Today Microsoft announced that on July 2008 Bill Gates will step down from his daily duties at Microsoft and will work part-time as chairman and technical adviser for the company. The main reason for this is that he will be working full-time for the Bill and Melissa Gates foundation, which he founded with his wife.
This is probably going to generate a lot of buzz that’s for sure. For me, I personally don’t think this news comes out as that much of a shocker. Everyone has their own reasons for doing something and if you feel that you have left your mark and have accomplished all that you wanted to, it is only natural to go on to bigger and better things as a successful business person is always moving. By moving I don’t necessarily mean always dropping one thing and doing another, but rather having that mentality of wanting to accomplish something and constantly doing things in order to reach that goal as oppose to just sitting still and receiving the same result everyday.
There are probably going to be a lot of doom and gloom stories about the company over this, but I’m pretty sure if you are a company as big as Microsoft that there are plenty of qualified candidates that will be suitable for the job. From what I have read, the foundation is actually doing pretty well thus far. We’ll just have to wait and see what type of things will happen when Bill Gates fully dedicates his time to it.