Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images A young Mark Zuckerberg.
- Many, if not all, of today's most famous tech executives have loved computers and programming from an early age.
- Tesla's Elon Musk designed a space-themed video game at the age of 12, while Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was offered $1 million for software he created before he even attended Harvard.
- While many tech CEOs aspired to be on the developing side of technology throughout their careers, most have switched over to the business side.
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As a child growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk was fascinated with space.
When Mark Zuckerberg was a teenager, he frequently became frustrated when a playlist would end, thinking of ways to improve upon music recommendation software.
And Bill Gates, ever the whiz kid, was drafted by a company to develop technology at 16 and sometimes worked 18-hour days.
Many famous tech CEOs have always loved the nitty-gritty development side of the industry - often creating their own video games and software and writing code from a very young age.
However, today, some tech execs are not as involved in the engineering side of the companies they head, but instead serve as the face of some of the largest companies in the world.
Here are the earliest software programs, video games, and technological endeavors by some of the today's most successful and well-known tech executives.