The name Randy Wigginton won’t mean much to most tech enthusiasts. The software engineer is one of the lucky few to have worked at Apple in its early years, being Apple employee #6. And he did it alongside Steve Wozniak, the genius behind the company’s early breakthroughs. A while back, he answered a lot of questions about the Apple of the time on Quora. Your answers are very illustrative.
Lost Opportunities, Visionaries and Endless Days
Through 16 questions and answers asked over several years, Wigginton recounts his experience in the original Apple. One of the most consulted aspects is the distribution of the initial share capital of the company, who had more and who sold “too much” early. Initially, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula each held 33.33% of the company.
Wozniak began selling some of his shares to private investors before The company went public on December 12, 1980.. But the most famous case is that of Ron Wayne, co-founder of Apple, sold his 10% to Jobs and Wozniak for $2,300 just twelve days after registering the company. These shares would have made him a millionaire if he had waited a few years.
Wigginton on the left and Wozniak on the right.
In this sense and in defense of Wayne, Wigginton points out that “no one at that time had any idea that Apple would succeed.” The only visionary of all, perhaps, was investor Mike Markkula. Markkula invested the first $80,000 in equity and another $170,000 in debt, shortly after becoming Apple’s second CEO for a few years in the 1980s.
However, it appears that Apple had no accountability policy regarding hours worked. Wigginton recounts what the marathon workdays were like for the original Macintosh team. Did they work 90 hours a week? Your answer is “yes and no”since this calculation includes breaks, lunches and dinners.
What is clear is that they couldn’t help but work 6 or 7 days a week, reaching 100 hours with only a few weeks left before launch. Unsurprisingly, the engineer is very much against this practice usual.
What Steve Wozniak Looked Like Back Then
For his part, Randy Wigginton recounts what Wozniak was like, whom he considers his mentor and best friend during those Apple years. “Working with Woz was like work with the smartest person you’ve ever mettaking a few extra steps, combined with a passion for pranks. “His best moments were not programming but playing pranks.
Recall that Wigginton was “sponsored” by Wozniak. They worked closely together on the circuit design and ROM software for the Apple II in 1977. While Wozniak was responsible for wiring the color graphics circuits, Wigginton wrote graphics routines in machine language and Chris Espinosa wrote programs in BASIC.
And he always considered Woz an unstoppable mentor and tutor. He was able to work long days, including nights, at Christmas and New Year’s, when he deemed it necessary. But after these “bursts,” he returned to his usual schedule of 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. For the engineer, this co-founder of Apple was a patient and good person, not inclined to worry about money. One of his concerns was for the people at Apple and “I was happy with many other things.”
He was a brilliant engineer with a penchant for pranks.
When asked if Wozniak was overestimated by people, he replied that as an engineer he was brilliant. was able to create the Apple disk controller ][withonly8chips[contansolo8chips[avecseulement8puces[contansolo8chipswhile a standard used 40 or 50 tokens. When they showed the “disk drive at the Dallas electronics conference, no one could believe it worked,” they looked under the table to see if there were any other devices there.
What Randy Wigginton is doing now
Judging by Wigginton’s account, Wozniak was a genius who key contributions to the Apple of the time. And both of them formed a unique tandem, worthy of memory. Later, he decided to focus on something else when the company became more “serious” and began to increase its staff, but also to improve its work policy.
For his part, Randy spent only four years in the company. Later, he turned to other technical profiles such as software developer and programmer, He worked as an engineer at Paypal, Ebay, Google, Square and has been working full-time for several months now at Block, a small financial services firm in Oakland, California. A splendid resume, in any case.
An older version of this article was originally published on 07/22/2023.
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