A spokeswoman for Cisco said Chambers quit -- in what must be one of the eventual multimillionaire's worst prognostications -- because he worried that he could not afford such an expensive hobby.
These days, he does not do the flying himself, but he has made enough money to own his own jet. He has two homes, a primary one in Los Altos Hills, an affluent area of Silicon Valley, and a weekend home near Carmel, an hour's drive down the coast. The Carmel house has a huge picture-window view of the Pacific.
Over all, however, Chambers says he leads a modest life with his wife, Elaine, with whom he has two grown children. He irons his own shirts, he said, and Elaine, who was also his high school sweetheart, "tells me to take out the garbage and reminds me that I'm not the CEO of the house."
For someone raised by a psychiatrist, he is not particularly introspective about his ambition.
"What drives me is building a company that will last," he said.
When pressed about his personal motivation, he added, "Changing the way the world lives, works, learns and plays."
RSS