Bill Gates Wasn't Worried About Burnout In 1984 – Here's Why

You see yourself working for somebody else? I never have. Can you see it? I'm used to having a company where the ideas that I have or something that I can easily pursue. So I think it'd be a tough transition.

If you had stayed at Harvard a few more years, would this computer revolution have passed you by? Perhaps. Things move very quickly in the industry, and it was really the urgency to get out there and be the first one to put a basic on the microcomputer that caused me to drop out.

You're called a genius. I will... Well, no, I don't think that embarrassed you at all. (laughs) They call you a genius. Part of your genius is that you are a computer whiz, and the other is that you did have the business acumen to turn it into a working company.

Are you a business genius too? Well, I wouldn't say genius. I enjoy working with the people, talking about what we're gonna get done, getting real excited, making sure that the structure is there, that the ideas get measured properly, and I'm really leading the company. That's exciting.

At the age of 28, in a field of work where burnout is common, are you gonna burn out before you're 30? No. How do you know? Well, the work we're doing, it's not like, you know, we're doing the same thing all day long. We go into our offices and think up new programs, we get together in meetings, we go out and see end users, we talk to customers.

There's so much variety, and there's always new things going on. And I don't think there'll ever come a time when that would be boring.