So I had like four times where I thought,

hey, I'm pretty good at programming,

and then I was either given a hard task or feedback

and I said, No, there's another level here.

And so by the time I go to Harvard,

I've had thousands of hours

of complex programming experience.

I was so lucky in those things.

Hi, I'm Steven Levy.

Today we spoke with Bill Gates about privilege,

his desire to succeed, and how,

as a kid, he drove his parents insane.

This is The Big Interview. [intense music]

[photos clicking]

I know that you have been thinking

about doing a first-person book,

some sort of autobiography, for many, many years.

I talked to you about it like 30 years ago maybe.

Why do that now?

I hired Rob Gupt to help me dig out all the old facts,

get the report cards, and go talk to all of my friends

and colleagues from early days.

So yes, it's a project we've been working on for some time.

It was only about 18 months ago

that we decided taking this first phase of my life,

about 25 years, right as I start Microsoft,

and doing a book where my parents, my upbringing,

the luck of what I was exposed to, that was the whole story.

And once that idea came up, I got quite enthused about it,

because we weren't getting into the current stuff

where there's still a lot not figured out.

I mean, the foundation's goals are ongoing.

Even Microsoft, although I play a modest role as an advisor,

the AI stuff is of course very, very much ongoing.

And so it was really fun to take this period

and try and explain how amazing my father was, my mother,

my sisters, just a huge variety of things

that got me to be kind of forward looking.

And by the time I'm 20 years old,

I found myself more enmeshed in programming and the magic

of what programming could do than almost anyone.

So I love the way it's come out,

that we just do this first 25-year period,

which we're calling Source Code.

And then another book can take the whole Microsoft story.

And then a different one can take the philanthropic work

and contemplate that.

Well, by doing that, by breaking that out,

it becomes way more personal

than anything that we've seen from you.

People like me have been pounding you, asking you questions.

When can these self-reflectives?

And you've done it here.

I know that you admire the Agassi book by J.R. Moehringer.

I don't know whether you considered him to be a co-writer.

Is that a thought you might have?

No, we, I mean, we had our team pretty early on.

But that's a great book.

But you, in a way, went on there

and you held a mirror to yourself.

This is very much a bildungsroman,

like a coming-of-age story.

And sometimes the mirror didn't portray

such a flattering image, did it?

I mean, I had my ups and downs.

I had conflicts with my parents.

I had, I was using Harvard computer time,

and they were confused about what I was doing.

The first customer, you had MITS, we had a complex contract.

We ended up in a dispute, surprisingly, with them.

My relationship with Paul is a very central piece

of how Microsoft comes together,

and Paul and I are working together super well,

and then disagreeing.

So yes, between my parents and Paul.

And I had a lot of uncertainty,

even though the software thing,

there were many experiences that made that

just such a unique thing that, wow,

why do I see this when other people don't see it.

But yeah, it's hopefully a very human story.

It's not immaculate conception.

Well, it is a human story,

and I think one where it gets to very emotional ground.

I remember I did a profile of you, I think in 1999.

And your father told me a little bit

about some of the stuff in here,

and he said your mother was traumatized by the situation.

You wouldn't talk for days on end.

You say yourself that the things that really interested you

were like reading, and math, and being inside your own head,

and in some ways you weren't kind to your parents.

And I think unrolling some instances like that,

you seem a little remorseful.

Well, I give both of my parents, each in their own way,

a lot of credit for how they shaped me.

You know, with my dad, it was much more setting an example

of always being serious about his work,

of sharing anecdotes.

With my mom, it was far more intense, that,

Oh, you didn't get up here as soon as I wanted,

or, Your table manners weren't as good as I wanted.

So yeah, in the case of my mom, I was often falling short.

She did get me to interact with the adults that were around.

That was a skill that became quite valuable for me.

So she helped compliment my intense desire

to study and understand things.

But yeah, the tension between my mom and I was,

she was always pushing for me to do better,

and eventually proud of what I achieved.

But that was a complex relationship.

Very amazing, I mean, my mom was a phenomenal person,

not just her social skills,

or her ambition for herself, her husband, and me,

but just, she was a special person.

Clearly there was a lot of love,

but they were at their wit's end

to figure out what to do with you.

Towards the end of the book, you say something that,

you say if this were today you would've been diagnosed,

you said, probably, on the autism spectrum.

What led you to that conclusion?

When did you start thinking about that?

Well, I know when I was growing up, this idea that they,

I would go and talk to a therapist

was actually quite an unusual thing.

And this guy, Dr. Cressey, who really got me thinking about,

okay, what was I trying to achieve

in this conflict with my parents.

Did I really have some thought in mind

or was I just trying to make trouble?

That was, I think, quite unusual.

But back then, the idea that kids were very different,

and there some kind of interventions,

that just wasn't commonplace at all.

I was clearly somewhat hyperactive.

I could concentrate a great deal.

I think, in fact, I did get to see that therapist was good.

Who knows what it would've been like?

Kids are much more looked over.

The thing where I was able to go off to the computer center,

or even spend all that time alone,

even going out on those hikes,

people are protective enough, they might view a lot of that.

Yeah, you describe these epic, crazy hikes

that you wouldn't think of sending a 12-year-old

or 13-year-old today.

They were super dangerous.

Yeah, even though now you'd have a GPS tracker.

Well, has that realization sort of shaped you?

You're a super curious person.

Curiosesity is something that runs through this book.

Have you like pursued the curiosesity about that,

in terms of understanding yourself?

Well, I do, even at this age, I love learning new things,

and I view all of my work as kind of being a student,

and super lucky, not just the things I get to read, but.

And these days you can learn so easily.

And then I get access to experts.

I mean, when I'm confused about AI,

Sam Altman gets 10 people together and we sit and talk.

I'm very lucky that my career path has meant

that my deep curiosesity, I've been able to maintain it.

And I think it is part of my success,

is really wanting to understand things in a pretty deep way.

[photos clicking]

Another thing which struck me, reading the book,

is I knew you came from a well-off family.

And something, again, you refer to

towards the end of the book,

how much privilege is part of your story.

You say, I was like a white male

that's in a privileged position.

But your family was very well off.

At various parts, your father sort of like swoops down

with like legal help, and you get in trouble at Harvard,

and he flies out across the country.

And it seems that, just at other times,

teachers would come in, even though you were

inside your own head, people had your back at every turn.

Oh, there were teachers who put such a high percentage

of their time into me versus the other students.

I was so lucky in those things.

And the one funny thing is my parents were well off,

but compared to the kids at this private school I was at,

I was below average.

I mean, they had bigger houses and they had wealth.

My dad was well paid to be a lawyer,

but we weren't a family that had wealth.

So I managed to both have the benefit

of being at that school and actually have a little bit

of a chip on my shoulder that, hey,

you guys are so much better off,

your parents gave you a car,

and you didn't have to work in the summer.

But yes, you could hardly design a better childhood,

including a timesharing computer terminal showing up

when I'm 13 years old, and the high school scheduling,

which is a super interesting algorithmic problem where,

because I was good at math, they asked me to solve it.

Yeah, you did this unbelievable scheduling thing

for your school. Right.

And the first time they asked me, I say,

No, I don't know how to do that.

And then six months later when, tragically,

the people who are working on it are in a plane crash,

I've actually figured out how to do it.

So the first serious algorithm was actually deciding

when the classes would meet,

and who would be in which classes,

which is a very kind of cool problem.

And so then to have that,

then to have TRW have this incredible project

that was very state of the art,

in terms of real time reliability,

and to have the great programmers there, including Norton,

embrace me and say, Yeah, you think you're good,

but this code is not very good.

Right, this was like a mentor you had

when you were working on this project for TRW as a kid.

Right, so I had like four times where I thought,

hey, I'm pretty good at programming,

and then I was either given a hard task or got feedback

and I said, No, there's another level here.

So by the time I go to Harvard, I've had thousands of hours

of complex programming experience.

And then when I get there, I get to do even more.

So yes, the fact that parents encouraged me, as a male,

the idea of doing all, being weird like this was,

eh, it was kind of okay.

The school I went to,

and that high school is a fantastic high school.

I had at least five or six teachers

who kind of saw a spark in me and really engaged with me.

[photos clicking]

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book about outliers,

says that the ingredients are like 10,000 hours,

certainly you've topped that by a big number,

in terms of programming,

10,000 hours of practice doing something.

I guess a degree of timeliness, which you just talked about.

I still find that kind of unsatisfying.

What makes Bill Gates, Bill Gates?

Well certainly it's not just the circumstances,

but that's gigantic.

I mean that eliminates people born at a different time,

and many people

who didn't get the educational opportunities.

Yes, there's still a few million kids

who are in the same milieu that I am.

And then it's okay, seeing my father,

understanding the common sense of business,

seeing a business like Physio Control that was up and down,

the early engagement with Digital Equipment Corporation,

which to me was this vaunted company

that proved that it wasn't just mainframes,

and those people embraced me.

I mean, I got to know them in many phases,

including once they offered me a job,

just 'cause I wanted that reinforcement.

So yes, there's something about my desire to succeed,

and my skillset, being forward looking,

which my friend Kent Evans, who's in the book,

helped really cement that.

Kent helped shape me as forward looking, amazing person.

And then Paul's more off reading about the chip stuff.

I didn't read Electronics magazine.

Well after Paul showed me it, okay, then I did.

But that's Paul, and it's actually pretty unnatural,

'cause he's two years ahead of me,

the fact that he seeks me out and says,

Bill, what does exponential improvement mean?

And I say, Are you kidding?

That is mine.

Exponential improvement is a very, very special thing

that doesn't happen except in rare, rare, rare cases.

Paul also clued you on to LSD,

which you talk about taking a couple times.

Steve Jobs would always say

that was like the formative experience

and helped open up the gates of design in his mind.

I don't get that impression that you felt that

to be a life-changing experience.

I think the batch that he got

must have really been good [Steven laughs]

for product design and marketing.

I mean, my god, just think if I'd had that batch.

Yeah, I did some crazy things when I was young,

and Paul deserved some credit for that.

But yeah, we did that together a few times.

Eventually we gave it up.

By the time we get serious about work,

we're not doing that anymore.

You also mentioned the famous time you got busted

for speeding and spent the night in jail.

I was hoping to learn more about that.

Did that freak you out, spending a night in jail?

No, it was just kind of a funny thing.

I mean, they thought it was strange to have somebody

so young that had a nice car.

You had a Porsche.

What was the story with this kid?

Was I a drug dealer or something?

I clearly didn't fit their normal pattern.

We kept enough cash around

that Paul was able to come down and bail me out,

but took him a few hours to get it together.

So yeah, there's that, a famous mugshot of me in Albuquerque

because I got pulled over and didn't have my license.

In the end of the book,

you say that sometimes you look back

and wish you were back again

where you were when you were 13 years old,

and just like learning about everything.

And you describe yourself, at that time,

as someone who just lived largely inside your head.

Talk about that. Are you?

With all your success, and all the access to the world,

really, that you have, you look back,

and wanna roll the tape back?

Well, I've been so lucky

that I'm not saying I want to go back and change something.

But it was kind of amazing to live through that,

hey, I'm just this kid and all of us are the same,

to okay, here's something I'm curious about,

here's some people to do it with me.

Having a dream, a computer on every desk in every home,

the importance of software,

to actually have it come completely true

and get to work with, in this phase of my life,

with Kent, and with Paul,

and I'm just meeting Steve Ballmer at Harvard,

but he hasn't come to help.

I'm sure we'll hear a lot about that.

That'll be right at the start of the Microsoft book.

We're up in Seattle and I decide,

boy, I can't run this thing myself.

I need my friend who really gets business,

and management, and people, and so he comes in.

So it was so magical and so incredible

that I do kind of miss that wonderful thing

where the whole thing was in doubt.

There were days when I thought, oh, we are so messed up,

and other people are ahead of us,

and who do we think we are to have these wild dreams,

and yet, step by step,

we build this incredible group of people.

[photos clicking]

You know, it's interesting, the book, again,

is a coming-of-age story.

But you talk about, you look back

and say how much we are shaped by who we are,

and we are like who we are.

You talk about saying, boy,

I think somewhat remorsefully saying,

I was like a smart aleck in school

and that wasn't a smart thing to do.

And you talk about being, pushing back about everyone.

And it made me think really the way you behaved

in your deposition, being a smart aleck there.

Ah, you think I was a smart aleck, that lawyer,

now that's a smart aleck. [Steven laughs]

Not recalling the specifics of the interview is

that it's very unlikely I would make a statement like that

without some common understanding between myself

and the reporter of what that term,

which, out of context, is incredibly ambiguous,

what it meant in the context of her series of questions.

[Lawyer] And just to be sure I understand it,

what you're saying is that you don't remember

what the definition was,

and you don't even remember that there was a definition,

but you believe there must have been a definition

or you wouldn't have been using these words.

Is that fair?

There must have been a common understanding,

I wouldn't say a definition.

There's a certain clever boy shortcut use of sarcasm

that allows you to communicate efficiently.

It can be kind of funny.

And yes, that whole kind of sparring,

that sitting at night at Harvard, talking to each other,

that kind of dialogue doesn't work

when you're managing people.

Or even my skill of procrastination, which at Harvard,

that was my personal position was,

ah, I don't work in these classes 'til late.

So yeah, there's a lot of habits of being a young,

trying to be a cool, maybe not succeeding,

but trying to be a cool student,

that I actually had to break those habits,

procrastination, being super clever and kind of sarcastic,

tearing somebody's argument apart.

I mean, yes, the underlying skill is actually worthwhile,

but knowing not to deploy it as the kind of go-to approach,

which when I was a student was kind of my whole way

of engaging with other people.

We have the one anecdote in there

where I told this professor how wrong he was,

and I was just so certain of myself.

And you were wrong.

And then five minutes after I attack him,

I realized, oh god,

there's a reason why it actually comes back.

And his thing was completely right

and I was completely wrong.

That was a helpful experience

because the guy was so nice about it,

and I was so outta line.

One final question, do people really change?

No, I think you moderate,

and you become wiser, and you grow.

But the idea of, am I still pretty much

that same kind of hyperactive, curious,

maybe I can figure this out

that other people can't figure out.

And if I do figure it out, what am I gonna do about it?

Who do I work with on this?

I'm still 95% that same person.

Bill, thanks so much for doing The Big Interview.

Thank you. [intense music]

[photos clicking]

[distorted music]