As you can imagine, I have wondered "what if?" more than a few times. :-)
But "what if?" can work both ways. I could have become a billionaire and one of the most famous people in Silicon Valley. Or Steve could have driven me from the mild depression I'd occasionally experienced into full-blown mental illness, as happened with one of Apple's earliest employees. You just don't know which way it could have turned out.
The other story on the front page today about Regis McKenna reminds me of one of the more remarkable coincidences I've encountered.
As I told in the Reddit story, when I walked out of Apple's answering service in 1976 I thought to myself, "Those guys are flakes! They're never going to make it."
It was one of those things that sticks in your mind. I remember vividly to this day exactly where I was walking and the exact words that were in my head.
A couple of years ago I was reading Michael Moritz's Return to the Little Kingdom and ran across this:
At first there was great uncertainty at the Regis McKenna Agency about Apple's prospects. The account executive, Frank Burge, explained, "People who knew Markkula and Apple wondered whether they would make it. We kept saying 'These guys are flakes. They’re never going to make it.'"
Other than "these" vs. "those", it's the exact same words I was thinking.
It was definitely a strange feeling to run across that quote!
You made the right choice. I have talked to lots of people who worked at Apple in the early days, including some key people from the first dozen or so employees. I never met anyone who said it was enjoyable working with Jobs. (Lots of people said they grew a lot, learned a lot, and so on, but never anything along the lines of "I felt great going in to work every day".
For those reasons I went to Microsoft. And you know what? I felt great going into work every day. That's way more important than a billion dollars.
Also, I'm a somewhat high net worth individual (nothing remotely in the Steve Jobs range). I'm lucky to be where I am, but the price of being a billionaire seems much too high for me.
You appear to be at peace with your decision. It is a much deserved peace.
Tom, what a small world! I see you had to deal with the aftermath of some of my code when you were PM for VB5/6. If you remember the horrible VBX interface, that was my fault.
I really appreciate your comment. One friend of mine was interviewed and they asked about her experiences working with Steve, and she said something like, "you'll probably find that some people who've worked with him don't want to talk about it." Ouch.
See my reply to enraged_camel for some related thoughts...
Cannot believe I missed this wonderful reply. For those who don't know, the VBX interface is one of the most successful component models in the history of computing. Growing pains != to failure.
>>For those reasons I went to Microsoft. And you know what? I felt great going into work every day. That's way more important than a billion dollars.
Is it, though? I mean, don't get me wrong, happiness is very important, but we're talking about literally a billion dollars. You can use that type of money to do a shit ton of things, and virtually guarantee that your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren etc. live very, very comfortable lives. Personally, given the choice, I'd gladly choose half a decade (or whatever) of absolute misery working for an asshole boss if it will net me a billion dollars in the end. Because for me, my own happiness is not more important than the happiness and comfort of those around me and those who come after me.
> You can use that type of money to do a shit ton of things, and virtually guarantee that your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren etc. live very, very comfortable lives.
I think that is naive. I've met quite a few people with large trust funds, and in every case I thought "Man, I am so glad I'm not them." Human joy and self-worth does NOT come about from being "comfortable".
Besides the billion dollars or the fame, there is another question I've asked myself a few times when I've been in a speculative mood.
Steve was famous for his "bozo bit". You could be his greatest hero one day, and the next day he would flip the bozo bit on you and you were the scum of the earth.
When he told me "you couldn't possibly program these microcomputers, they are completely different from the mainframes you've worked on," what if I had pushed back and shown him they weren't so different and I could do a great job with them?
There's a possibility he would have learned from that experience, realized he was mistaken in his snap judgment, and improved his relations with other people he worked with.
Of course that may be wishful thinking. And being Steve, he probably still would have had a bozo bit. But maybe he wouldn't have flipped it so often! :-)
I completely agree. There is no guarantee that they will invest wisely. Adversity is a great teacher and wisdom is the fruit of that labor if not somewhat liberating. I think through that wisdom, the phrase "never enough" has much more meaning. 10k needs to be 100k after time passes and we keep finding excuses to inflate that number.
>virtually guarantee that your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren etc
It only really takes about $50mm for that. (I guess it does depend a bit on the number of progeny you choose to have)
> ersonally, given the choice, I'd gladly choose half a decade (or whatever) of absolute misery working for an asshole boss
Some people quite literally kill themselves under such circumstances, so it really is a ymmv situation. (and I probably lean towards your side of the specrum)
Personally, given the choice, I'd gladly choose half a decade (or whatever) of absolute misery working for an asshole boss if it will net me a billion dollars in the end.
Many of us would. But that's hindsight.
The reality is, of those who try, most wind up working for the asshole boss with nothing to show for it at the end.
Most wealthy people in history have not been able to guarantee that their own children, let alone grandchildren or great-grandchildren, would continue on in wealth. To me, if you get rich, it's probably an awful idea to just give it to your kids, if you care about how they turn out at all.
It's just that you still don't want to hand over the money on a silver platter, it's better for people's character and pride to do some work to get it (e.g. build and sell a Ferrari to you)...
You do know that when Jobs became iCEO in '96 Apple was a few months away from insolvency. There are far more companies where people bust their ass for years and all they get for it is worthless stock.
In the late 1970s, I worked at a small company called Aph. They did contract work developing single board computers. I did a couple myself. They built all their own tools, software, assemblers, etc., all of which were first class. One employee (the famous Hal Finney) even wrote a Basic interpreter in assembler.
In fact, they had everything they needed to build a consumer computer. It was all better than what Apple had.
The thing we lacked was vision. We coulda been billionaires! We lacked a Steve Jobs.
That's the thing: how many others tried and failed that have all but been forgotten? Small successes and small failures accumulate exponentially over time. Maybe in some parallel universe those guys became the multi-billion-dollar company and Apple never went anywhere...
My takeaway is to not underestimate the value of a great leader. There's lots of talent, I know easily a dozen just among my friends who could have built a competitive computer and the software for it. I built two single board computers myself of my own design, and I didn't even know electronics (the components were designed to almost fall together).
But there's an enormous gap between that and knowing what to build, how to pull it all together to make a product, and sell that product. That takes vision.
Going a little off topic, I've always felt someone could make a decent sci-fi story from that: what would the world look like if everyone had the ability to irrecoverably alter a single decision from their past? Would it be wasted on trivial matter? Would it drive people crazy to have such uncertain power and never know if/when they should use it? Would people not use it out of principle?
Wow, there was essentially no information in that blogpost. Here are the relevant sentences:
> My understanding is that after the Macintosh-crazed 80s, he ran into some issues. Suffice it to say that I see him on the street at least a couple of times a month.
According to his Wikipedia page, he ended up co-founding Radius, which IPOed in 1990, and is now retired in Palo Alto. So he's pretty far from homeless, which is what that quote sorta implies. The blog itself acknowledges that - I dunno why it's trying to make the comparison.
I've heard about Burrell Smith and mental illness, but I've never heard the suggestion that Steve Jobs was a driving influence that exasperated it. It also never occurred to me to make that connection, although it seems like an obvious one now having heard it.
Do we have any concrete reason to believe that was the case, or at least someone's anecdotal comments supporting it?
Of course I don't know, and I could be making a completely unwarranted connection. And it goes without saying that anyone else's mental health challenges are none of my business in the first place!
But from talking with friends who did work closely with Steve, what I can say for sure is that it seems like a real possibility that working with him could have had a very bad effect on my own mental health.
I always wonder how true that last statement is - to the tune of "Find something you love so much that if you do it you'll never work a day in your life."
I've enjoyed things that, when they became an obligation, I stopped enjoying. Though I think it says more about myself than the actual veracity of the quote.
That's pretty much bullshit for the pure reason that a job very rarely can only include the things you love. I love programming but I hate polishing up the same features for days, but that's what's necessary to make a good app. I hate testing, but it's part of the game.
I once had a psych professor who said he wasn't made to teach, in fact, he pretty much hated it. Since it came with the uni job, he said he used his knowledge of psychology to make himself enjoy it.
On the flip side, sometimes I see a really happy person doing a "dead-end job", which also makes me wonder how much disposition plays into it.
While living abroad, I met a photojournalist who made me want to get into his line of work. That is, until I asked him for a breakdown of what it entails. In short, his words reflected the pie chart you posted.
I think it's also important to distinguish something one is talented at doing vs what one enjoys doing. I grew up drawing regularly, out of pleasure, and believe I can still do it with some degree of skill, but for two decades now I haven't had any enthusiasm to pick it up again.
Perhaps people who agree with the quote are both talented at and enthusiastic about what they do.
I don't think that's so bad: if you love photography you're likely to get at least some enjoyment from some of the other things on that list, like photo editing and messing with photo gear. And even if it's dull work you can console yourself that it's part of being a photographer, as opposed to just having to console yourself that you have your family, golf or a stiff drink waiting for you once you're finished for the day.
I've always wanted to make video games. More than anything in my life. I got two degrees in computer science, then got hired by a major games studio. And I have to tell you, I absolutely love what I am doing. Every day I come into work not only looking forward to the challenges but also taking incredible pride in my work. When the games I work on are actually on the shelves in shops it's such a great feeling it can't be compared with anything. The people I work with are fantastic and very friendly, I couldn't have a better manager. It's literally the best job I could imagine, if you told my 12-year old self that the nights spent learning Visual Basic on my dad's PC will result in this I think I would have exploded with joy.
But(there always is one).
The pay is terrible. With my education and experience I could be easily making 2-3x what I make now, and I'm not even exaggerating. I've been told by multiple people that I have to be mad to work for such low compensation.
And yet. All my friends who make better money writing software almost universally hate their jobs, and their bosses. They live in nicer houses and drive better cars, but not a single one is proud of the product they help make. It's just another web app or financial product for them, it doesn't matter what it is or who it's for, as long as they get the money at the end of the month.
So now in the light of that statement - even if you find something that you can do as a job, you have to consider if it's worth the sacrifices(in my case, financial ones). At the moment, I feel like it is. But it doesn't mean I will always feel that way.
Theatre actors and classical musicians are also paid poorly even though they require years of training. There's more demand for those jobs then supply of jobs.
I loved poker until I played it professionally. I love programming, but not when I'm at work. I'm growing a garden, but I know I'd hate being a farmer.
The only job I truly loved was working with children, but there was no (financial) future in it. I didn't have to work, but I wouldn't have been able to live either.
There was an article I read somewhere (maybe here?) a couple weeks ago that mentioned that employee happiness and autonomy are correlated. That could be the issue with turning passions into a job. You lose the autonomy you had before.
> The only job I truly loved was working with children
There's gotta be SOMEthing you can do there, maybe volunteer, tutor, whatever? I mentor'd an at-risk teen for a while, he ended up going off to college. If that is a passion you have, you should sneak it in there somehow. Maybe teach kids why Texas Hold'em No Limit is the greatest partial-information game ever invented by man? ;)
I mean, I've also yet to find someone to pay me for jacking it to internet porn all day, and even apart from that I think the world has enough rockstars, professional sports players, and actresses. You have to take that phrase with a healthy dose of salt.
They took the public concept of "show someone a youtube video and film their reaction" and turned it into a major business (millions in revenue) on youtube. Then they turned around and tried to trademark "reaction videos" and offer "licensing" to anyone else who.
Then 4chan organized some raids and they lost a bunch of subscribers and panicked and backed-off the trademark attempt.
Not really. It's more like "let's show a bunch of children floppy disks and record their confused look before they realize this is what the 'save' symbol comes from." MSTK was a scripted show with jokes and stuff. This is just old people listening to dubstep and stuff.
It's not just you. The concept behind that quote needs to die. Pretty much every form of paid labour is exploitation and there is a miniscule amount of humanity's needs that can be met with labour that someone would really love to spend their time doing.
It's not just false, it's harmful because it creates unrealistic expectations. And, I mean, let's face it, only a certain class of people can even make a pretense of it in the first place.
- The dopamine reward kind. E.g., food, sleeping around, alcohol. The dopamine response burns out eventually, and you're left with nothing.
- The deeper satisfaction kind. The sort reward I imagine a civil engineer gets, knowing he designed the bridge he drives across every day. I figure this one can last.
Additionally, I figure some people "love" the superficial parts. Who will love their job more, the game developer who is passionate about test automation, or the game developer who is passionate about video games?
I think in general to find that kind of enjoyment at your job, it's about the skillset you love to employ (Problem solving? People skills? Politics? Care?) and finding the jobs that fit that skillset, rather than trying to pick a job that associates with puppies because you love puppies.
I think that statement is a bit hyperbole. I agree with it in some sense: I love my job, and am grateful I get to do that instead of digging ditches every day. That being said, if money wasn't an issue, I'd absolutely work less hours, and only on projects I thought interesting. I don't think I'd actually quit though.
It's probably impossible since you have to be consistent and regular even when you don't feel into it that day. Unless there's something that is always giving you chills of pleasure 24/7 for decades. Low probability.
This is an excellent example of why startups are dominated by the young, single, affluent. They have nearly nothing to lose. The rest of us do.
"If the company goes poof, we are individually liable for the debts," Wayne explained.
"Jobs and Wozniak didn't have two nickels to rub together. I had a house, and a bank account, and a car… I was reachable!"
It seems like a different environment now. The debt here sounds like a bank loan or something along those lines where they expected to get paid back in cash. These days, it's more likely to be a VC investment or a Kickstarter or something else where there's no debt created and the people giving the money are just buying some sort of share in the company's potential success.
It is better, but it's difficult to guarantee that the company will never go through a stage where a personally-guaranteed overdraft is the best option. At least in the UK these are usually jointly and severally repayable by the founders. At that point I'd far rather be the founder in my early 20s with nothing but debt than the one with the house who is going to end up homeless.
It's very common with "Close companies" (companies that are owned and run by a small number of people) that banks require the directors/owners to act as a personal guarantor on company loans.
Without that, it would be quite legal for the directors to take a whopping loan, pay themselves a whopping salary/bonus, then have the company go bankrupt without recourse to the bank. Rinse, repeat, profit.
Very often lenders will refuse to issue loans to the LLC, instead requiring company officers to take loans out in their name so a lender can be made whole in the event of default.
that is the whole reason he walked away from the company. Jobs refused to fill out all the paperwork to form a corporation. They were running the company as a partnership which left all the members liable for everything the business did. It was not just the bank loans that were the worry. It was the contracts they were signing, if they failed to deliver the owners could personally have been sued for breach of contract
> "If the company goes poof, we are individually liable for the debts," Wayne explained.
Definitely not true, since Apple was a corporation. Creditors can only "pierce the corporate veil" (and tap shareholder assets) where a corporation is a sham, which Apple certainly wasn't. I hope he had other reasons for walking away, since this one doesn't make any sense!
Before the age of angel investors, most corporations got their initial working capital through personally-secured loans. Those were either loans directly to founders (their credit card, perhaps) which was then loaned to the corporation, or a direct loan to the corporation personally secured by the founders.
Good point—this may have been a factor. But this story [1] about Apple's founding indicates that they got financing based on a verified purchase order:
> A bank turned the two scruffy guys down for a loan and another computer parts store declined an equity stake in the new venture. “Finally Jobs was able to convince the manager of Cramer Electronics to call Paul Terrell to confirm that he had really committed to a $25,000 order,” says Isaacson. Terrell confirmed it and then Jobs got the parts on 30 days credit.
It's possible that Cramer Electronics would have asked for the loan to be personally secured, but it sounds like that would have been futile given the Steves' lack of other assets. I haven't read every story about early Apple, and would be curious to know whether they managed to finance operations this way, or if they indeed had to personally secure loans.
And lines of credit, leases, loans, insurance policies, corporate credit cards... One real-world indicator that your company is beginning to succeed is reaching the point that personal guarantees are no longer required.
Very interesting. I've been a mostly-bootstrapped founder for a couple years now, and I've never been asked to personally guarantee anything—which is good, because I don't think my wife would let me.
Apple was a partnership when Ronald Wayne was involved. They didn't incorporate until 8 months later, in 1977.
(This leads me to ask "Why?" - corporations are made specifically to shield principles from liability for corporate debts. But maybe it was a bit harder to incorporate in 1976 than it is now.)
this is incredible. According to the article he backed out of the shares because of possible liability of the deal went south, but that doesn't make sense. If they incorporated his personal assets would not be up for grabs if the company couldn't pay it's debt. Also the fact that he did this means that he does care about financial stability and this seemed like a bad investment. In either case, it's impossible to predict these things so statistically he probably made the right move, but what bad luck!! Im surprised Steve didn't get him back into apple once they were well off, or maybe there is more to this story.
With micro-businesses that are incorporated, where you have one, two, or even three people involved, it can be fairly hard to maintain the legal wall that separates your personal assets from the business. I am part of a two person LLC. If I didn't have, say, the right kinds of liability insurance, a creditor could make the claim that the corporation really doesn't exist and go for my personal assets. If bank accounts are co-mingled, all bets are off. The list goes on of activities and facts that can, regardless of corporate legal filings, take you back to the state of sole proprietorship or partnership. On top of that, the cost of defending that status in the event of a suit can be nasty to boot.
Jobs even ripped off Woz when the opportunity presented itself. He was the last person to give any part of "his" baby away.
"When they made Breakout for Atari, Wozniak and Jobs were going to split the pay 50-50. Atari gave Jobs $5000 to do the job. He told Wozniak he got $700 so Wozniak took home $350."
Woz seems to be such a gentle and kind guy who just loves tech and gadgets. I don't think I have ever read of anyone having a problem with him. Pretty interesting as most people at such a high level in any sector (not just IT) are usually known to be assholes.
I've always felt that if people idolized Woz more than Jobs, the world would be a better place. That's probably just my own tinkerer/engineer bias coming to light though.
You're not alone. Woz seems like a really great guy. He has a big heart. When I think of what a true hacker is I think of Woz. A person who loves tech and to tinker but for the better for others and not just himself.
Wozniak is so rounded when it come to relationship I think he has an issue with having issues. He is always too nice. I also think nothing applies to their relationship, I bet it was some kind of family relationship at one point. Being in this venture together, at that time. You take the hit because of the greater bond it built.
Getting a loan for a small company often involves the owners guaranteeing the loan, because small companies tend to fail and banks don't like being left unpaid. If the loan was to the company with no extra terms then yes, he would be free and clear, but the bank probably wouldn't agree to that.
I don't know what it was like back then, but these days (at least here in the UK) banks want personal guarantees from directors/owners etc. for business loans, even to Ltd companies.
Assuming he hung in, would he have sold out when Jobs got fired back in the 90's? We always try and maximize the winnings for a good story but miss the critical thinking along the way. Risk=Reward (or massive failure). Just sounds like Mr. Wayne was not big into risk.. Very understandable.
Indeed. It calculates what a 10% stake would be worth now, but it is highly unlikely that he would still be a 10% owner even if he had stayed the course. It is not as though Steve Jobs still held 45% of the company at the time of his death.
I'm also not convinced the stress of it all played didn't play a part to Steve's illness and eventual death. At 81, Mr. Wayne is still celebrating life.
We've all given stuff away by making decisions in our lives. We make what we think is the best choice, and then we live with the consequences. Regret doesn't change tomorrow.
That said, were I in Woz or Job's shoes, I would have given this guy a big check at some point, as a thank you. Actually maybe Woz did--neither he nor Wayne seem like folks who would talk about such a thing if had happened. Not likely from Jobs though.
As mentioned in this thread, the temptation to ask "what if?" is huge, and we all have built-in cognitive strategies for dealing with it. If this ability didn't exist, coping with non-fatal mistakes could easily overwhelm us and paradoxically become fatal!
Imagine waking up every day knowing that you could have been a billionaire but for a single foolish decision, and having no way to get around that thought. You'd have a very poor quality of life indeed, even if you were perfectly materially comfortable. The fact that he cannot keep an Apple product hints at this; being confronted with a constant reminder would be too painful.
It's a subtle and useful lie to think of yourself or pretty much anyone else as being non-materialistic or enlightened enough as to cheerfully give up billions of dollars in wealth. No doubt if this person was given a second chance with foreknowledge, he would take the deal.
It's only afterward that we cry "sour grapes" in order to reduce our mental struggles to a manageable level.
If I were Ron Wayne, I'd take solace in the fact that in 99 out of 100 similar scenarios, my choice would have been the right one. If he's still kicking himself, he needs to understand that he's a victim of survivorship bias. Being "older but wiser" won't help him avoid the same mistake in the future, because it wasn't technically a mistake at the time. He made a rational choice based on the information and experience he had available to draw on.
With my luck, this would have been a story from my life! But as I always say, there are no "should have's" in life; there are "did do" and "didn't do". Life is too unpredictable to think "what if". It reminds me of the Matrix when Neo is in the Oracles kitchen and Neo knocks the vase over after the Oracle told him "Don't worry about the vase." Neo obviously confused says "How did you know I would break it?" and she finishes with "What really is going to bake your noodle is would you have still broken it had I not said anything?" No point in wasting energy on things that never happened.
"I said: 'Steve, whatever it is that you want to do, you can do it a lot more easily with money in your pocket. Go ahead and make the money, and do whatever you want to do. Just don't forget what you wanted the money for'.
This was my takeaway. I have a very clear sense of how much is enough in my life. When I get there I'm going to quit my job, and be completely free to just take on work I care to do. I already enjoy the work I do, but I'd love to be fully in control of my own schedule.
I don't consider myself unmaterialistic. I'm happy that I'm comfortable and secure. I don't put too much value on material things but some of them do make my life better. If I could get a ton more money without anything else in my life changing, then sure, I'd take it.
But if that money came with power, a high profile job, I'd have to work a ton, have a ton of stress, change my lifestyle, my main social circles would have to be with other rich people, nearly all the attention I ever got would be from people I can't trust not to want something... just no. I'm happy now and that's not an equilibrium I want to upset. Nothing about the day to day lives of rich, powerful people seems like so much fun as to outweigh the negatives, which if you pay attention, seem to be many.
Just to be clear, since it's a bit unclear, you're not the person the is the subject of the article, but a random person responding to the comment I posted.
Everybody knows about Jobs and Woz, but I hardly ever see mention of the third guy. I'd bet that most Apple fans couldn't come up with the name "Ronald Wayne" without looking it up, and likely don't even realize there was a third.
One doesn't need to be materialistic to feel regret about missing the chance to acquire money. Maybe he has philanthropic goals that will go unmet, maybe he has startup ideas that capital could've helped test, etc.
>In the early 1990s Wayne sold the original Apple company agreement, signed in 1976 by Jobs, Wozniak and himself, for $500. In 2011 the contract was sold at auction for $1.6 million.
Is there any term in agreements like that an entrepreneur who chose to quit prematurely shall transfer his/her share at the price of 1 dollar in 1970s?
But it can be tempting!
In my case, I had the opportunity to be the first programmer at Apple. I told the story on Reddit a few years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/h4n5w/
As you can imagine, I have wondered "what if?" more than a few times. :-)
But "what if?" can work both ways. I could have become a billionaire and one of the most famous people in Silicon Valley. Or Steve could have driven me from the mild depression I'd occasionally experienced into full-blown mental illness, as happened with one of Apple's earliest employees. You just don't know which way it could have turned out.
The other story on the front page today about Regis McKenna reminds me of one of the more remarkable coincidences I've encountered.
As I told in the Reddit story, when I walked out of Apple's answering service in 1976 I thought to myself, "Those guys are flakes! They're never going to make it."
It was one of those things that sticks in your mind. I remember vividly to this day exactly where I was walking and the exact words that were in my head.
A couple of years ago I was reading Michael Moritz's Return to the Little Kingdom and ran across this:
At first there was great uncertainty at the Regis McKenna Agency about Apple's prospects. The account executive, Frank Burge, explained, "People who knew Markkula and Apple wondered whether they would make it. We kept saying 'These guys are flakes. They’re never going to make it.'"
Other than "these" vs. "those", it's the exact same words I was thinking.
It was definitely a strange feeling to run across that quote!