<story><title>Apple&apos;s first employee: The remarkable odyssey of Bill Fernandez</title><url>http://www.techrepublic.com/article/apples-first-employee-the-remarkable-odyssey-of-bill-fernandez/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MCRed</author><text>In 1977, there wasn&amp;#x27;t such a popular thing as &amp;quot;Stock options&amp;quot; for going to work for a &amp;quot;startup&amp;quot;.   This is, quite literally, THE startup that started in a garage and produced the &amp;quot;came from a garage&amp;quot; myth.  Further, your dishonest implication that Jobs didn&amp;#x27;t give up ownership is factually false, and the reality is, he simply gave up ownership to different people than Woz did.&lt;p&gt;But your comment shows what type of person you are, that&amp;#x27;s for sure.</text></item><item><author>danmaz74</author><text>Yes. It also shows what kind of guy Jobs was.</text></item><item><author>ddellacosta</author><text>This is how you tell what kind of guy Woz really is:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Around the time of the Apple IPO in late 1980, Woz decided to give away stock options to the earliest Apple employees who had never gotten options -- including Randy Wigginton, Chris Espinosa, Kottke, and Fernandez. He gave them each a stock grant out of his own chunk of shares. It was a generous move, especially towards Wozniak&amp;#x27;s old neighbor and friend with whom he&amp;#x27;d built his first computer and helped become Apple&amp;#x27;s first employee.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dalke</author><text>Umm, Intel gave stock options to key employees in 1971. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intel.pl/content/dam/doc/report/history-1971-annual-report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.intel.pl&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;dam&amp;#x2F;doc&amp;#x2F;report&amp;#x2F;history-1971-annu...&lt;/a&gt; for evidence. Quoting note 5:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (a) Under this plan, officers and key employees have been granted options to purchase shares [of qualified stock] ... (c) [the same for non-qualified stock]&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2012/04/04/149870751/a-rare-mix-created-silicon-valleys-startup-culture&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;149870751&amp;#x2F;a-rare-mix-created-s...&lt;/a&gt; : When Fairchild&amp;#x27;s investors back east took the option to buy the company, its executives didn&amp;#x27;t understand things like giving stock options to employees. &amp;quot;Their attitude was much like everyone else on the East Coast,&amp;quot; Rock says. &amp;quot;Companies could give out a few options, but only to top executives. They were all very staid and white-shoe.&amp;quot; ... Rock says one executive called the idea of stock options creeping socialism. &amp;quot;They did things the way their fathers did them,&amp;quot; Rock says.&lt;p&gt;In turn, National used stock options and higher pay to hire people from Fairchild. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=UUbB3d2UnaAC&amp;amp;lpg=PA172&amp;amp;dq=by%20offering%20stock%20options%20and%20higher%20pay%2C%20National&amp;amp;hl=sv&amp;amp;pg=PA172#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=by%20offering%20stock%20options%20and%20higher%20pay,%20National&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;books.google.com&amp;#x2F;books?id=UUbB3d2UnaAC&amp;amp;lpg=PA172&amp;amp;dq=b...&lt;/a&gt; . This was in the mid 1960s.&lt;p&gt;Quoting from &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1997/07/07/228627/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.fortune.com&amp;#x2F;magazines&amp;#x2F;fortune&amp;#x2F;fortune_archive...&lt;/a&gt; : &amp;quot;With Rock&amp;#x27;s backing, they decided to form a company called Intel that wouldn&amp;#x27;t be stingy about granting options to employees. &amp;quot;We didn&amp;#x27;t include everybody, but almost everybody,&amp;quot; says Moore, who retired in May as Intel&amp;#x27;s chairman. (Noyce died in 1989.) Other startups followed Intel&amp;#x27;s example; by 1977 it hardly raised eyebrows when Apple Computer--another startup backed by Arthur Rock--granted options to all its employees.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Followed by &amp;quot;Ironically, outside of Silicon Valley the stock option was becoming an endangered species. Congress, at the urging of Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, had begun in the 1960s to whittle away at options&amp;#x27; tax-advantaged status, which some denounced as an unfair boon for the rich.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I think that establishes that in Silicon Valley by the time that Apple was founded, employee stock options of the type that Apple did were a popular thing.&lt;p&gt;And the garage &amp;#x27;myth&amp;#x27; starts with Hewlett-Packard in 1939, not Apple. Here&amp;#x27;s a picture of the garage where HP started: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/about-hp/history/overview.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www8.hp.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;hp-information&amp;#x2F;about-hp&amp;#x2F;history&amp;#x2F;ove...&lt;/a&gt; . It has its own Wikipedia page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Garage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;HP_Garage&lt;/a&gt; and is on the National Register of Historic Places.&lt;p&gt;So before you start calling people dishonest - know some history first, and not just word-of-mouth myths.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple&apos;s first employee: The remarkable odyssey of Bill Fernandez</title><url>http://www.techrepublic.com/article/apples-first-employee-the-remarkable-odyssey-of-bill-fernandez/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MCRed</author><text>In 1977, there wasn&amp;#x27;t such a popular thing as &amp;quot;Stock options&amp;quot; for going to work for a &amp;quot;startup&amp;quot;.   This is, quite literally, THE startup that started in a garage and produced the &amp;quot;came from a garage&amp;quot; myth.  Further, your dishonest implication that Jobs didn&amp;#x27;t give up ownership is factually false, and the reality is, he simply gave up ownership to different people than Woz did.&lt;p&gt;But your comment shows what type of person you are, that&amp;#x27;s for sure.</text></item><item><author>danmaz74</author><text>Yes. It also shows what kind of guy Jobs was.</text></item><item><author>ddellacosta</author><text>This is how you tell what kind of guy Woz really is:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Around the time of the Apple IPO in late 1980, Woz decided to give away stock options to the earliest Apple employees who had never gotten options -- including Randy Wigginton, Chris Espinosa, Kottke, and Fernandez. He gave them each a stock grant out of his own chunk of shares. It was a generous move, especially towards Wozniak&amp;#x27;s old neighbor and friend with whom he&amp;#x27;d built his first computer and helped become Apple&amp;#x27;s first employee.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gaadd33</author><text>Actually Hewlett-Packard was &amp;quot;THE startup&amp;quot; that started in a garage and produced that myth. That was in 1939, a few years before Apple was around.</text></comment>