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When Microsoft first started, Bill Gates was the heart of the company. He wrote most of the code and even rewrote other people’s code to ensure it was up to his standard. This hands-on approach worked when the company was small, with just 10 employees. But as Microsoft grew, Gates quickly realized something important: if you want to have a big impact, you have to learn how to delegate.
Photo: Daniel Berman
Letting Go of Control
Gates admits that in the early days, he found it hard to let go. Even after they grew to 10 people, he was still reviewing and editing everyone’s work. But then came the real challenge: the company reached 40 employees, and it became impossible for Gates to personally oversee everything.
He had to trust others and delegate important tasks. He had to be okay with shipping code that he didn’t personally edit—something that was very hard for him at first. But it was essential. The demand for Microsoft’s software was skyrocketing, and there was no way one person could handle it all.
Enter Steve Ballmer
That’s when Steve Ballmer entered the picture. Gates hired him to manage the chaos. Steve figured out how to handle the growing demand by hiring more programmers and setting up teams. He made sure that the promises Gates made to customers could actually be delivered on. Gates admits that Steve kept pushing him to hire programmers that Gates had never even met—a huge leap of faith for someone who had always been so hands-on.
Gates says, “I would know all the managers of the people, but of course, I could say the quality per person was falling monotonically.” In other words, the more the company grew, the harder it was to maintain the same level of personal involvement and quality control. But that’s the price of scaling a company, and it was necessary to meet the huge demand for Microsoft’s products.
The Power of Delegation
The lesson here is simple but crucial: you can’t do everything yourself. If you want your company to grow, you have to learn how to delegate and trust others to do their jobs. Gates recognized that one person—even someone as talented as him—couldn’t write all the code for the world’s most popular office productivity software. It required a team.
For many founders, giving up control is one of the hardest parts of growing a company. It’s easy to want to keep doing the things that made you successful in the first place. But to scale, you need to find talented people to fill in the gaps and take on responsibilities. That’s how you build a company that can thrive beyond your individual efforts.
In Gates’ words, “Picking what you're good at and how you find the other people to fill in those things, that's super important.” Microsoft’s success didn’t come from one person doing everything—it came from assembling a talented team and learning to delegate.
Listen to Bill Gates:
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