Ten thousand hours' worth of time, to be precise. Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, figures that he and Bill Gates may have put in the 10,000 hours it takes to become an expert -- according to the rule in Malcolm Gladwell's popular book "Outliers" -- at about the same time.

He and Gates were both born in 1955 (as was Apple CEO Steve Jobs), and both began playing around with computers at about the same time. "I know Bill and I started at almost exactly the same time, freshman year in high school, both using GE Time-sharing computers," said Ozzie during a lunch event in Seattle on Friday.

Putting in about 20 hours a week during the school year and an astounding 60 hours a week during summers and at college, he figures he accumulated his 10,000 hours by his sophomore year at university. "Which is exactly when the hobbyist aspect of the PC industry kind of took off," he said.

"Once you master technology you can start to think about other aspects like user scenarios. So the next 10,000 hours can be spent in a slightly different way," he said.

The idea of a benchmark for the amount of time required to become an expert in something was popularized in Gladwell's book, in which he discusses how expertise requires more than just innate ability. He says researchers found that 10,000 is a magic number of sorts for the amount of time experts spend developing their craft.