Steve Wozniak

This was the company for me, he'd write, because I'd already decided I wanted to be an engineer for life.

HP was different from other tech companies.

It was run by engineers for engineers.

During a recession, instead of layoffs, HP cut everyone's salary by 10% so no one would lose their job.

To Wozniak, that's how a company should work, like a family, where everyone takes care of each other.

I never agreed with the normal thinking, he writes, where a company is more competition driven and the poorest, youngest, or most recently hired workers are always the first to go.

At home, he worked on side projects constantly.

When coworkers asked him to build something for them, he never charged.

It didn't feel right to charge for something he loved doing.

Then one day at the bowling alley, he saw Pong, the first successful video game.

He stood there staring at it, mesmerized.

I could design one of these, he thought.

And he realized something crucial.

While he'd been contentedly designing calculators at HP, the field had advanced beyond what he thought was possible.

He didn't wait.

He decided to build his own version immediately.

Not just to have it, but to be the only person in the world with their own version of Pong at home.

And he'd do it his way with just 28 chips.

He completed this a year before Atari released their home version.

When he showed it to Steve Jobs, who was working at Atari at the time, the engineers were so impressed they offered Wozniak a job on the spot.