That "very good infrastructure" proved essential as more Softies sent in material. By the mid-1990s Gates used an assistant to filter the submissions. It was always somebody who had a technical background and who, as Gates put it, "could read a lot
of stuff and judge which things were going to be worth having me read or not read." The high-ranked items-theywere actually ranked-first totaled about 120. During the last Think Weeks (they ended in 2008), the number had grown to nearly 400, so Gates' assistant had to create two categories: the submissions that Gates still read personally and those that wound up before another Microsoft executive.