Microsoft After Gates. (And Bill After Microsoft.)

The icon of the tech world will focus on philanthropy as the company he founded faces turbulent seas.

In some respects, this week won’t be terribly different for bill Gates than the previous 1,712 weeks he has spent working full-time at Microsoft, the company he co-founded as a teenager. The 52-year-old icon has some one-on-one meetings scheduled with a few of his top technical executives. He has some customer meetings. And, as often happens, he’ll go to the television studio on Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus to tape a few messages for events he won’t be able to attend. In addition, he says, “I hope to write a few memos.”

But normalcy will be an illusion. Everybody knows that when the week ends, Bill Gates will walk out of his office for the last ...