Return to the Little Kingdom (38 page)

One of the most important signs of status was the numbers given to employees on the day they joined the company—which had caused Jobs such concern at their first appearance. Printed on the plastic identification badges, these numbers became a corporate version of the big-city social register. As Apple grew, the status of the employees with the lowest numbers rose. Though the badges often didn’t match financial standing, they still provoked admiring glances. Some of the earliest employees could rattle off the names of the first fifty or so of their colleagues and others took to advertising their positions by having their employee numbers stamped on their automobile license tags. Another way in which the old-timers emphasized their difference was the Cross pen decorated with a small Apple that had been distributed to every employee on Apple’s third Christmas. Eventually the pens were made available in the company store.

The social order was also visible in companywide messages. One sonorously proclaimed the difference between a monthly newsletter and a shorter corporate memo: “Recently promoted people deserve applause and recognition . . . ‘Apple Times’ will list newly promoted employees . . . ‘Apple Bulletin’ should not be used to announce promotions and other personnel changes below the level of division manager.”

There was also a debate about the value of the technical writers. Jobs had always placed great importance on Apple’s manuals, and there was a feeling that they formed an important part of what the company was selling. Some argued that if this was so, the technical writers deserved to be on a pay scale similar to that of the top-flight engineers. Eventually, however, Apple buckled to the notion of “replacement value” and paid its writers on the levels that existed outside the computer industry. One publications manager was not allowed to become a principal member of technical staff, according to a formal complaint that he lodged, because “doing an industry-leading job in publications just did not have the stature of ‘designing a power supply or software system.’”

 

So with all these strains and pronounced stripings it was a dizzying challenge for the old hands, let alone the newcomers, to sort out where they fitted, what tasks to pursue, and precisely what it was that the company stood for. As the divisions were formed in the fall of 1980 those sorts of questions became even more baffling. For in the space of twelve weeks Apple went on a hiring binge and boosted its payroll from six hundred employees to twelve hundred: a period that some came to refer to as The Bozo Explosion. Some employees were snapped up from temporary agencies and squads of as many as sixty were gathered for orientation seminars.

For everyone the growth was unsettling. The rate of change was revealed in odd ways and in little household items like the corporate telephone directories that were kept in looseleaf folders and updated every few weeks. Managers found their schedules were slipping and paperwork was multiplying though the latter was partly due to a proliferation of Apples which spat out charts and graphs and reams of numbers. Some of the focus of the first few years disappeared, and there was a general sense that the company was sliding out of control. Even Markkula, never the corporate disciplinarian, was forced to admit, “We had trouble keeping the car on the track.”

Layers below there was far less insulation from the rush of the new. In an engineering laboratory Chuck Mauro was startled by the speed with which fresh faces appeared. “It made your head reel, hearing about four new guys who were going to start on Monday. It was all you could do to keep up. It was impossible to even remember all their names.”

Apple went to considerable lengths to preserve some sense of continuity, instill a form of community, conceal differences, and give the impression of stability. A large part of the effort was directed toward providing pleasant working conditions, a goal that sprang largely from Jobs and, to a lesser extent, Markkula. Part of the impetus was purely practical, for other companies in the area had gained a reputation for looking after their employees and Apple’s management generally recognized that one way of keeping people, in an industry where companies were sometimes crippled by a sudden exodus, was not to skimp on the trimmings. Part sprang from the long benevolent reputation of Hewlett-Packard. Part was based on the unshakable conviction that people work harder and more efficiently when they are treated well and given decent surroundings. But running through all of this was more than just a gratuitous streak of altruism. Like the founders of many companies, Apple’s were determined to improve on the deficiencies they saw elsewhere.

The picnics, parties, and presents that broke up the work week were larger versions of affairs that had sprinkled every stage of Apple’s development. After the company shipped its first $100,000 worth of computers, the entire fifteen-person work force had gathered for a pool party at Markkula’s house. When the manufacturing department had been spruced up, the rest of Apple was invited to an open house at which children, spouses, and “spouse equivalents” were made welcome. Succeeding milestones had almost always been celebrated with a party, a cake, or a bottle of champagne.

As the months lengthened into years, the parties got grander—extending to marquees and bunting and jazz bands. There were outings to specially arranged sneak screenings of movies like
Star Wars
and
The Empire Strikes Back
. A Halloween party that had been held during the first few months (where Jobs arrived as Jesus Christ) developed into an annual ritual and more or less turned into an unofficial company holiday. The scale of the celebration grew so large that a couple of blocks in Cupertino had to be cordoned off while employees paraded about in fancy dress.

Entertainment and the provision of creature comforts were taken seriously. Employees could join bowling leagues and aerobic dance classes. They could take out memberships at local health clubs. There were corporate scuba-diving classes and ski weekends in the California Sierras. Offices were provided with what many large companies would have considered expensive furniture and consultants were hired to give advice on topics like “Building Traffic Patterns” and the optimum amount of desk space for programmers. Employees were always given some form of Christmas present. One year most had received a hundred-dollar bill wrapped around a pen, and later, after an important sales goal was achieved, everybody was given an extra week’s paid vacation.

Apple also started a program that gave employees, once they had demonstrated a minimal efficiency, their own Apple computers. There were computer classes for family members, and a company store offered large discounts on purchases of Apple equipment to relatives and close friends of employees. More important the programmers, engineers, and technical writers could work as efficiently at home as in their offices.

 

Despite these efforts Apple’s identity must have seemed clearer to customers than to employees. By 1980 the company was too large and too scattered for any one manager to cover in a daily stroll to take the air and test the waters. So for most employees the corporate hand was invisible. To combat the uncertainty and provide a corporate manifesto and a coherent ideology, Apple established a committee which, with steadfast earnestness, set about trying to make some sense out of diffuse motives. It tried to reduce the abstract to the concrete and to codify all the conflicting impulses and intentions, the clashes between individual enterprise and teamwork, between autocracy and democracy, that make up a company. It was little wonder that the result, though full of good intentions, sounded banal, self-conscious, and hackneyed.

The general message of the committee was reflected in companywide memos that included lines like “Apple is more than just a company . . . it is an attitude, a process, a point of view and a way of doing things.” But the committee’s will and testament was embodied in a statement of corporate values that was heavily influenced by precepts Hewlett-Packard had distributed as a guide to its own employees. Apple’s group fastened on nine commandments and made the general observation: “Apple values are the qualities, customers, standards and principles that the company as a whole regards as desirable. They are the basis for what we do and how we do it. Taken together, they identify Apple as a unique company.”

As for particulars, the committee fastened on:

Apart from issuing statements dripping with goodwill, the committee also nudged the company toward specific actions. Apple started holding weekly lunches where employees could meet senior managers and vice-presidents. And Markkula made a determined effort to let people know that they could come to him and air their grievances. He more than anyone listened to people far down in the company argue against managerial decisions. Other doors stayed closed. Jobs and Scott, some of their colleagues said in the unholy jargon of Silicon Valley, were not “people persons.”

Trying to instill a system of values in a company where the spirit of the founders ran so strong was difficult if not impossible. Even if Apple was too large for the founders to be seen in every nook and cranny, it was small enough for rumor of their behavior, word of their performance, and their general reputation to have a profound effect on the corporate tone. They were mobile billboards. And when their deeds or their words failed to match the beatific standards preached by the culture committee, the entire effort was stymied.

Culture was not to be confused with democracy, and though certainly no one at the company said as much, Apple Values contained more than a hint of corporate totalitarianism. One of the most vigorous proponents of Apple Culture, Trip Hawkins, a Stanford Business School graduate in his late twenties, chose to explain the importance of corporate culture in military terms. “If you have a strong culture you don’t have to supervise people so closely and you don’t have to have so many rules, regulations, and procedures because everybody thinks the same way and they all react to situations in the same way. It helps you delegate more effectively. For example, you can put a bunch of marines on the beach under fire and they’ll actually run up the beach. Companies that don’t have strong cultures cannot do anything quickly.”

Jobs certainly found the theory of a corporate culture alluring but he was more taken by actions that offered immediate, tangible results. He certainly wanted to make Apple a pleasant place to work. He would enthusiastically describe his plan for an updated version of a company town, which he called “Supersite,” where offices and houses would intermingle. He hoped that it would help Apple hire young engineers who wouldn’t be able to afford California housing prices, allow them to get their feet on the ground, and become familiar with the area. In dreamy moments he would paint a bucolic picture of a corporate park where meetings would be held, and programs written, in the shade of large trees.

Jobs had originally favored flexible hours that allowed engineers and programmers freedom to work at home or at the office. But when this failed to achieve the necessary results, he fired off a memo to a group he was heading that stated: “When I agreed to totally flexible hours it was with the stated assumption that it was the most efficient way to get a very professional quality of work done. This group has not demonstrated that quality in the last 60 days. . . . Effective tomorrow, everyone . . . is required to be in by 10:00 A.M. No exceptions.”

Some who worked for Jobs found him difficult to tolerate. Publications manager Jef Raskin, who worked at Apple until April 1981, said, “He’s extraordinarily seductive. He would have made an excellent king of France.” In a four-page memo sent to Michael Scott and titled “Working for/with Steve Jobs,” Raskin suggested that Jobs “get management training before being allowed to manage other projects.” Raskin complained: “While Mr. Jobs’s stated positions on management techniques are all quite noble and worthy, in practice he is a dreadful manager. It is an unfortunate case of mouthing the right ideas but not believing in or executing them when it comes time to do something.” Raskin continued: “Jobs regularly misses appointments . . . . He does not give credit where due. . . . Jobs also has favorites, who can do no wrong—and others who can do no right . . . . He interrupts and doesn’t listen. . . . He doesn’t keep promises . . . . He is a prime example of a manager who takes the credit for his optimistic schedules and then blames the workers when deadlines are not met.”