Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates doesn’t exactly need a job these days, but he has an old resume handy just in case. Gates shared a vintage resume on LinkedIn late last week, writing ruefully, “Whether you’re a recent grad or a college dropout, I’m sure your resume looks a lot better than mine did 48 years ago” — in other words, 1974.
Uh, don’t be so sure, Bill. Not that many of us are Harvard students, as Gates was at the time, with experience with many of the computers and programming languages of the moment. We didn’t co-lead a project at our high school to handle scheduling for private high schools, earning over $10,000. And we certainly weren’t in partnership with Paul Allen, Gates’ late co-founder of Microsoft, designing a system for traffic engineers to study traffic flow.
Bill Gates’ 1974 resume in all its typewritten glory.
Bill Gates via LinkedInBut what might be the most striking for ordinary people to note is the small section of personal data Gates added to the resume. He says he’s 5-foot-10-inches tall (about 1.78 meters) and weighs just 130 pounds (about 59 kilograms). He’s just a freshman at Harvard but lists a salary of $12,000 (£9,915, AU$17,477) and says his desired salary is “open.”
He also has no restrictions on a job location. But we do know that Gates and Allen started Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975 before moving the company to its current location of Redmond, Washington.
“A $12,000 salary 48 years ago would have been amazing for a recent graduate — you always did well, Bill Gates,” wrote one LinkedIn commenter.
Gates’ resume appears to have been typed up on a typewriter, as would have been the norm for 1974, before Gates and others helped spread the use of personal computers.
He also lists his home address where he lived with his parents when not at Harvard. The breathtaking mid-century modern home in the Seattle lakeside neighborhood of Laurelhurst sold just a year ago for $2.6 million.
