Microsoft 1978

I'm sure most of you are familiar with this famous Microsoft group photo from December 1978:


This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/08/microsoft-1978.html

Marty was right… as it turns out, there was an error in the source article from the Albq Tribune – according to this link, Bob O’Rear left Microsoft in 1993, not 1983:

http://www.horizons.utep.edu/Releases/2003/Nov03/orear.html

In 1977, O’Rear became the seventh employee for Bill Gates and Paul Allen’s business venture Microsoft. As the company’s chief mathematician and project manager, O’Rear was the co-author of the first version of MS-DOS and placed Microsoft’s software in the first IBM personal computer.

After the release of the IBM PC in 1981, O’Rear moved into international sales and marketing launching Microsoft’s offices in Europe. He retired from Microsoft in 1993.

Found at
http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/DOS/ibm100/Boot.htm

What do you think about the enormous disparity in estimated worth between Bill/Paul and everyone else? The rest of them combined add up to less than one half of one percent of either Bill or Paul’s worth. Not sure what the backstory is there but the huge discrepancy caught my eye immediately.

Nice article, I haven’t seen it summed up like this before. Bill Gates isn’t CEO anymore though. But we got one hell of a replacement.

What do you think about the enormous disparity in estimated worth between Bill/Paul and everyone else?

I think we should all start our own companies immediately…

“But we got one hell of a replacement.”

You can’t be serious.

hey collin - actually bill is the richest person in the world, at least according to a little magazine called Forbes. maybe you need to do your research before you make false statements

“To bad bill isnt the richest man in the world. Do you research before you state false comments.
collin on January 20, 2007 12:19 PM”

Err, please look at the date of the article before telling them to do research. It is dated 1.5 years ago, when he was the richest guy in the world

oh and a liyyle reseach takes one to Forbes, a reputable source
http://www.forbes.com/billionaires
look who is top, Bill Gates

@collin
he isn’t the worlds richest? could have fooled me.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/Worth_1.html

now, my question to you is, did you become an idiot? or were you born like that?

There’s a mistake here - the left-most man in the middle row is Rick Weiland, who retired in the early 90’s and passed away in August of 2006

One thing’s for sure, Bill Gates made an empire and you can respect him for that alone.

You’ve got to love hippies. And this is a fine looking group of hippies. With one sir William Gates looking like a mis-fit from ‘that 70’s show’. But I can’t help but wonder how did McDonald wind up at the bottom of the money heap. Gambling, philanthropy? Experimentation?

Maybe he was the only real hippie there.

I don’t know how one can say he’s the richest man in the world… Out of what we know publicly, yes, but I am sure there are Arabic “royalty” worth a lot more than that… It’s sad, but probably true…

Judging wealth is actually not that easy. For example Bill’s billions are allmost all into his charitable organization and if I remember right he can’t claim them back.
Moreover there are like Boog said lots of guys out there that made their money through, well let’s say less respective work like selling drugs/industrial waste/humans that certainly do everything to keep things quiet.
And of course the petro-guys are big fans of discretion too. I’m for example wondering why Hassanal Bolkiah with an estimated Fortune of 20 to 40 billion US Dollar didn’t make into the Forbes list at all.
That’s only one example. I could state some dozen other examples aswell - especially from the middle and far east - of guys that don’t occur in the Forbes list but certainly have 10+ billion us dollars of networth.

( sorry for my bad english - me is no english native speka :wink:

Only goes to show you how much money can be made charging monopoly prices: http://thisMatter.com/Articles/Microsoft.htm

Is Marc McDonald (employee #00001) still employed with MS? His estimated worth is lower then I would have expected for someone who was there as the first employee, did he miss out on his stock options when left or something?

Bill Gates was a hottie back then and even more handsome now…I wish I married him…

Do Bill Gates Paul Allen have employee #'s?

to bad bill isnt the richest man in the world. Do you research before you state false comments.

In the real world I don’t see a lot of difference between several million and several billion if its just sitting somewhere not being used. An accumulation of wealth is nothing more than that - an accumulation. It is how the wealth is used that truly determines the value of the money. If you sit on it - it isn’t worth a penny. Looking back through more distant history, those who merely wanted to accumulate wealth fall into some rather undesireable catagories, such as tyrants and pirates - hmmm, maybe things haven’t changed that much after all.