Ray Ozzie: Bill Will Be Present Forever

Over one year since he retired from his day-to-day role with Microsoft to dedicate his time and financial resources to philanthropy, Bill Gates still remains synonymous with the company he created with Paul Allen. Ray Ozzie, the man who inherited the Microsoft chief software architect title from Gates along with half his responsibilities, has revealed that the company’s co-founder is still very much present in the Redmond giant, and that he simply cannot be replaced, in an interview with Gartner. When he transitioned out of Microsoft, a move announced in 2006 and wrapped up a couple of years later in mid-2008, Gates split his responsibilities between Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie, which became chief research and strategy officer.

“Craig [Mundie] and I aren't able to fill Bill's shoes. Bill will be present forever, even though he's not present. If we had approached it like "we're filling the founder's shoes," then we would have failed — absolutely and miserably — because we are not Bill. The transition of doing the things that we do is going well. There are challenges, and there are things that have worked out way better than I ever could have imagined. It varies person by person by person,” Ozzie stated.

Gates is currently dedicating the most of his time and financial resources to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but still acts as a Microsoft chairman. At the bottom of this article, users will be able to find embedded a video released at the 2008 Consumers Electronics Show in Las Vegas, focusing on bringing a humoristic perspective to the then-imminent departure of Gates.

In 2005 “I had conversations with Bill and he'd say, "Well that's pretty dramatic or radical in terms of what you are trying to accomplish. It's the right thing to do and if you do it, that will be great." And I said, "How?" And he'd say, "I don't know. It starts with a memo, and I don't know what happens after that." I didn't have a path to figure out how it was going to pan out. When I look back and I read the memo, so many of the things that I had written have come to pass, not because I drove them to make it happen, but because the organization made it happen. It may have happened a little differently here or there, but it happened. So, I'm very pleased about that,” Ozzie recalled.