The road to Cupertino

1983

In the early 1980s, I was very much in love with Apple. Yes, you can fall in love with a company, and I sure did. I owned an Apple ][ and I loved all Apple products and the whole Apple story. Not only was Apple the coolest computer company, it was the only computer company that was cool at all. Eventually I began to imagine somehow getting a job there. I was a 22-year-old college dropout. The perfect candidate for a company founded by two college dropouts, right?

But I wasn’t sure I wanted to move away from Denver. So I managed to get a job with the company that represented Apple to the local retail stores. It was adjacent to Apple, but it wasn’t really working for Apple. And that’s what I wanted - to actually work for Apple. I finally decided yes, I wanted to move to California and work for Apple there. The crazy blizzard of 1982 also helped convince Barbara and me to move to better weather.

Working for Apple but not quite

I knew a few folks at Apple, and I found a cool-sounding job I thought I could do: customer technical support. Apple had me fly out for a bunch of interviews. I was incredibly excited to visit Silicon Valley! I spent my first afternoon driving around to see all the legendary companies of that era, like Atari, Hewlett-Packard, Ampex, and Jack in the Box. When I went to Apple, I expected a tall office building and a giant six-color neon sign, probably rotating. But I found a bunch of sedate one-story buildings with quaint little wooden signs. I couldn’t believe that so many amazing things were made in such buildings. Although the signs were cool.

Apple’s Bandley 3 building in the 1980s. I loved those modest wooden signs. I think Bill Dawson has one! I didn’t take this photo and unfortunately I don’t remember where it’s from.

My interviews went well (that’s another story!) and I flew home the next day. A week later, I got this letter via express mail. They offered me the job! And of course I said yes.

The offer letter came via DHL. I had never heard of DHL before.

See where they offered me 400 stock options? I sold those 400 shares a few years later at a profit of about $2 per share. I made $800, woohoo! Since then, Apple stock has split 2:1, 2:1, 2:1, 7:1, and 4:1. So those 400 shares would now be 89,600 shares. I’ll leave it to you to calculate how much they would be worth today, as I have done myself several times.

But I can’t complain.