Who was Apple's first CEO? If you said Steve Jobs, go to the back of theclass. When Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple in 1976, they brought in some help to run the company they created. Apple's fifth employee was Michael Scott (no "relation" to character from The Office), who was chosen as CEO and the ostensible "adult supervision" of what would go on to become one of the biggest tech companies in the world.In an interview with Business Insider, Scott dishes on Apple's early years, and what Jobs was like as a twentysomething colleague. Apparently Jobs was just as demanding and sure of himself as he's reputed to be today—if not more so.
"He was maybe more particular," Scott said in the interview. "The Apple II case came, it had a beige and a green, so for all the standard colors of beige available in the world, of which there are thousands, none was exactly proper for him. So we actually had to create 'Apple beige' and get that registered."
While he gives Jobs credit for his assertiveness and attention to detail, Scott also describes Jobs as a poor manager of people. In Apple's early years, Jobs was apparently not allowed to be in charge of many people since he would pay little attention to things like employee reviews, raises, and health care.
Jobs' legendary cutting demeanor features in a Scott anecdote about Jobs getting involved in pricing negotiations with vendors at the last minute:
"If we were negotiating price for parts, we could negotiate a price with a vendor and at the last minute, Steve would come in and bang on the table and demand to get one more penny off. And of course they would give him one more penny off. Then he'd crow 'well I see you didn't do as good a job as you could've getting the price down.'"
Regardless of any internal discord, Apple was a huge success, and Scott says the company doubled in size—both in terms of personnel and square footage—every three months for the first five years of its existence.
"My last year there, we were adding a quarter million square feet every three months," he says. "Most of the time when we were growing, we had to bring in temp workers because we couldn't hire them fast enough, then we'd pay the headhunter fees to convert them over to Apple employees. You do what you have to do."
Scott was ultimately removed from the role of CEO in 1981 after firing 40 Apple employees in a single day; he was replaced by Mike Markkula, the man who had hired him. Scott quit Apple officially on July 10 that year.
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