Of all the employees that Apple had in its early days, some started working while still minors, like Chris Espinosa and others gave their all but ended up in obscurity, like Bill Fernandez, there is one who particularly stands out. For many reasons: He was a rebel and a revolutionary who ended up being “fired” much sooner than expected.. He came from Atari, from a comfortable and secure job, and felt that he was being cheated by a young company that seemed too revolutionary. We are talking about Rod Holt.
Who is Rod Holt?
Rod Holt has been a lifelong electrical engineer and resides in San Francisco, California. As an innovator, he played a key role in the development of the Apple II. In fact, he became interested in electronics at an early age and taught amateur radio at Wellesley High School when he was just 16 years old.
In 1952, immediately after graduation, he married his high school sweetheart and continued studying mathematics at Ohio State University. Sigui acquired a solid grounding in electronics and engineering. Among the few anecdotes known, one refers to Holt’s obsessive perfectionism in every task he undertook.
He had actually considered becoming a mechanic and had spent many years studying while working in his own motorcycle shop. He was a strong political activist and even had his own archive with banners and zines from the Free Speech Movement. Steve Jobs recruited him in 1976, when I was still an analog engineer for Atari.
His role was clear: to design the power supply for the Apple II, and Holt opted for a switching power supply (without an external transformer), more efficient, smaller and lighter than traditional linear power supplies. The requirements were very ambitious and the engineer respected everything: no fan, installed in a plastic case Jerry Manock “too narrow” expressly designed to avoid interference, and capable of delivering 38W of power with 5,12,-5 and -12 volts. Quite similar to the current ones, actually.
This design was crucial to the commercial success of a computer with a light weight and a small size. In fact, Holt’s work set a new standard for the manufacture of power supplies of the future.
Steve Jobs went to Amiga to “fish” for employees
But let’s go back a few steps. Let’s start with his recruitment into the ranks of the young Apple. Although years later they did the same thing to him with Intel or Microsoft – Steve Jobs forbade Google from approaching him to offer jobs to its workers -, Jobs was very fond of analyzing the market, to attract the attention of employees from other sectors.
It all started with Atari. That’s where Holt met Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Jobs didn’t hesitate to consult several technical leaders, including “Pong” creator Al Acorn, to see if he knew anyone who could build such a complex and ambitious power supply. Joe Decuir confirmed the story to podcaster Randy Kindig:
If he did. Several times. I had to turn down jobs several times. The first was in February 1976. That’s when he ripped Rod Holt off my Atari team. Rod Holt designed the switching power supply for the Apple II. I rejected it again in 1977 and rejected it again in 1979.
As Joe Decuir notes: “I chose to work at Atari, rather than at a medical electronics company, in late 1975, because I thought Atari would teach me a lot of things I didn’t know yet.” And in hindsight, he thinks he made the right decision given the brevity of his colleague Rod’s work.
Fired or asked to leave
There is a book that goes into this in depth, “The Little Kingdom,” in which Rod says he was literally tricked by Steve Jobs into becoming “Chief Engineer and Vice President of Engineering,” an explosive role that earned him a salary well below what he expected. He earned $200 a day, the average at the time.
However, the money came, damn it, it came. Holt was Apple’s fifth employee, and although he started small, when Apple went public in December 1980, Holt’s stake in the company was worth $75 million. At the time, he was working full-time but his situation was precarious. Holt said that new management forced him to leave the company in 1983. The amount of severance pay he received for his role is unknown.
Another reliable source, such as engineer Andy Hertzfeld, who was instrumental in the development of the first Macintosh, instead states that Holt “retired” in 1982, shortly before the Apple IIe and Apple Lisa, in favor of Bob Belleville, head of the Mac engineering team in 1983. A compromised moment, since the company had to rethink its product portfolio – many of which ended up being buried – and its strategy. In any case, Holt’s position regarding his departure forty years ago has never been clarified.
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