Again, I had that moment of surprise. But I’m a stubbornly logical person,
and I tried to consider Bill’s argument objectively. His intellectual
horsepower had been critical to BASIC, and he would be central to our
success moving forward—that much was obvious. But how to calculate the
value of my Big Idea—the mating of a high-level language with a
microprocessor—or my persistence in bringing Bill to see it? What were my
development tools worth to the “property” of the partnership? Or my
stewardship of our product line, or my day-to-day brainstorming with our
programmers? I might have haggled and offered Bill two points instead of
four, but my heart wasn’t in it. So I agreed. At least now we can put this
to bed, I thought.

Our formal partnership agreement, signed on February 3, 1977, had two other
provisions of note. Paragraph 8 allowed an exemption from business duties
for “a partner who is a full-time student,” a clause geared to the
possibility that Bill might go back for his degree. And in the event of
“irreconcilable differences,” paragraph 12 stated, Bill could demand that I
withdraw from the partnership.

Later, after our relationship changed, I wondered how Bill had arrived at
the numbers he’d proposed that day. I tried to put myself in his shoes and
reconstruct his thinking, and I concluded that it was just this simple:
What’s the most I can get? I think Bill knew that I would balk at a
two-to-one split, and that 64 percent was as far as he could go. He might
have argued that the numbers reflected our contributions, but they also
exposed the differences between the son of a librarian and the son of a
lawyer. I’d been taught that a deal was a deal and your word was your bond.
Bill was more flexible; he felt free to renegotiate agreements until they
were signed and sealed. There’s a degree of elasticity in any business
dealing, a range for what might seem fair, and Bill pushed within that
range as hard and as far as he could.

Microsoft was a high-stress environment because Bill drove others as hard as
he drove himself. He was growing into the taskmaster who would prowl the
parking lot on weekends to see who’d made it in. People were already
busting their tails, and it got under their skin when Bill hectored them
into doing more. Bob Greenberg, a Harvard classmate of Bill’s whom we’d
hired, once put in 81 hours in four days, Monday through Thursday, to
finish part of the Texas Instruments BASIC. When Bill touched base toward
the end of Bob’s marathon, he asked him, “What are you working on
tomorrow?”

Bob said, “I was planning to take the day off.”

And Bill said, “Why would you want to do that?” He genuinely couldn’t
understand it; he never seemed to need to recharge.

Our company was still small in 1978, and Bill and I worked hand in glove as
the decision-making team. My style was to absorb all the data I could to
make the best-informed decision possible, sometimes to the point of
over-analysis. Bill liked to hash things out in intense, one-on-one
discussions; he thrived on conflict and wasn’t shy about instigating it. A
few of us cringed at the way he’d demean people and force them to defend
their positions. If what he heard displeased him, he’d shake his head and
say sarcastically, “Oh, I suppose that means we’ll lose the contract, and
then what?” When someone ran late on a job, he had a stock response: “I
could code that in a weekend!”

And if you hadn’t thought through your position or Bill was just in a lousy
mood, he’d resort to his classic put-down: “That’s the stupidest f_k__g
thing I’ve ever heard!”

Good programmers take positions and stick to them, and it was common to see
them square off in some heated disagreement over coding architecture. But
it was tough not to back off against Bill, with his intellect and foot
tapping and body rocking; he came on like a force of nature. The irony was
that Bill liked it when someone pushed back and drilled down with him to
get to the best solution. He wouldn’t pull rank to end an argument. He
wanted you to overcome his skepticism, and he respected those who did. Even
relatively passive people learned to stand their ground and match their
boss decibel for decibel. They’d get right into his face: “What are you
saying, Bill? I’ve got to write a compiler for a language we’ve never done
before, and it needs a whole new set of run-time routines, and you think I
can do it over the weekend? Are you kidding me?”

I saw this happen again and again. If you made a strong case and were fierce
about it, and you had the data behind you, Bill would react like a bluffer
with a pair of threes. He’d look down and mutter, “O.K., I see what you
mean,” then try to make up. Bill never wanted to lose talented people. “If
this guy leaves,” he’d say to me, “we’ll lose all our momentum.”

Some disagreements came down to Bill and me, one-on-one, late at night.
According to one theory, we’d installed real doors in all the offices to
keep our arguments private. If that was true, it didn’t work; you could
hear our voices up and down the eighth floor. As longtime partners, we had
a unique dynamic. Bill couldn’t intimidate me intellectually. He knew I was
on top of technical issues—often better informed than he, because research
was my bailiwick. And unlike the programmers, I could challenge Bill on
broader strategic points. I’d hear him out for 10 minutes, look him
straight in the eye, and say, “Bill, that doesn’t make sense. You haven’t
considered x and y and z.”

Bill craved closure, and he would hammer away until he got there; on
principle, I refused to yield if I didn’t agree. And so we’d go at it for
hours at a stretch, until I became nearly as loud and wound up as Bill. I
hated that feeling. While I wouldn’t give in unless convinced on the
merits, I sometimes had to stop from sheer fatigue. I remember one heated
debate that lasted forever, until I said, “Bill, this isn’t going anywhere.
I’m going home.”

And Bill said, “You can’t stop now—we haven’t agreed on anything yet!”

“No, Bill, you don’t understand. I’m so upset that I can’t speak anymore. I
need to calm down. I’m leaving.”

Bill trailed me out of his office, into the corridor, out to the elevator
bank. He was still getting in the last word—“But we haven’t resolved
anything!”—as the elevator door closed between us.

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