Bill Gates says he worked 80-hour weeks coding software for Microsoft

Microsoft is currently valued above $3 trillion, and co-founder Bill Gates has an estimated net worth of $165 billion.

Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has revealed that he used to work for 80 hours a week, writing codes for his company. Speaking to CNBC Make It, the 69-year-old said he worked extra hard even a decade after becoming a billionaire because he did not feel successful.

“I wouldn’t say that I felt comfortable that we were successful until about 1998 or so,” Gates told the publication. That was 11 years after he took Microsoft public. he was 31 and had just become the youngest billionaire in history, Forbes reported. “That’s the first time I look back and say, ‘Okay, we are in a pretty good position here, and I understand why my competitors are so jealous that they think they need the Justice Department to help them out,’” Gates said. He was referring to the time when Microsoft faced antitrust lawsuits, as rivals and even the US government argued that it had become a monopoly.

In his new memoir, Source Code, Gates wrote about working 80-hour weeks coding software regularly and constantly worrying that any mistake could cost Microsoft its place at the forefront of the personal computer revolution. At the time, the company was the world’s most valuable public company and was worth more than $250 billion. Gates himself was the world’s wealthiest person with a net worth of $58 billion, Forbes estimated.

“Not until the late-90s did I feel like, ‘Wow, we can even make a few mistakes and still be okay,’” Gates told CNBC Make It. “I thought I was one mistake away from death until then. That was just my mentality.”

Today, Microsoft is valued above $3 trillion, and the co-founder has an estimated net worth of $165 billion, Bloomberg reported.