Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says he used to memorise staff numberplates

BILL Gates has revealed details of how “fanatical” he was in the early days of Microsoft and why his parents sent him to a psychologist as a teenager.

MICROSOFT co-founder Bill Gates has revealed how he used to memorise his employees’ numberplates to keep track of when they came and went.

Speaking on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4, Gates also disclosed that he was “disruptive” as a teenager, forcing his parents to send him to a psychologist.

The 60-year-old opened up to presenter Kirsty Young on the show about how “fanatical” he was in the early days of Microsoft, and the relationship he had with Apple founder Steve Jobs that was both competitive and mutually supportive.

Computing became an obsession and he would spend five hours a day learning programming, skipping gym classes to further his knowledge.

Gates met Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen at school — the pair managed to rig the school’s schedule so Gates could sit near the “nice girls” in class — and he eventually dropped out of Harvard to set up the company when he was just 19.

By 1979, at 23, Microsoft was grossing $US2.5 million a year.

Bill Gates has revealed he used to memorise his employees’ numberplates to keep track of their movements.

He said: “I was quite fanatical about work. I worked weekends, I didn’t really believe in vacations ... I had to be a little careful not to try and apply my standards to how hard they (his employees) worked.

“I knew everybody’s licence plate so I could look out in the parking lot and see when did people come in, when were they leaving. Eventually I had to loosen up as the company got to a reasonable size.”

Talking about his relationship with his parents — his father was a successful lawyer, his mother a teacher who sat on a number of corporate boards — he said: “They set a very good example of being engaged in giving back.”

This was a lesson developed into a philanthropic philosophy culminating in he and his wife Melinda setting aside much of their vast fortune to help the world’s poor.

Explaining why they sent him to see a child psychologist when he was 12, he said: “I was a bit disruptive. I started early on questioning were their rules logical and always to be followed, so there was kind of a bit of tension there as I was pushing back.”

As a child he devoured books, especially biographies, and considered a future as a lawyer or scientist so he could “work on hard problems”.

Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, pictured, have set aside much of their fortune to help the world’s poor.

Gates also spoke of his relationship with Apple founder Steve Jobs.

He said: “For some periods (we) were complete allies working together — I wrote the original software on Apple 2. Sometimes he would be tough on you, sometimes he would be very encouraging. And he got really great work out of people.”

Talking about when he saw Jobs a few months before he died in 2011, Gates said: “In the early years the intensity had always been about the project, and so when Steve got sick it was far more mellow in terms of talking about our lives and our kids.

“He and I gave a joint interview together and I talked about how I envied his incredible design skills. Steve was an incredible genius and I was more of an engineer than he was.

“It was fun that it was more of a friendship that reflective, although tragically then he couldn’t overcome the cancer and died.”

Gates picked Under Pressure, by Queen and David Bowie, Willie Nelson’s Blue Skies, and The Two Of Us by The Beatles among his tracks.

He also selected copies of the world’s great lectures on DVD as his luxury item, and chose to take Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels Of Our Nature as his book.

If you were stranded on a desert island, what music would you want to have? Here’s my list: https://t.co/zQAWk7bTxn pic.twitter.com/Yqf4BQATSz

— Bill Gates (@BillGates) February 1, 2016