Electronics Weekly Electronics Design & Components Tech News
As is the corporate way, it was deemed that these badges should be numbered and, as corporate lore decrees, the number assigned would be based on the order in which employees had joined the company.
“Steve Wozniak was declared employee number 1,” writes Cringely, “Steve Jobs was number 2, and so on. Jobs didn’t want to be number 2. He didn’t want to be second in anything. Jobs argued that he, rather than Woz, should have the sacred number one since they were co-founders of the company and J came before W in the alphabet.”
“When that plan was rejected”, recounts Cringely, “he argued that the number 0 was still unassigned, and since 0 came before 1, Jobs would be happy to take that number. He got it.”
We sent a girl to interview him in Apple’s early days and she was back in no time saying “I’m not going to be spoken to like that”.
Hello Stuart,
Shouldn’t it be “Hello George,” ?
Also from the UK.
Definately teasing more…. ????????????
I met jobs a few times. He was staying in the Savoy. After our meeting, about 2pm he goes to get his plane.
He reappears and they have packed all his clothes as the room must be left by 11(?). He get his bag and changes his suit down to his underpants in the foyer just behind us back into jeans and black jumper.
Then off he goes!
Thank you george, I’ve changed that
Hello, David, from your North American proofreader.
Shouldn’t “days pf Apple” be “days of Apple”?
I had never heard this story before, but given Jobs ego, it is quit believable. I also like a computer company using zero-based counting for it’s employee numbers. That seems appropriate.
If the numbers were printed on the badges in binary and counted up in Gray code, I might even laugh out loud.
Hello, George, from your UK proofreader.
Shouldn’t “quit” be “quite”, and “it’s” be “its”?
Only teasing. 😉