Gmail Creator and YC Partner Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer and Happiness ·

From then on, video games just seemed like a pointless waste of time compared to programming.

I wished I had that kind of passion.

That was enough to fit a small Linux install, but it wasn't enough room for Emacs which is why I'm a vi person.

*cough*

I wanted to go work on Linux stuff and figured I'd at least meet some smart people there, and maybe they'd later start a company that would actually be successful.

Paul Buchheit when asked why he took Google's offer.

When they sat down with me they said, "we want you to build an email something." That was all the specification I got! So I went off to build something with email, which became Gmail.

Basically he created Gmail without any spec. And now maybe the most popular email provider.