Helped to found and expand Linear Technology, Williams was a talented analog circuit designer and technical author. He worked for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1968–1979), Philbrick, National Semiconductor (1979–1982), and Linear Technology Corporation (LTC) (1982–2011). While he did not have a degree, he took one semester of psychology at Wayne State University in Detroit, but dropped out. He was the son of a banker in Detroit during the peak of the US auto industry who felt he needed to cut him off financially because he believed it was necessary for his son to earn his own way.
Growing up, he had a neighbor who loved electronics and would show him his Tektronix oscilloscopes in the garage. Williams soon developed a passion for electronics and especially for test equipment. His passion led him to MIT, not as a student, but as a lab tech who built hardware for the scientists and kept a whole slew of sophisticated test equipment working.
Test equipment has to be more advanced than the circuits it tests, so learning the design of test equipment turned him into one of the best analog engineers in the world. He never confused description with understanding. When he gave seminars on how to design piezoelectric transformer lamp drivers, Williams pointed out that professors who fill the blackboard with math really don't know how a circuit works. He knew that the math can describe how a circuit works, but understanding how it works was a much more fundamentally intuitive and poetic endeavor.
