"There’s no moment when I dropped out. You just go less and less and less until you realize it’s going to be embarrassing if I show up because I haven’t been there in a long time, and then pretty soon you’re just not going, and that’s how you drop out of high school. So, if you find yourself on that path, stop doing that. But that’s precisely what I did. And so now I’m not at school and I have to get a job, so I’m working at 7-Eleven and a paint warehouse and stuff like that. And 7-Eleven is actually kind of an interesting job because it’s a job I think they keep rotating for people that are smart enough to do the night shift with all the accounting and the administration and stuff they make the night shift do, but that have reasons personally that they need to work at 7-Eleven."

"I think the biggest deficit for me was when I started to manage people, because now you’re concerned about their hopes, dreams, aspirations, what motivates them. They have entire lives that are kind of a mystery to me, because I assume they want to be motivated and led and encouraged and compensated exactly as I would. And that’s not always the case. Some people need a lot more affirmation, some people just want money, some people want to be in the important meetings and make decisions. But I was largely oblivious to that. And so eventually I had to learn that everybody that you’re managing has their own set of incentives and priorities, and they’re completely different from what I think they probably are."

"… I think there was two stages for me. I always knew immediately that I was fascinated with these machines, from the TRS-80 Model I. It’s all I wanted to do was ride my bike back there and have more time with it. And I did that, you know, to wear out my welcome as much as I could. And the other revelation came, I think about second or third year of university when I realized, “I love programming, but I have no idea what I’m going to do. Am I going to make the 12 flash on a VCR somewhere? Or am I going to go work on an operating system? I have abso- absolutely no idea what I’m going to do post-graduation. But I love what I do.” And so, I think that was a lot of consolation. It’s like, it doesn’t really matter what I’m doing at this point, ’cause I kind of love doing it, so…"