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By 1979, Microsoft had outgrown its first home in Albuquerque, NM.

In part, they found that Albuquerque at that time did not have a rich network of other computer companies.

On the other hand, the network of high-tech companies in Seattle had continued to grow. And so they returned to the Pacific Northwest.

They settled in Bellevue, a fast-growing city just east of Seattle.

In Bellevue, Microsoft expanded beyond Altair BASIC, creating new programming languages like FORTRAN, COBOL, and Pascal.

A big moment came in 1980 when Microsoft partnered with IBM to develop an operating system for its new personal computer. They bought the operating system QDOS, modified it, and launched it as MS-DOS in 1981—quickly becoming the go-to system for IBM-compatible PCs.

As personal computers became more common, Microsoft branched into application software, introducing Multiplan (1982) and Microsoft Word (1983). Then, in 1983, the company unveiled Windows 1.0, a graphical interface designed to compete with Apple’s Macintosh.

In the early 1980s, Fred Moody, a freelance typesetter and later journalist, visited Microsoft’s Bellevue office.

Later, he described the what he saw:

“How can I explain how strange it was to have something like Microsoft suddenly land in Seattle?

The people wandering frantically around Microsoft’s hallways looked just like normal (if nerdish) Seattleites. They were dressed in jeans, sweatshirts, T-shirts, flannel, boots, sneakers, wore their hair unkempt, and were often sloppily bearded. They sported, in other words, your basic laid-back Seattle look.

Yet they crackled with purposefulness, ambition, and fervor. They looked and acted like people who knew they were on to something unimaginably big, and they had the passion of True Believers. They always needed everything immediately, and were convinced that they were doing work that would change the world—an attitude that by definition was hilarious in a Seattleite.”

- Fred Moody, Seattle and the Demons of Ambition: A Love Story. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003.

In Microsoft's early days, the laid-back dress code reflected a culture that valued skills over appearance or background. The company focused on what people could do, not where they came from.

At the same time, most employees were white. While there were no official discriminatory policies, it was much easier for people from white, middle-class families to have access to the needed education and therefore also gain the experience needed to get hired in a company like Microsoft.

Early Black employees, like Trish Millines-Dziko, were in the minority both at work and in the predominantly white Eastside community. To support one another, they formed Black at Microsoft (BAM), a group that helped with everything from finding a barber to building a sense of community.

Over time, Millines-Dziko saw that Microsoft wasn’t doing enough to recruit and retain Black employees. She moved from engineering to Human Resources to help improve diversity efforts. Later, she founded the Technology Access Foundation to create more opportunities in tech for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Listen to Trish Millines-Dziko describe her experience (audio only).

Excerpts from Oral History Interview, August 8, 2002. MOHAI, Speaking of Seattle Oral History Collection, Information Technology Oral History Project, 2019.35.6.11.

Photo courtesy of Black Past.

Redmond

In 1986, Microsoft reached a new stage of growth, moving its headquarters to a new campus in Redmond, Washington, and debuting on the stock market on March 13.

This milestone set the foundation for Microsoft to grow into one of the world’s leading tech giants.

Before Microsoft moved to Redmond in 1986, the city was a small, rural town known for logging, farming, and equestrian culture. In the early 1900s, it thrived as a logging and sawmill town, later shifting to agriculture.

By the 1960s and 1970s, suburban growth began, but Redmond remained mostly quiet until tech companies, led by Microsoft, transformed it into a technology hub.

When Microsoft moved its headquarters to Redmond, Washington in 1986, it created a suburban-style campus that blended with the natural surroundings.

The first buildings were low-rise, simple, and functional, with concrete and glass exteriors that matched the company's tech-focused style. The campus was surrounded by forests, walking trails, and open green spaces, embracing the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

Bill Gates at Microsoft campus, Redmond, 1991. MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 2000.107.19910122.1.23, photo by Mike Urban.

Redmond Campus. Microsoft Archives.

Microsoft campus, Redmond, 1991. MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 2000.107.19910310.1.04.

Microsoft's Application Development Team. SC0855 Richard William Weiland papers, 1969-2006, box 23, folder 3, Apps Development.Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

A typical Microsoft employee office in the 1990s. Microsoft Archives.

Edward Wang and his family in Redmond, February 1989

Edward Wang was born in Taiwan and moved to the US at age 30 to work as a salesman for Microsoft. Despite his family's urgings to remain home, Wang decided to leave in order to see other countries and advance in the world.

In this photo, Edward Wang laughs with his wife Fang-fang and their son E-shin outside their home in Redmond.

Production worker Steve Taylor at Aldus, checking packages of PageMaker, June 1, 1987

Aldus Corporation was a software company founded in Seattle by Paul Brainerd in 1984 that developed PageMaker, one of the earliest desktop publishing (DTP) software products, which was released in July of 1985. The company is named after fifteenth-century Venetian printer Aldus Manutius.

Three former Aldus executives (Jeremy Jaech, Dave Walter, and Ted Johnson) left the company to establish Axon Corporation, later known as Visio Corporation, in 1990 and created a product which later became known as Microsoft Office Visio. In 1995, Adobe acquired Aldus and continued to publish PageMaker until 2001.

Ken Sarumaru of Sun Grade, Inc., Bellevue, December 10, 1986

Early tech entrepreneur Ken Sarumaru (who has since changed his name to Kenichi Uchikura) has had several Bellevue-based software businesses including Sun Grade Inc., designed to connect software companies with Japanese markets. Uchikura founded Pacific Software Publishing in 1987 and is still operating out of Bellevue.

Mark Eppley of Traveling Software, December 21, 1990

Mark Eppley founded Traveling Software in Bothell in 1983 to create products to help people work remotely and move files between laptops and office desktops. The company was re-branded as LapLink.com in 1999, named after its most notable product at the time, and later software like PCmover helped keep the company profitable and growing. The company is still in business as Laplink, headquartered in Bellevue.

Colman Elementary School students working at computers, Seattle, February 8, 1993

In 1991, Seattle voters approved a $22 million levy to equip schools with classroom computers, but home access remained unequal. For example, by 1993 only 5% of students at Colman Elementary had computers at home. The school, now called Thurgood Marshall Elementary, is located in Seattle’s traditionally Black neighborhood of the Central District.

To help, the Seattle Public Schools partnered with local organizations the Union Gospel Mission and Seattle Learning Alliance to create an after-school program for students from Colman and another elementary at an area youth center.

Charlotte Guyman, Director of Marketing for Microsoft consumer division, September 1993

Charlotte Guyman was Microsoft's consumer marketing director. She led Microsoft Home, launched in 1993 to shift the company beyond business software. The brand introduced user-friendly products like Encarta and Works for Windows.

She left Microsoft in 1999 and later became a director at Berkshire Hathaway, a board member at UW Medicine, and a trustee for Save the Children.

Charles Simonyi, February 7, 1991

Charles Simonyi is a software architect known for leading the development of Microsoft Word and Excel. Born in Hungary, he moved to the U.S. in 1968 and worked at Xerox PARC, where he led the team behind Bravo, the first WYSIWYG word processor.

Joining Microsoft in 1981, Simonyi became a key figure in application development and later contributed to Microsoft Research on "intentional programming." In 2002, he founded Intentional Software Corporation. A year later, he established the Charles and Lisa Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, supporting arts, science, and education initiatives locally and globally.