From these beginnings…
I came across Jobs’ job application to Atari as an 18 year old. He uses all lower case, self-describes as an English Lit major with no phone number, but skilled in digital design, computers and calculators. He hung out in the lobby of what was a one-year-old startup at the time, until Pong creator Al Alcorn hired him as a technician.
The misspelling of Hewlett-Packard, where he interned at age 12, and the reference to design engineering sounded like he was channeling the Woz’s skills on his application. So I asked Woz about this since Jobs didn’t do any digital circuit design as far as I knew.
Woz confirmed that Jobs was never a design engineer but had a high school level of technical chops. He went in other directions at Apple because he knew Woz was so much better at it (Woz was truly gifted at circuit design). Woz drove Jobs to Reed College, as friends and future colleagues. That’s a 1,344 mile round trip.
It reminds me of a discussion I had many years ago with Bill Gates, who marveled at his successes: “Most people lose that fire in the belly as they age. Except Steve Jobs. He still had it, and he just kept going. He was not a programmer, but he had hit after hit.”
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