#6 Tableau Software's Pat Hanrahan: fireman at a paper mill company

Hanrahan is co-founder and chief scientist at Tableau, and one of the biggest names in big data. But while he was in college he worked in a paper. "I’d be on fire duty, which meant standing around with a hose and doing nothing. That said, if you go a week in a paper mill without a fire, you are doing well. All that dust accumulates and practically becomes explosive," Hanrahan told AllThingsD.

#5 SAP's Bill McDermott: delicatessen worker-turned-owner

When the SAP CEO was 16, he worked part-time job as a busboy in an Italian restaurant. Then he found a job at a deli, a food and refreshment outlet, near his home in Long Island. He ended up buying it soon after, borrowing $5,500 to make it happen. Five years later, he had made enough money to pay off his student loans, buy beach house for his parents, according to his alumni page on the Northwestern University Kellogg School Of Management, where he earned an MBA in 1997.

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