Tech CEOs leading multi-billion dollar companies wield enormous power.
But when they were younger, some CEOS took whatever jobs they could find as teenagers to scrape by.
Others chased their non-tech related dreams after college before gravitating to tech.
Still others, upon starting their careers, found themselves in positions they wouldn't have envisioned in a million years.
If there's a common theme here, it's that these execs excelled in their early roles, no matter how mundane they might seem now. They wouldn't be where they are now if they hadn't.
It's been said that the road to the top can be meandering, and based on these examples of tech CEOs that had less-than-glamorous beginnings, this maxim rings true.
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Microsoft's Steve Ballmer: assistant product manager for Duncan Hines' Moist & Easy cakes and brownies
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 and has been its CEO since 2000.
After graduating from Harvard in 1977, Ballmer spent two years as an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble.
In 2008, he told AllThingsD's Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg about the experience of managing the Coldsnap Freezer Dessert Maker, a product used to make ice cream.
After that, Ballmer was an assistant product manager for Duncan Hines' Moist & Easy cakes and brownies.
VMware's Pat Gelsinger: Farm Hand
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger had a huge impact on the chip industry during his 30 years at Intel, which he joined in 1979.
But Gelsinger started out working in a completely different field. In fact, as a teenager growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania, Gelsinger was a member of the Future Farmers of America, so he literally worked in a field.
"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.
Twitter's Dick Costolo: improv comedian
When Twitter CEO Dick Colstolo graduated from the University of Michigan in 1985 with a degree in computer science, he had three different offers for programming jobs on the table.
But instead of taking one of them, Costolo decided to try his hand at improv 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.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider