I think his status as a single child-free person goes understated in this article. It takes a special kind of husband/wife to be okay with someone who works this hard and not having to juggle a home life frees up his schedule to a huge degree. I can imagine working hard 18hr days while still in my 30s, but I cannot imagine doing that while maintaining a marriage and taking care of a kid or two. The guy is a billionai…
Plenty of executives work long hours. In fact I imagine most do. I can't find it, but I remember reading where Scott McNealy talked about his dad working long hours as an executive at GM. Elon Musk has 5 kids, as another example.
If you want to be cooking some nice meals for them, coaching sports, attending events, assisting with homework, tucking into bed, dealing with illness, prepping for holidays, having fun together, taking vacations, etc. then you have to devote a substantial amount of time. I suspect that most of these busy CEO dads don't spend all that much time doing these things.
You only have so much time in the day and available time that corresponds to the time the child is available and active is in very short supply.