enough" even if he hadn't received a job offer.
Touring DEC's facilities and meeting the engineers behind the software he had spent countless hours working on was "the closest thing for me at that age to visiting Mecca," he writes.
"At DEC, I was awed by everyone I met and basked in the feeling that I was valued for skills I had been honing for so long," he adds.
Although Gates found the experience exciting, he ultimately declined DEC's "incredibly flattering" job offer. He also turned down offers from General Electric's appliance factory in Kentucky and Honeywell's computer division-where Allen, however, accepted a programming job in Boston in the summer of 1974.
A few months later, Allen burst into Gates' Harvard dorm room with a copy of Popular Electronics, featuring the Altair 8800-the world's first minicomputer- on its cover. That moment convinced Gates it was time to put his studies on hold and launch a software company with Allen. They incorporated Microsoft in New Mexico in April 1975.
Looking back, Gates acknowledges that if he had pursued a traditional career path, it might have delayed or even prevented the creation of Microsoft. However, he tells CNBC Make It that this was never a serious possibility:
"We were just trying to get the ego boost of people offering us jobs, which was kind of fun," he says.
Instead, the job offers he received that year reinforced his confidence, solidifying his belief that his future was in computers.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
