Reporter: Bill, what led to your decision to build your own site, your own corporate campus?
记者：比尔，是什么使你决定建立你自 己的网站及你自己的公司呢？
Gates: Well, I was always thinking that environment that we did product development in should be a fun environment, a lot like a college campus. And this idea of using small teams means you want to give them all the tools, all the computers, an individual office, whatever it takes so that they feel like they can concentrate on their jobs and be very creative. And, in the Northwest, having a lot of trees around, you know，one, two, and three story buildings where offices are very good sized. That made sense to me. And we had been looking ever since we moved up to Seattle for a piece of land that wasn’t too far away and yet that would let us grow as a company. And in 1986 we actually got to move into our corporate campus. This kind of shows you one of the buildings here. Initially, there were four buildings like this clustered around the lake you see here, and each of the main Development groups each got their own building. And that meant that we really had the best of all worlds. People felt that it was a fun environment, but yet we were really close to each other as far as working together. Things like people juggling or riding unicycles around, having barbecues outside, having company meetings where everybody would stand around. This was the original ground breaking. And these are two of the developers, but here we see Jon Shirley who started with the company in 1983. He came from Radio Shack and played a very critical role, because, although I had Steve Ballmer helping me think through business issues and a lot of other people like Kazuhiko Nishi on the product side, or Paul Alien，it was Jon who helped us really grow; what kind of systems did we have to have in place. And Jon had been my good friend when he worked at Radio Shack, so we were excited to have him come on board. Actually, he was the second president of Microsoft. We hired another gentlemen [chuckles] who was with us for a little less than a year where it wasn’t a good match. A gentlemen from Tektronix. And then brought in Jon after that. There was a week in 1986 that was pretty exciting because that was the week we moved into the campus. But that same week we moved in, we went public as a company, this is our offering prospectus. And that was also the week of Microsoft’s first CD-ROM Conference where we were pushing the idea of multimedia back in 1986 that didn’t really catch on, you could say，until 1994 so before it was in the mainstream. But this kind of shows you the pace of activity at that time. We felt fine to have all those things happen all at once. And I know that next Monday I flew down to Australia to be part of a big software show down there.
盖茨：嗯，我们生产产品的环境应该 是一个很有趣的环境，像大学校园一 样。用一个小团队来工作的概念就意味 着你要给他们所有的工具、所有的计算 机、一间个人办公室和他们需要的任何 东西，这样他们才能感觉到自己可以集 中精力在工作上并且富有创造性。你知 道，在西北地区树林环绕，一、二、三 层楼房内的办公室空间很棒。我觉得不 错。自从我们搬到了西雅图之后，就一 直在寻找一块离市区不远却可以让我们 成长为一个公司的地方。1986年，我们 搬进了我们的公司园区。类似于现在你 看到的其中一个楼房。起初，我们有4 个环湖办公楼，每一个主要开发团队都 有自己的办公楼。那意味着我们有世界 上最好的一切。大家都觉得那是一个有 趣的环境，我们在一起工作，彼此感情 很好。外边有杂耍和独轮车表演，人们 在室外烧烤，所有人站成一圈开公司会 议。这是一种全新的尝试。这是其中两 位开发者。乔?雪莉1983年开始在公司 工作。他之前在Radio Shack公司担任 重要职位，尽管我让史蒂夫?鲍尔默帮 我处理一些商务问题，还有很多其他的 人比如彦西和保罗?艾伦分管产品，但 是乔真正地做到了让公司壮大，他知道我们在什么位置需要怎样的系统。乔在 Radio Shack公司工作的时候就是我的 好朋友，所以我们很高兴他能加入。事 实上，他是微软的第二任总裁。之前我 们聘请了另外一位绅士（轻声笑），他 感觉这里不合适，在公司待了不到一 年。他来自Tektronix公司。之后乔就 入职了。1986年我们搬入这个园区的 那个星期，我们都非常兴奋。也就在同 一周，我们正式宣布公司成立，这是我 们的招股说明。同时，那一周我们召开 了微软的第一次CD-ROM会议，我们 把多媒体的概念推回到1986年，那时 并没有真正地流行起来，可以说，直到 1994年之前都是主流之一。但是你可以 看到那时活动的速度。所有事情都来得 很快，我们觉得很好。并且我知道，下 个星期一我要飞到澳大利亚去参加一个 大型的软件展览会。
Reporter: Let’s talk a little about going public and whether that was something that everybody accepted that you needed to do，whether it was a controversial issue， and what difference it made.
记者：我们来谈一谈上市，你们做的事 情是不是所有人都认可的，有没有争 议？带来什么变化？
Gates: Well, Microsoft had started giving out stock options to people as early as 1981. So we were sharing in the success we thought we’d have. As we did that, they had about a five year vesting period. And so as some people were starting to vest on quite a bit of their stock, there was the question of how would they get liquidity Now you could just let it be traded privately, but then the price would fluctuate a lot because the supply would be so short. And I was quite reluctant to go public because of the overhead. We had been able to track our stock price internally up in a very linear way. And with the market sort of maybe over-anticipating the future, or getting paranoid—you know the stock would be very volatile. But I was convinced that it made sense. And as long as we were going to do it, it was an opportunity to really expose the company broadly. Talk about our vision where we had done well, where we were taking the industry. And it did become something that was covered very, very broadly by a lot of people. And it was extremely successful. The stock took off after this offering at $21.00 and it just zoomed up from there for many, many years.
盖茨：嗯，微软早在1981年就开始对 外出售股票。所以我们分享的是我们觉 得理应有的成功。这样做，我们大概 有5年的财产保留期。当有些人开始对 他们的股票实行保留权的时候，问题来 了，他们如何进行资产流动？现在，你 可以直接私下交易，但当时价格会浮动 得很大，因为供应不足。由于经费问 题，我不愿意上市。我们可以直接内部 跟踪我们的股价。而在股票市场上可能 对未来期望过高，或变得多疑——你知 道股票是变幻无常的。但我确信它有意义。并且只要我们着手去做，这就是一 次公司广泛曝光的机会。谈论我们的梦 想，我们做得好的地方，我们将这个 产业带向何方。确实，有许多人参与进 来。确实办得很成功。股票发行时的价 值是21美金，这么多年一直在升。
Reporter There was no regret about going public?
记者：所以上市并没有什么遗憾了？
Gates: Going public is not without its complexities in terms of dealing with analysts and all the reports. It is a little convoluted about when can you keep things secret versus having to go out and talk about those things. So, it is not totally simple. But the benefit of having the stock be very liquid for everyone was very positive. We didn’t use any of the money that we raised. We just put that money in the bank and it sat there with all of the money that we had earned, because we were very profitable and had plenty of cash by this time. So our reason for going public was very different than any other company that was going public.
盖茨：上市并不容易，需要和分析家讨 论并处理所有的报告。什么时候应该保 密，什么时候对外公布，这并不好控 制。所以并不简单。但股票可以随时流 通对每个人来说是有很明显的好处的。 我们没有花一分筹到的钱。我们把这 些钱存入银行，和我们赚到的钱放在一 起，因为我们的利润空间很大，并且现 金充裕。所以我们上市的原因与其他上 市公司完全不同。
Reporter: You have a couple of charts there, Bill，that kind of track your growth that you might want to pick up. I，m curious to know whether it was more satisfying for you to add your first 100, 1,000，or 10,000 employees? And, how did you feel about the incredible growth in your company in this time period?
记者：你那有两个表格，比尔，你期望 的公司发展轨迹。我很好奇，当你在雇 用第100名、1000名、10000名员工的 时候，这种公司规模的扩张是不是让你 感觉更满意？你对公司这个时期令人难 以置信的发展怎么看？
Gates: Well, the growth in sales was pretty rapid. We were doubling every two years. It just looks like an exponential curve. It is unusual because in here there is a lot of products that are coming and going, and products that are doing incredibly well and yet it looks very well ordered. The profits went up the same way. Actually, the profitability percentage rose a little bit as we moved up here. So it was very tightly managed. The thing that really changes the company isn’t the sales growth, though, it is the number of people. This shows you the total here. We are now well over 15,000 employees. And yet, until we moved to Seattle we were about sixteen employees. Then we got up to a little over 30 when Steve came. Then right after Steve Ballmer comes then you see these periods of 40 to 129，220— 476 increasing at a very rapid rate. It is swell because you can have all these other product groups. You can sell around the world and you can do better product support. You can lavish on the developers a great library. You can start a research group that is looking way out into the future. And your recruiting department can be the best at going out to all of those universities. So many excellent things that the energetic，smart people we hired empowered us to do. But it does mean that I got to the point where I couldn’t look at all of the code, which I had done in the early years. At 100 people, I knew everybody. I even knew their license plates when they came and went. I knew really what everyone was up to. By the time it got to 1,000 that was no longer the case. I was hiring the managers and knew all of the managers, but there was a level of indirection. And, certainly, as you go up over 10,000 then there are several levels indirect. There are some managers you don’t know. There are some products that you certainly know how they fit in if you are setting the overall strategy Now electronic mail has been a huge phenomena for us. And it keeps a little bit of a closer feel even if somebody’s office is in another building，you’re always sending them messages. Or, even if they’re off in another country it makes that easy. So, we are not as big as our size suggests. But, it certainly has a bit of a different feel than the small company.
盖茨：嗯，销售的发展很快。每两年就 会翻一番。就像一条指数曲线。这很不寻常，因为不断的有新产品被开发出 来，并且都做得好到令人难以置信，看 起来订单不少。利润同样也在上升。事 实上，我们搬到这里以后，利润率又有 所上升。因此，管理很紧凑。真正改变 公司的不是销售额，而是员工人数。你 可以在这表上看到。我们现在有超过 1.5万名员工。但是，在搬到西雅图之 前，我们差不多只有16个员工。史蒂 夫来了之后，我们的员工数目增加到30 多人。之后，从40到129、220到476， 增长非常迅速。迅速膨胀是因为你可以 拥有其他所有这些产品组。你可以在全 世界销售产品并可以提供更好的支持。 可以斥巨资为开发人员建一座图书馆。 可以组建一个前景规化研究团队。你的 人力资源团队可以找到大学里最好的毕 业生。所以，我们雇用的很多精力充沛 且聪明的员工，可以帮助我们做许多优 秀的事情。但这也就意味着，我不再像 早先一样可以了解到一切。100个人的 时候，我认识所有的人。上下班时，我 甚至可以认出他们的车牌。我知道每个 人到底是做什么的。员工数量达到1000 人的时候，事情就不是这样了。我雇用 了管理人员，并且了解所有的管理层， 这样就有了间接的层级。当然，当人数 增加到1万的时候，间接的层级就更多 了。有一些管理者我根本不认识。如果 你做市场的整体战略的话，你当然会知 道一些产品应该是怎样的。现在，使用 电子邮件已是普遍现象了。即使是跟在 另外一^1^*办公楼的人，你们也可以经常 传信息，让人感觉很近。或者，即使他们是在国外，你们沟通起来也很方便。 所以，我们看起来并不像公司规模那样 大，但是感觉当然会有和小公司不一 样。
Reporter: At the same time, has your culture changed? Or has it been pretty stable?
记者：同时，你的企业文化改变了吗？ 还是一直保持原有的？
Gates: Well, the culture, of course, varies by group. The sales force has great sales people and have the same enthusiasm for software, but their day-to-day activity and measurement is quite different. In the product groups it is pretty similar today. The developers like writing great code. They like collaborating with the team, they like getting things out every eighteen months. They like watching the competition. If somebody is very smart and contributing a lot, then it is fun. If they don’t match that kind of level of energy, then it is really not the right place for them. It is an exciting thing. It is still a little bit different. People can’t come and talk to me everyday [Laughs]. And so they have to look to their Business Unit Manager, which is how we have it setup. Certainly, we are trying to preserve all of that culture, and get the advantages of being a large company with a broad product line, with stability, worldwide presence, great support, and yet have the advantages that a small software company has.
盖茨：嗯，企业文化，当然，不同的团 队有不同的文化。销售团队有很好的销 售人员，软件团队也很有工作热情，但 是他们每天的工作和衡量尺码却是不一 样的。现在，产品部门的文化都很相 似。开发人员喜欢编写好的程序。他 们喜欢与团队合作，喜欢每18个月都 拿出成果。他们乐于看到竞争。如果有 人很聪明并乐于奉献，那么这里就会很 有趣。如果他们达不到那样的精力水 平，那么这里并不适合他们。这是一件 令人兴奋的事情。但是也有不同于其他 公司的地方。大家不能每天都来找我谈 话（笑声）。所以，他们要去找他们的 部门经理，这是我们建立的管理模式。 当然，我们希望保持所有这些企业文 化，保持大企业的优势，有一条很广泛 的生产线，有稳定性，在全球有广阔的 市场，强大的支持，同时也拥有小软件 公司的优势。
Reporter: Is there anything else you want to add?
记者：还有什么其他的想补充的吗？
Gates: I’d say that my job, throughout all this, has been, I think, the most fun job I can imagine having. And partly the people I，ve gotten to work with outside the company. Certainly there are great people inside the company. And certainly, for at least a decade or [Laughs], that will just continue to be the case.
盖茨：我想说，我的工作，通过这一 切来看，我想是我可以想象到的最有 趣的工作了。部分原因是与公司外部 一些优秀人才的合作，当然，公司里 也有很多出色的人才。当然，在未来 至少10年的时间里（笑声），都会是 这样。