Surely nobody could’ve seen it coming in the 80s that tech geniuses would be ruling the market decades later. Mostly what you make use of on a daily basis, some way or the other employs software. These include mobile phones, computers, laptops, and the upcoming electric cars. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most famous software engineers.
This list of tech giants may or may not have the names of those you’re familiar with. Regardless, these software engineers surely played a consequential role in shaping the tech scene today.
A Look At Some Of The Most Famous Software Engineers
- Marc Andreessen
A general partner and co-founder of the Andreessen Horowitz and Netscape, Marc Andreessen is a famous software engineer. Born in 1971, July 9, he’s also a well-known American investor and entrepreneur. Opsware was among the other creations that he sold to Hewlett-Packard.
Currently, his net worth stands at more than a whopping USD 645 million. Marc Andreessen is also the co-founder of the pioneer web browser, Mosaic. He also co-founded the popular company that offers a platform for many social networking sites, Ning.
To top it all of, Marc is also a stakeholder in one of the most used social media platforms, Facebook.
- Eric Schmidt
From 2001-11, the software engineer and technology businessman was at the helm of Google. He played a pivotal role in shaping Google and Alphabet Inc. as their executive chairman. The time frames for the same are 2011-15 and 2015-17, respectively.
As of June 25, 2021, Eric Emerson Schmidt has a net worth of USD 25.3 billion.
His first venture began with IT firms such as Bell Labs, Byzromotti Design, and the likes. Eric Schmidt held technical positions in these firms. He went on to engineer a program called Lex alongside Mike Lesk.
Till 2009, Marc Emerson Schmidt was also a part of the board of directors at Apple Inc.
- Jimmy Wales
One of the early pioneers of the free culture movement, Jimmy Wales, co-founded Wikipedia. He played a monumental role in shaping Wikipedia the way we know it today.
Apart from that, Jimmy Donal Wales is a former trader in the financial circles, a webmaster, and an internet entrepreneur. The for-profit variant of Wikipedia, that is, Fandom (earlier called Wikia), was also another one of his creations.
At present, Jimmy Wales has a current net worth of USD 1 million.
- Dave Cutler
His is a name that’s widely famous in the world of operating systems (OS).
David Neil Cutler Sr. helped engineered many well-known OS such as OpenVMS, VAXELN, and even Microsoft Windows NT.
He was influential in the creation of AMD64 after the exit of Digital and Alpha. Also, Dave Cutler was among the brains behind the Azure Services Platform, a venture of Microsoft.
Dave Cutler also helped developed Microsoft’s gaming console, Xbox One. The area of his focus was on engineering the OS for the said console, Hyper-V Host.