Pay attention to the $15K salary he wants- that's about $75K in today's money. Not much has changed,even though companies nowadays make many tons more money from the dev work...
If we're being pedantic, aside from "Harvard," it wouldn't have screamed much to most people in 1974: "What are all these acronyms, and what on earth is an 'operating system'?" This resume was written three years before anyone normal had access to a computer. I'm not even sure how many bank branches and travel agents had a terminal yet.
Interesting that you paid attention to his salary. What about his course work? What about the hardware and languages he knows? He was more skilled than the average developer today in his freshman year.
Oh,I've seen that part as well, however there were also some very good comments made by other users on that section.Bill was doing stuff on a computer since the childhood,so by the time he walked into the uni he already knew more than an average guy.
His developer chops were why he was making such bank at 18 years old. Still though, his salary is probably the most interesting takeaway from all of this (that, or the whole listing your height & weight thing).
As a data point, the University of Waterloo releases data about hourly earnings for students enrolled in the co-op program. The first co-op term for students in Mathematics (the faculty Computer Science is under) is typically taken after completing 2-3 semesters of schooling.
According to the data for students doing internships in the United States, the average first year Computer Science (or more accurate, first year Faculty of Mathematics) student is making
$30.57 USD an hour [0]. However, going to the States is typically a function of one's experience, and so this is more common in upper years.
If you take the average for work terms in Canada, the average first year (or more accurately, first year Faculty of Mathematics student) makes $18.84 CAD [1].
It's worth noting that Waterloo is probably the #1 undergraduate program (at least in North America) in terms of industry placement and co-op programs. Their students are heavily sought-after.
(This doesn't disqualify any of what you said; it's just worth pointing out for those who are unfamiliar with the program.)
I had a job paying that kind of money when I was in high school working on applications for a large internet provider.
The skills came from learning to program starting in the 5th grade.
So first year students don't make that kind of money but as a first year student you might have skills that were honed earlier which allows for that type of job.
A lot of first year cs students have under a year of experience and can only list python, Java and possibly C++ under proficiencies. What's more sad is when you try hiring at a job fair and 300 4th year / master's students also only have python/Java/C++ with no side projects.
Personally speaking, vast proficiency in any given language or languages doesn't mean that much to me. You'll pick up es6 or go or whatever else. I care about the thought processes behind development choices, their implications on computational efficiency. They teach this in school, at least in the schools I attended.
In fact, many professors were adamant they didn't care about languages at all other than someone grading it can read it. Some classes never wanted to see your source code. Most classes didn't have code at all!
Yep, that’s one of the biggest takeaways I got from observing my friends who got their education from known good CS programs vs. weak CS programs.
Those in good programs had classes that were focused on the actual subject matter (algorithms, OS, compilers, ML, etc.) with the language just being a tool, and in upper level classes, professors absolutely didn’t even care what language you used, as long as it got the job done (within reasonable limits, of course; no one likes grading BrainFuck code, even though some people attempted writing assignments in those as a joke).
Those in weaker programs, instead, had a “Java class”, “C class”, “javascript class”, etc.
$75,000 is a bottom ~15-20% software developer salary in the US today per the BLS figures.
Someone in his ability range today will earn twice that (Gates was clearly at least a top 25% programmer in his day, more likely solidly top 10%), or more depending on location. That's before factoring in the age & experience issues, which can throw that all over the place and would be hard to adjust for today vs 45 years ago.
And why not? A friend of mine called the local IT company enquiring about the position. He told them that he's got experience with x,y,z technologies and can do a,b,c.The guy from the company was so excited( it's a small town with a very limited pool of candidates) that he wanted to get him in for an interview. Before confirming the date, he asked my friend: what's your education? To which,my friend replied: I'll start 11th grade next year..The guy hung up...