Valve co-founder Gabe Newell revealed that he initially planned to become a doctor, but a fateful meeting at Microsoft with future CEO Steve Ballmer changed his path, offering valuable advice.
In an interview with YouTuber Zalkar Saliev (via PC Gamer), Newell noted that when he started programming in high school, it wasn`t considered a full-fledged career, and video games didn`t even exist yet. “As a kid, I thought I was going to be a doctor, and programming was what I did when I should have been doing something else,” he recalls. “It wasn`t a profession; there were no courses for it, and my first programmable device was a Texas Instruments calculator.”
Newell`s brother, Dan, was an early employee at Microsoft, founded in 1975. At the time, Microsoft was not a major player in software development, ranking only third among software developers in Washington state, according to Newell. “So there was no notion of the reputation the company would gain about ten years later,” he added.
One day, Newell visited his brother at work, intending simply to hang out. However, Steve Ballmer, Newell recounts, became annoyed, considering him a distraction. Ballmer directly told him: “`If you`re going to be hanging out here, why don`t you do something useful?`”
Newell followed this advice – he took a leave of absence from Harvard to “just work at Microsoft.”
He never returned to Harvard, instead building a career at Microsoft where he participated in creating the first versions of Windows. After 13 years, Newell left the company in 1996 to co-found Valve with another Microsoft employee, Mike Harrington. At Valve, Newell achieved tremendous success, overseeing numerous game development projects and the creation of the Steam platform.
Today, Newell is a billionaire who works from his own yacht and goes scuba diving during breaks. He also recently revealed the secret to his success.
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