Outliers: The Story of Success · chapter 2 · id outliers-c2-03-the-sequence-of-opportunities-
“The sequence of opportunities -- Lakeside terminal, C-Cubed bug-finding deal, ISI payroll programming, TRW -- gave Gates roughly 10,000 hours of programming before founding Microsoft.”
TRUE, BUTconfidence: medium⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending
Receipts
Gates (1995), The Road Aheadsource alive
Gates confirms the C-Cubed arrangement (free PDP-10 time for finding bugs), sneaking out at night to program, the ISI payroll contract, and the TRW Bonneville Power debugging job while still in high school.
Wallace & Erickson (1992), Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, Wileysource alive
Gates's programming timeline is documented: Lakeside terminal (1968), C-Cubed bug-finding (1968-70), ISI payroll contract (~1970-71), TRW Bonneville project (1971-72). The 10,000-hour figure is Gladwell's estimate, not precisely calculated.
This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us. Corrections are loud here.