Crazy Rich Coders

Making waves since August 2018, Crazy Rich Asians depicts the hilarious antics of an incredibly wealthy Singaporean family along with the tribulations of navigating Singapore’s upper-class society. The last major Hollywood film with an all-Asian cast was a whopping 25 years ago. Yet, the milieu and grand lifestyle portrayed in Crazy Rich Asians is not exclusive to rich Singaporean families.

Some of the most affluent self-made successes around the globe began their journey as programmers. The high-life is a not so far-fetched reality for those with the skills and determination to achieve it. This article is about some Crazy Rich Coders!

Larry Page

To say that Larry Page was born into programming is an understatement. His father, Carl Page Sr., earned a PhD in Computer Science and was a famous trailblazer in the field. Both his parents were professors of computer science at Michigan State University. Page has described his house as being littered with technology magazines. It’s no wonder that he followed his parents’ footsteps!

At the age of 6, Page was already playing around with personal computers in the house. Music was also an integral part of his life.

His approach to computer science is intimately linked to his passion for music, the speed and timing required in playing music clearly influenced him when building Google:

“In some sense I feel like music training lead to the high-speed legacy of Google for me” (Fortune, 2014).

As you might expect, Page decided to study computer science. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and earned a PhD in computer science from Stanford University. It was there that Page met Sergey Brin, who would later join him in founding Google.

Page, while searching for a dissertation topic, found himself intrigued by the massive amount of data on the internet. A core aspect of his research was tracking the backlinks of a website as an indicator of its popularity and relevance. Brin, who was also pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, joined his research. Together, they began developing a search engine, which they named ‘Google’. The name was a reference to the number googol (1 followed by a hundred 0s), to represent the vast amount of data on the world wide web.

As their project grew, Page and Brin decided to set up a company based on their Google project. In 1998, Page raised 1 million dollars from his relatives, allowing Page and Brin to finally create the company. Google quickly became the largest search engine in the world. By 1999, it was receiving 500,000 searches per day. One year later, Google had indexed 1 billion URLs. Due to Page’s obsession with speed, he incessantly pushed the engineers to reduce the speed by mere milliseconds!

In 2001, Eric Schmidt replaced Page as CEO of Google, and Page assumed the President of Products role. By 2004, Google was receiving 200 million queries every day. The same year, they decided to go public and raised 1.7 billion dollars during their IPO. Throughout the 2000s, Google released hit product after hit product, from Google Mail to Google Maps, etc.

Larry Page has never stopped improving Google; he always focused on making it faster and more extensive. In 2011, he re-assumed the position of CEO. Today, Page has attained a net worth of US$56 billion, making him the 12th richest person alive. His business partner, Sergey Brin, follows right behind him with a net worth of US$48 billion.

Bill Gates

Most of us would have heard of Bill Gates. Perhaps you know him as the founder of Microsoft, a monolith in software production. Maybe you also know him for being the world’s richest person for 19 of the last 27 years. You might even recognise him from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest private foundation in the US. While the name Bill Gates will indeed be familiar to many of us, the story of his rise to fame is unknown to many.

Bill Gates was born into an upper-class family in Seattle, Washington. His father, William H. Gates Sr., was a distinguished lawyer. His mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, was an influential businesswoman that also served on the Board of Directors at several corporations including the First Interstate Bank of Washington and United Way.

At the age of twelve, Gates enrolled in Lakeside School, a prestigious private school in Seattle. The school had purchased computer time for students on a General Electric computer using proceeds from a rummage sale. Gates was fascinated by the machine and would spend hours programming on it in BASIC. He also used it to write his first program, a tic-tac-toe game against the computer. It was in this same school that Gates met Paul Allen, another computer fanatic, who eventually co-founded Microsoft with Gates.

Allen and Gates used every opportunity they found to use and explore computers. When Computer Center Corporation (CCC), a small Seattle-based company, offered free computer sessions to students, the duo and their friends spent hours on their machines. The duo was even banned when they were caught exploiting bugs in the system to extend their sessions.

Gates and Allen were remarkably resourceful in finding ways to apply their programming skills. Impressed by the students’ ability to bypass their security, CCC hired the bunch to find flaws in their system in exchange for computer time. Gates also made use of that time to study programming religiously. In 1970, CCC went bankrupt, but Gates remained eager to find computer projects. He and Allen started Traf-O-Data, a program that measured traffic flow. In his senior year, Gates was hired by his school to develop a class scheduling system.

In the fall of 1973, Gates enrolled at Harvard University. Despite majoring in pre-law, he spent most of his time in the computer lab. Throughout university, Gates kept in touch with Allen, who had dropped out of Washington State University to work at Honeywell in Boston. In the summer following Gates’ first academic year, he joined Allen at Honeywell. Allen introduced Gates to a newly released microcomputer named the Altair 8800 mini-computer kit. The device captivated the duo; they felt that this new technology was an opportunity to form their own company.

Gates called the makers of the Altair 8800, MITS, to gauge their interest in an interpreter for the Altair. Ed Roberts, the president of MITS, was receptive to the idea and invited Allen and Gated to give a demonstration of the product at MITS headquarters. The duo developed the interpreter within weeks, and successfully demonstrated the usefulness of their product. MITS signed a deal with the two to distribute the interpreter. The duo decided to name their new venture “Micro-Soft”, but dropped the hyphen within a year, resulting in the name we know today.

In 1976, Microsoft separated from MITS but continued to grow under the leadership of Gates, who was now head of the company. In 1980 came Microsoft’s big break when Gates partnered with IBM to write an operating system for their new computer.

Rather than selling the system’s source code to IBM, Gates had the foresight to sign a non-exclusive licensing deal. This allowed Microsoft to sell their product, MS-DOS, to whatever company interested in their operating system.

MS-DOS became wildly popular and launched Microsoft into success. Microsoft has not stopped growing since and is now one of the largest companies in the world by market value.

The story of Bill Gates is one of self-made success.

Gates’ incredible talent and passion for programming, coupled with business acumen, led him to become an icon in tech and one of the wealthiest person in the world.

Gates’ persistent desire to program and apply his skills brought him various opportunities, which he capitalised on with incredible success.

Ding Lei

Unlike some of the other crazy rich coders in this collection, Ding Lei didn’t stand out in his early schooling days. However, he had always displayed an interest in electronics. Reading about IT and playing with transistor radios were part of his hobbies. As his passion for electronics intensified throughout his secondary education, Ding’s academic performance improved. By the end of his secondary education, Ding had been accepted into Chengdu College of Electronic Science and Technology, known today as the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.

Ding studied microwave communication, but found himself bored and decided instead to attend computing courses. Upon graduating in 1993, Ding was hired by the Ningbo Telecommunications Bureau.

However, his career at Ningbo was short-lived. Searching for something greater, and against the will of his parents, he quit his job and moved to Guangzhou to work for Sybase. It was during his Sybase time that Ding met Ma Huateng, whom you may know as the founder of Tencent.

Subsequently, inspired by the potential of the internet in shaping the future, Ding decided to create NetEase in 1997. NetEase was selling email software, before it has become the online gaming giant it is today.

NetEase went through several changes before reaching at its current form. In 2000, Ding moved NetEase to Beijing and listed the company on Nasdaq. After witnessing the success of Yahoo, Ding decided to turn NetEase into a web portal. Failing to provide an accurate revenue report, NetEase was removed from Nasdaq. By January of 2002, NetEase was back on Nasdaq and has been rising ever since.

The creation and evolution of NetEase is a story of highs and lows. Within three years of its founding in 1997, NetEase was listed on Nasdaq. Only a year after, NetEase was suffering the effects of the dot-com crash and was removed from Nasdaq.

Despite his struggles, by 2003, Ding was the wealthiest man in China. Today, he is worth US$11.4 billion, and NetEase is an industry leader in online gaming.

Judy Faulkner

Judy Faulkner, “the most powerful woman in healthcare” (Forbes, 2013), was born on August 1943 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Faulkner attended Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, where she received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. She then enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, where she earned a master’s in computer science.

Both her parents, Louis and Del Greenfield, were professionals in the healthcare industry. Her father worked as a pharmacist. Judy’s mother was the executive director of the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, which is part of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.

In 1979, Faulkner founded Human Services Computing, a healthcare software company that later changed its name to Epic Systems. It was fairly small upon inception and saw a slow but steady growth during its first decade of its existence. Epic Systems’ rise to success came when Faulkner released an electronic medical record software named EpicCare. EpicCare was based on Windows operating software and proliferated in the healthcare industry; partly due to the growth of Windows operating system. By 1997, EpicCare had become the largest medical records software in the US, and Epic Systems had solidified itself as a healthcare powerhouse.

Unlike most company owners, Faulkner never took Epic Systems public, despite pulling in a multi-billion dollar annual revenue. She felt it was more important to retain control of her company. What’s more, Faulkner has not sought any outside capital or ran any substantial marketing.

Judy Faulkner, as a female tech geek in 20th century America, never quite fit the mould. Women were, and still are, underrepresented in the field of computer science. Regardless of the odds, her determination to succeed and her steadfast approach to maintaining control of her company led Epic Systems to become one of the market leaders in the healthcare industry.

Faulkner has garnered a net worth of US$3.5 billion and Epic Systems holds the medical records of 64% of Americans.

Despite her personal accomplishments, Faulkner still believes that: “Being resourceful and working together make the world a better place” (Becker’s Hospital Review, 2018)!

Rasmus Lerdorf

Known as the father of PHP programming, Rasmus Lerdorf was born on November 1968 in Qeqertarsuaq, Greenland. He spent his early life in Greenland and Denmark before moving to Ontario at the age of 15. Lerdorf completed his education in Canada, graduating from the University of Waterloo in 1993 with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Systems Design Engineering.

After graduation, Lerdorf tried designing his personal website. However, the programming language used by the industry back then was tedious and inefficient. Lerdorf decided therefore to create his own scripting language to design websites.

In 1995, he released the first iteration of this language, PHP, marking the beginning of a web design revolution. Today, PHP is crucial in almost every back-end web development.

Lerdorf, rather humbly, refuses to credit himself with the innovation brought by PHP. In an interview with SitePoint, he said: “I did not develop the PHP we know today. Dozens, if not hundreds of people, developed PHP. I was simply the first developer.”

In addition to his ingenuity as a programmer, Lerdorf has an exemplary professional background. In 2002, he was hired by Yahoo, where he worked for seven years as an infrastructure architect. Perhaps even more notably, Lerdorf has been pivotal to the success of Etsy. He served as an advisor to the company for several years before joining Etsy as an engineer, where he still works today.

Rasmus Lerdorf is a pioneer in programming and his contributions have changed the face of back-end development forever.

In 2018, Rasmus Lerdorf’s net worth is estimated to be in the range of approximately US$ 1.4 billion.

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