#8 VMware's Pat Gelsinger: Farm Hand

The CEO of VMware contributed hugely to the chip industry during his 30 year stint at Intel, which he joined in 1979. But before this, Gelsinger started out working as a farm hand as a teenager growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Future Farmers of America

"I was a farm boy from Pennsylvania. As I used to joke at Intel, I knew more about cow chips than computer chips when I started," Gelsinger said in an August 2012 interview with the EMC+ blog.

#7 Twitter's Dick Costolo: improv comedian

Fresh out of University of Michigan in 1985 with a degree in computer science and three different offers for coding jobs, he opted to try his hand at improve comedy in Chicago.  

"I decided to make a big bet on myself and took a chance," Costolo told this year's graduating class in a commencement speech in May, as reported by Kellie Woodhouse of AnnArbor.com. "I was grinding away for a long time and I had no money."

"The beauty of improvisation is you're experiencing it in the moment. If you try to plan what the next lines are going to be, you're just going to be disappointed," Costolo told the UM grads.

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