As Microsoft celebrates its 51st anniversary, a look back at a 1978 photo of the company’s employees shows just how much times have changed since its early days.
The iconic photo, taken in 1978 in Albuquerque, N.M., shows 11 of the company’s earliest employees, some sporting glasses and eccentric facial hair, huddled together in the style of a family portrait. The photo was taken prior to Microsoft’s move to Washington state later that year.
The ragtag Microsoft group only took the photo because Bob Greenberg, one of the company’s original “hard coders,” won a free portrait with a local photographer for guessing the name of an assassinated president on a radio competition.
For those in the photo not named Bill Gates, the throwback portrait is most often how they get recognized in public, despite most of them now being worth millions.
“It’s iconic,” Greenberg said of the photo, according to a Microsoft blog post. “It’s taken on a life larger than any of ours, really.”
In 2008, the original employees pictured in 1978, came back together to recreate the moment, and at the time, the late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen said the original photo captured positive memories of the company’s early days.
“It does capture a moment in time and the spirit that we had there in the office,” Allen said. “You see we’re all smiling. We’re all really having fun. When you try to explain to people about the early days of Microsoft, it’s just hard to explain how much fun it was. Some people, especially Bill, would sleep in the office. You’d come in the office, sometimes you’d see his feet sticking out the door.”
As Microsoft turns 51 on Saturday, Fortune took a look back at the original photo to see where the pictured employees are now.
Bill Gates
The recognizable Microsoft cofounder in the bottom left corner of the photo went on to become one of the richest people in the world, and led the company as CEO until 2000. Gates served on the company’s board until 2020, and since then has focused on his philanthropic work and the Gates Foundation.
For years, Gates has worked at giving away the majority of his fortune through the Giving Pledge, which he created with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates and investor Warren Buffett.
As of Friday, Gates was the 17th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $102 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Gates said last year he would leave his three children only 1% of his wealth, which, according to Bloomberg, would still be a whopping $1.02 billion.
“In my case my kids got a great upbringing and education but less than 1% of the total wealth because I decided it wouldn’t be a favor to them,” Gates said on the podcast Figuring Out With Raj Shamani.
A trove of documents released by the government earlier this year shed more detail on Gates’ alleged involvement with disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including details of an affair with a Russian bridge player and efforts by Epstein to get access to Gates’ inner circle. At a town hall with employees from the Gates Foundation, the Microsoft cofounder said “I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit.” A spokesperson for Microsoft said in a statement to Fortune Gates’ was committed to answering questions and demonstrating he wasn’t part of Epstein’s criminal activity. “Gates has acknowledged it was a serious error in judgment to meet with Epstein,” the spokesperson said.
Paul Allen
The late Paul Allen, who helped create Microsoft with his childhood friend Gates, is pictured in the bottom right corner of the 1978 photo. The gifted programmer was essential for helping the company develop its MS-DOS operating system originally for IBM’s first personal computer.
Later, Allen served as Executive Vice President of Research and New Product Development at Microsoft until he stepped down in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He served on the Microsoft board from 1981 to 1985, and then again from 1990 to 2000. He then served as a “senior strategy adviser” to the company’s executives, according to PaulAllen.com. He and Gates remained friends until his death in 2018 of a cancer-related ailment.
At the time of his death, Allen was worth $20 billion. At his peak, Allen owned both the Portland Trailblazers NBA team as well as the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks.
Bob Greenberg
The catalyst for the 1978 photo, Greenberg was one of the company’s original 13 employees. He left Microsoft in 1981 and went on to help his family’s company Coleco develop the mega-famous Cabbage Patch Kids doll that dominated stores in the ‘90s.
As of 2000, his net worth was $20 million. He is a startup investor.
Gordon Letwin
Gordon Letwin stayed at the company for more than a decade after the iconic photo was taken and was key to developing the OS/2 operating system, which included a graphical user interface in 1981, making it more like modern computers than previous systems.
Along with his then-wife Rose Letwin, Gordon Letwin founded and funded the grantmaking Wilburforce Foundation, which primarily funds environmental projects. Letwin had a net worth of $20 million as of 2000.
Andrea Lewis
One of two women pictured in the 1978 photo, Andrea Lewis was a technical writer for Microsoft and left the company in 1983. Lewis later became a freelance journalist and author of the book What My Last Man Did, published in 2017. She also helped build the nonprofit literary arts center Hugo House in Seattle. As of 2000, Lewis had a net worth of $2 million.
Maria Wood
Maria Wood was a bookkeeper for Microsoft and sued the company for sexual discrimination just two years after the photo was taken. Microsoft settled the lawsuit and later Wood went on to raise two children and focus on volunteering. Wood was also married to another early employee Steve Wood. Their combined net worth was reportedly estimated at $15 million as of 2000.
Bob O’Rear
One of the oldest employees at Microsoft at the time of the first photo, Bob O’Rear was chief mathematician and one of the primary coders for the company’s MS-DOS operating system. He later went on to serve as international director of sales and marketing at the company.
O’Rear left the company in 1993 and reportedly took up cattle ranching in his home state of Texas. His net worth was estimated at $100 million in 2000.
Marc McDonald
Marc McDonald was a programmer and arguably Microsoft’s first salaried employee. McDonald left Microsoft in 1984 when the growing tech company had gotten “too big.” He then joined software company Asymetrix, founded by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, which focused on “web presentation and e-learning markets,” according to PaulAllen.com.
He later joined Design Intelligence, a Seattle software company later acquired by Microsoft. When the company was acquired in 2000, McDonald returned to Microsoft. He left the company fully in 2011. As of 2000, his net worth was estimated at $1 million.
Steve Wood
Steve Wood, Maria Wood’s husband, was the company’s first general manager and one of the first handful of employees at the company. He later went on to help create several companies,
Including Paul Allen’s venture Asymetrix, where he “held a variety of executive positions and built much of the team,” according to his Linkedin.
Wood also founded Wireless Services Corporation, now renamed SinglePoint, which focuses on renewable energy to “enhance sustainability and health,” according to its website.
Currently, Wood works as a volunteer firefighter in King County, Washington, and as the owner of AirNote LLC, according to his LinkedIn.
Bob Wallace
The late Bob Wallace joined Microsoft after he saw Gates put up a sign Gates seeking programmers in Seattle’s Retail Computer Store where he worked, the New York Times reported. In the late ‘70s, Wallace and Gates reportedly broke into a construction site and drove bulldozers—almost crushing Gates’ Porsche.
Among his technical accomplishments, Wallace helped develop an early version of the Pascal programming language while at Microsoft, but left in 1983 to create the company Quicksoft. Quicksoft, which sold a word processor called PC-Write, according to the New York Times, was one of the early pioneers of the concept of “shareware,” or software that is available free of charge and passed between users.
Wallace also had an interest in psychedelics and founded the Promind Foundation to help fuel scientific research and public education on the subject. Wallace’s 400 shares from his Microsoft days were worth as much as $15 million at one point, his wife, Megan Dana-Wallace, told the Times. Wallace died in 2002 at the age of 53.
Jim Lane
Jim Lane was a project manager at Microsoft and was key to striking the “Wintel” alliance with Intel that helped both companies dominate the personal-computer space for decades. Lane also worked on Microsoft’s Pascal compiler and its FORTRAN compiler before leaving the company in 1985. He later created his own software company. As of 2000, his net worth was around $20 million.
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on April 4, 2025.
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