We told you the tale of Apple’s longest serving employee, Chris Espinosa, recently and Chris even dropped us a line himself to tease that he’s working on something intriguing. Now Chris himself has taken to his blog to reminisce on his 34 years at Apple (the longest continuous stint of any employee). Read on for the best quotes from Chris’s memories of his start at Apple back in 1977…
Chris had his first official day at Apple on St. Patrick’s Day, 1977, but he says the route to get there was quite complicated: “I had already been working semi-officially for months when Woz and Job hired Mike Scott to be company President and his first order of business was to figure who actually worked [for Apple] and how they were supposed to get paid. Steve Jobs had been paying people out of the company cheque book and not all that regularly. So Scott lined folks up to make an official payroll. He picked employee number 7 for himself because he wanted it and allocated the other 10 or so people in nominally fair order.”
Chris also answers the question of whether he technically outranks Steve Jobs as longest serving employee. The answer? Nope. “Sure, for a while when Woz and Jobs and Bill and Dan and Randy had all left I was clearly the senior employee but when Apple bought NeXT in 1997, two interesting things happened. When Apple acquires another company, HR sets the employee’ date of hire at Apple to their date of hire in the acquired company.”
“So Steve’s start date at Apple would have been the date he founded NeXT which was immediately after he resigned from Apple in 1985. But since that was within 6 months of when he left Apple, span of service credits him for his first eight years and he ends up with a start date more of less coincident with the day of incorporation, January 17, 1977.”
There you have it, while Chris has been at Apple longest in real terms, Steve Jobs holds the title in the eyes of Apple HR. Still, Chris says he doesn’t begrudge him that. You can check out Chris’s full account at the link below and if you want to read the full story of Chris’s time at Apple read our Apple’s Longest Serving Employee feature. If you’re craving the chance to work for Apple now, check out our guide on How To Get A Job At Apple.
Picture by: Chris Espinosa
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