Today, June 27, 2008, Bill Gates transitions from his day-to-day role at Microsoft to focus more time on his work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will remain Microsoft’s chairman and will be involved in select projects based on direction from Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer and the leadership team.

Bill Gates and his childhood friend Paul Allen started in a garage in 1975.

Watch the video and hear from his friends, family and Microsoft leaders about Gates’ amazing journey — from coding BASIC for the Altair 8800 to leading the world’s largest software company.

Video Tribute: Looking Back, Moving Ahead

The bushy beards and big hair are gone, replaced with receding hairlines and streaks of gray.

Microsoft's founding employees gathered in 1978 to take a portrait before the company moved to Washington. Front row (left to right): Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, and Paul Allen. Middle row: Bob O'Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, and Gordon Letwin. Back row: Steve Wood, Bob Wallace, and Jim Lane. Not pictured is Miriam Lubow.

For the first time in 30 years, 11 of Microsoft's 12 original employees got together to re-create a famous photo taken just before the company moved from its Albuquerque birthplace to the Pacific Northwest in 1978.

"Paul doesn't have his mustache," quipped Bill Gates at the April photo shoot at Microsoft's Redmond campus. "Facial hair is on the decline, I guess," answered Paul Allen.

Reshooting an image known for its young faces (and of course groovy outfits and far-out hair) gave the company's founders a chance to look back at what Microsoft has accomplished over three tumultuous decades. Everyone was there except Bob Wallace, who passed away in 2002.

Many at the reunion wished they had stayed on longer. All but Gates left the company by the mid-1990s. None of them knew how big Microsoft was going to get, except maybe Gates.

As Allen tells it, thinking big in the early days meant just getting the company off the ground. When he and Gates talked about forming the company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, "we thought, wow, God, if we're successful, maybe we'll have 30 people."

Still, it was obvious to everyone that Gates had big plans for Microsoft.

"Right from the start…Bill knew this was going someplace, and we were along for the ride," said Bob Greenberg, one of Microsoft's original "hardcore coders." "I joked with him about lots of different things, but I learned very quickly the one thing you couldn't joke about was the company itself. You couldn't touch that ground." Today, Greenberg manages several investments, is an officer with several Jewish organizations, and is an investor in a start-up company.

Allen added, "Bill was Bill," driving the company hard and driving himself harder.

"I think Bill tried to set a very high benchmark," he said. "He wanted to make sure everybody emulated that [work ethic]." Gates said it was in Albuquerque where he laid out his famous vision for Microsoft. "'A computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software' was the slogan of the company," he recounted in a roundtable discussion that took place after the photo shoot.

Microsoft's original employees got together to reshoot the famous photo in April. Front row (left to right): Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Miriam Lubow, Marla Wood, and Paul Allen. Back row: Bob O'Rear, Steve Wood, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin, and Jim Lane. Not pictured is Bob Wallace, who has passed away.

A young Gates wasn't always taken seriously, though. Just ask Miriam Lubow, who was the original receptionist for the company. (She missed the Albuquerque photo shoot because of a snowstorm.) She was hired by Steve Wood while Gates was away. She is retired and actively involved in many projects, including an autobiography.

"One morning in comes this kid, sneakers and blue jeans and hair disheveled, and I'm thinking this kid doesn't belong here, what is he doing?" Lubow recounted to many laughs from her old colleagues. "He runs by my office and goes into the computer room that Steve said 'nobody should go in there; it's private. Don't let anybody in there.'"

She quickly went to tell Wood. "I said, look Steve, this kid runs in there, and he's in that room, and he's working like he owns this place, and Steve says, 'Well, you know what, he does. He's your boss. He's the president.'"

Once the company started to grow, Gates and Allen found they were having trouble wooing people to New Mexico, so they decided to move home.

"Bill and I used to talk about the fact that a lot of people didn't even know what state Albuquerque was in,"Allen said.

Aside from Andrea Lewis, "nobody was based in Albuquerque," Gates said, so there were no real ties there except for the good weather and the difficulties associated with moving everyone.

There was some initial resistance to the move, but everyone decided to make a go of it. It was at that time that Greenberg won a free portrait with a local photographer by correctly guessing the name of an assassinated president on a local radio program.