Ric Weiland
American computer programmer (1953-2006)
Richard William "Ric" Weiland (April 21, 1953 – June 24, 2006) was a software developer, programmer, and philanthropist. He was the second employee at Microsoft Corporation, joining the company during his final year at Stanford University in Stanford, California. At 35, he left Microsoft focusing on working in investment management and philanthropy. He was a quiet but well-respected donor to the LGBTQ social justice movement, the environment, health and human services, and education. After his death, the Chronicle of Philanthropy said Weiland had given the 11th largest charitable amount in the nation with more than $165 million distributed between 20 nonprofit beneficiaries.
Early life
Weiland was a high-school classmate and friend of Paul Allen. They created the Lakeside Programmers Group at Lakeside School, a preparatory school in Seattle. Weiland, Allen, Bill Gates, and Gates' childhood best friend Kent Evans were involved with the Computer Center Corporation working with a PDP-10. They created a payroll program in COBOL for a company in Portland, Oregon and wrote scheduling software for Lakeside School.
Microsoft
Allen and Gates hired Weiland in 1975, the same year they founded Microsoft in Albuquerque.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q92883. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2006 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ric Weiland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.