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Not to pile on, but you might be interested to know that Zuckerberg also spent the time to learn Mandarin.

• eldavido 10y ago
  I know he did. Apart from the whole business luminary/billionaire thing, I think Zuck is a pretty cool and insightful guy. I like both the idea of having a "challenge", as well as the specific ones he's done: running, meeting a new person each day, learning Mandarin, doing a cool side project with his house. (I get to hear about a lot of this as one of my best friends works as fb) At the risk of sounding a little bit self-aggrandizing, I often think about how similar the two of us are, not because I'm particularly special, but just that he's a torch-carrier for guys like me. I'm a month apart from Zuck in age, I'm about to get married to a woman with a serious career, and Zuck and I both grew up in the eastern US (I'm from Chicago). I had a Chinese girlfriend growing up. My family wasn't rich but we also weren't poor. I worked at Microsoft out of college, something Zuck said he might've done if he didn't found facebook. He's pretty talented though. I definitely didn't create wirehog. I also didn't go to Exeter or have the quality of education he did, either at Exeter, or later at Harvard. I have to wonder how much that stuff influenced his later life, and whether I should try to get my kids into those places. Controversies aside, I think he's doing an admirable job of casting the tech industry in a positive light, with his positions on taking time off from work, and trying to hire inclusively. I don't use facebook as I have genuine concerns about privacy, but I think he's a real idealist who thinks making the world more "open and connected" is a genuinely good thing. I'd love to meet him some day.