<story><title>Apple at 40: The forgotten founder who gave it all away</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35940300</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>enraged_camel</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;For those reasons I went to Microsoft. And you know what? I felt great going into work every day. That&amp;#x27;s way more important than a billion dollars.&lt;p&gt;Is it, though? I mean, don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, happiness is very important, but we&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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.</text></item><item><author>tomcam</author><text>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 &amp;quot;I felt great going in to work every day&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;For those reasons I went to Microsoft. And you know what? I felt great going into work every day. That&amp;#x27;s way more important than a billion dollars.&lt;p&gt;Also, I&amp;#x27;m a somewhat high net worth individual (nothing remotely in the Steve Jobs range). I&amp;#x27;m lucky to be where I am, but the price of being a billionaire seems much too high for me.&lt;p&gt;You appear to be at peace with your decision. It is a much deserved peace.</text></item><item><author>Stratoscope</author><text>There are so many things that might have happened but for one key decision. You can&amp;#x27;t spend the rest of your life wondering &amp;quot;what if?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;But it can be tempting!&lt;p&gt;In my case, I had the opportunity to be the first programmer at Apple. I told the story on Reddit a few years ago:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;IAmA&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;h4n5w&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;IAmA&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;h4n5w&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you can imagine, I have wondered &amp;quot;what if?&amp;quot; more than a few times. :-)&lt;p&gt;But &amp;quot;what if?&amp;quot; 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&amp;#x27;d occasionally experienced into full-blown mental illness, as happened with one of Apple&amp;#x27;s earliest employees. You just don&amp;#x27;t know which way it could have turned out.&lt;p&gt;The other story on the front page today about Regis McKenna reminds me of one of the more remarkable coincidences I&amp;#x27;ve encountered.&lt;p&gt;As I told in the Reddit story, when I walked out of Apple&amp;#x27;s answering service in 1976 I thought to myself, &amp;quot;Those guys are flakes! They&amp;#x27;re never going to make it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;A couple of years ago I was reading Michael Moritz&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;Return to the Little Kingdom&lt;/i&gt; and ran across this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;At first there was great uncertainty at the Regis McKenna Agency about Apple&amp;#x27;s prospects. The account executive, Frank Burge, explained, &amp;quot;People who knew Markkula and Apple wondered whether they would make it. We kept saying &amp;#x27;These guys are flakes. They’re never going to make it.&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other than &amp;quot;these&amp;quot; vs. &amp;quot;those&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s the &lt;i&gt;exact same words&lt;/i&gt; I was thinking.&lt;p&gt;It was definitely a strange feeling to run across that quote!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>adevine</author><text>&amp;gt; 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.&lt;p&gt;I think that is naive. I&amp;#x27;ve met quite a few people with large trust funds, and in every case I thought &amp;quot;Man, I am so glad I&amp;#x27;m not them.&amp;quot; Human joy and self-worth does NOT come about from being &amp;quot;comfortable&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple at 40: The forgotten founder who gave it all away</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35940300</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>enraged_camel</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;For those reasons I went to Microsoft. And you know what? I felt great going into work every day. That&amp;#x27;s way more important than a billion dollars.&lt;p&gt;Is it, though? I mean, don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, happiness is very important, but we&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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.</text></item><item><author>tomcam</author><text>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 &amp;quot;I felt great going in to work every day&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;For those reasons I went to Microsoft. And you know what? I felt great going into work every day. That&amp;#x27;s way more important than a billion dollars.&lt;p&gt;Also, I&amp;#x27;m a somewhat high net worth individual (nothing remotely in the Steve Jobs range). I&amp;#x27;m lucky to be where I am, but the price of being a billionaire seems much too high for me.&lt;p&gt;You appear to be at peace with your decision. It is a much deserved peace.</text></item><item><author>Stratoscope</author><text>There are so many things that might have happened but for one key decision. You can&amp;#x27;t spend the rest of your life wondering &amp;quot;what if?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;But it can be tempting!&lt;p&gt;In my case, I had the opportunity to be the first programmer at Apple. I told the story on Reddit a few years ago:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;IAmA&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;h4n5w&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;IAmA&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;h4n5w&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you can imagine, I have wondered &amp;quot;what if?&amp;quot; more than a few times. :-)&lt;p&gt;But &amp;quot;what if?&amp;quot; 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&amp;#x27;d occasionally experienced into full-blown mental illness, as happened with one of Apple&amp;#x27;s earliest employees. You just don&amp;#x27;t know which way it could have turned out.&lt;p&gt;The other story on the front page today about Regis McKenna reminds me of one of the more remarkable coincidences I&amp;#x27;ve encountered.&lt;p&gt;As I told in the Reddit story, when I walked out of Apple&amp;#x27;s answering service in 1976 I thought to myself, &amp;quot;Those guys are flakes! They&amp;#x27;re never going to make it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;A couple of years ago I was reading Michael Moritz&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;Return to the Little Kingdom&lt;/i&gt; and ran across this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;At first there was great uncertainty at the Regis McKenna Agency about Apple&amp;#x27;s prospects. The account executive, Frank Burge, explained, &amp;quot;People who knew Markkula and Apple wondered whether they would make it. We kept saying &amp;#x27;These guys are flakes. They’re never going to make it.&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other than &amp;quot;these&amp;quot; vs. &amp;quot;those&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s the &lt;i&gt;exact same words&lt;/i&gt; I was thinking.&lt;p&gt;It was definitely a strange feeling to run across that quote!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Stratoscope</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a very valid point!&lt;p&gt;Besides the billion dollars or the fame, there is another question I&amp;#x27;ve asked myself a few times when I&amp;#x27;ve been in a speculative mood.&lt;p&gt;Steve was famous for his &amp;quot;bozo bit&amp;quot;. 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.&lt;p&gt;When he told me &amp;quot;you couldn&amp;#x27;t possibly program these microcomputers, they are completely different from the mainframes you&amp;#x27;ve worked on,&amp;quot; what if I &lt;i&gt;had&lt;/i&gt; pushed back and shown him they weren&amp;#x27;t so different and I could do a &lt;i&gt;great&lt;/i&gt; job with them?&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Of course that may be wishful thinking. And being Steve, he probably still would have had a bozo bit. But maybe he wouldn&amp;#x27;t have flipped it so often! :-)</text></comment>