Melinda French Gates almost didn’t join Bill Gates’ Microsoft— Until THIS unexpected comment changed her life forever

File photograph: Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates

Tech billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gatesand Melinda French Gates might need divorced and gone their separate methods, however anecdotes from their private lives continues to achieve individuals’s consideration and make the headlines. It is famous that when Melinda French Gates joined Bill Gates’ Microsoft again within the Nineteen Eighties, the tech firm was only a “little” firm.So, what made Melinda take up a job at Microsoft again then, a choice by way of which she met her now ex-husband Bill Gates and which changed her life forever?Talking about this, Melinda revealed in an interview with LinkedIn News earlier this 12 months that it was an unexpected comment that made her changed her mind– and the remainder, as they are saying, is historical past!

When Melinda selected to join Bill Gates’ “little company” Microsoft

Things might have turned out very otherwise for Melinda French Gates— if not for one unexpected piece of recommendation that changed the course of her life. Back within the Nineteen Eighties, contemporary out of Duke University’s enterprise college, Melinda had simply wrapped up two internships at IBM and obtained a promising job supply from the tech big. But a dialog with her hiring supervisor took an unexpected flip.During the interview, the supervisor requested Melinda if she was prepared to just accept the supply. Melinda replied that she had one final interview—with a small, comparatively unknown firm on the time referred to as Microsoft. “‘Well, I have one more company to go interview. This little company, Microsoft. It was tiny,’” Melinda recalled saying to her then manager at IBM. “And she said, ‘If they give you an offer, you should take it.’ And it dumbfounded me,” Melinda French Gates added.That advice, coming from someone who was supposed to hire her, left Melinda stunned. But she took it to heart— and that decision would shape her entire future.Melinda joined Microsoft in 1987 as a product manager. Over the next decade, she climbed the ranks to become the general manager of information products at what would become one of the most valuable companies in the world.But it wasn’t just her career that flourished at Microsoft. It’s also where she met Bill Gates. The duo got married in 1994, co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000, and went on to become one of the most influential philanthropic couples in history before separating in 2021 after 27 years of marriage and having three children together.Looking back, Melinda often reminds others to take bold chances in their careers. “You can pivot. You can change. You can go in a whole new direction,” she says.One small nudge from a hiring manager— one simple sentence— was all it took to change everything.