giants of the era

Chapter 33 Joining New Employees

Steve Jobs once famously said: "It takes 50 great person to beat [-] mediocre employees."

Li Zetian recognized this sentence very much.

He calculated an account, and he paid Wozniak $1 an hour, an ordinary engineer $20 an hour, two would cost $10, and three would cost $2... …

A technical problem that an ordinary engineer can't solve in a few days or even ten days, but Wozniak may solve it in a few minutes.

This is the value of top engineers! ! !
The next night, Wozniak came to Apple's headquarters - the garage.

Wozniak is not surprised, and so is his garage, which is completely used as a laboratory.

"Just the two of us?!" He asked in surprise.

"What? You don't have confidence in yourself?" Li Zetian smiled and asked back.

"It's nothing, just two people!" Wozniak said indifferently, "What kind of personal computer do you want to design?"

Li Zetian opened a locked drawer with a key, and then took out a design drawing from it, "This is my design drawing, and there are some text descriptions beside it, you can take a look first, and then we can discuss the design plan." No, where do I need to modify it?" Li Zetian handed the design drawing to Wozniak.

"OK, all right!"

Li Zetian sat aside and waited quietly, looking at the design drawings, it should take some time.

When Wozniak was looking at the design drawings, Li Zetian secretly looked at him, and saw a look of shock on Wozniak's face!
Li Zetian secretly said happily: "I tried not to add the advanced design concepts of the future into it, but I still shocked the great people of this era, ha ha..."

"Exquisite design, especially the design of this PC expansion bus is definitely epoch-making! There are 100 plugs in total, only 86 plugs are used, and 14 are reserved for expansion. The computer produced can pass through the expansion bus. Compatible with a wide variety of 8-bit microprocessors, and even 16-bit technology quickly!!!”

Wozniak's eyes lit up and he raved about it! ! !

As for what the bus is?In short, the bus is the public communication trunk, through which various data and commands can be transmitted between the various components of the computer!
Each component of a computer is actually a module, and the connection relationship between the modules is through the bus. If the bus is standardized, then the modules are universal - compatible! ! !
The purpose of Li Zetian's design of the PC expansion bus is to establish the bus standard, which belongs to Apple's bus standard. In the future, when the Apple-ll model PC is developed, it will be compatible with many products on the market and promote the sales of Apple-ll! ! !
At that time, the expansion slot of Apple-ll will be the same big killer!
"Wozniak, what do you think of my design?"

“Excellent, perfect!”

"In this case, let's start to implement it!!!"

"Okay!!!" Wozniak responded excitedly, he couldn't wait at this moment!

That night, Wozniak stayed up all night, but in the morning he was still in good spirits.Seeing that it was almost time to go to work at HP, I reluctantly left the garage!
Li Zetian also stayed up all night with him.

"Wozniak, are you still coming tonight?" Li Zetian shouted towards his back.

"Come!!!"

The owner of the house, Tian Shuai, just went out at this time. He asked with a smile, "Chronos, the lights in the garage were on all night. Could it be that you worked all night last night?"

"Yes, Wozniak was very excited when he saw my blueprint! Oh, by the way, that person just now was Wozniak, an HP engineer, working for me after work!"

Tian Shuai couldn't help laughing, "I see, 'after work' is his real working time, right? He's been up all night, so he still has the energy to work at Hewlett-Packard during the day?"

Li Zetian smiled and asked, "Are you going out to find a job now?"

"Yes, go to Exxon for an interview!" Tian Shuai replied.

"Good luck, I'm going back to catch up on sleep!" Li Zetian waved his hand.

"Well, you go to sleep!"

Li Zetian actually wanted to say, stay, let's create a big situation together!However, Apple can't even afford to rent a decent headquarters, so it can only temporarily rent a garage, and its future is uncertain.Others are going to interview with Exxon, one of the top ten companies in the world, what can I do to keep him?

Li Zetian shook his head in his heart, this matter can only be discussed later.

In the days that followed, everything became very dull and single.

Tian Shuai got his wish and joined Exxon Corporation, then switched to a higher position.And Lee and Wozniak are developing Apple-l model personal computers in a small garage every day!
The Altair-8080 computer developed by MITS has only a mainframe, no display, keyboard, or mouse. This is a computer without a monitoring program. Users can only program this computer in binary machine language.However, once such a computer came out, it shocked the industry, and orders kept coming in. The "Global Catalog" described it as follows: "This is an absolute, undisputed, incredible success formed overnight."

Such a rubbish product deserves this kind of praise, which shows that the users at that time were really not demanding!

Li Zetian can't make such a rubbish product, at least he must have a monitor and keyboard.Forget about the mouse, with the monitor and keyboard, the Apple-l model computer is enough to crush the Altair-8080.The mouse is left to the Apple-ll model computer, which is another killer feature!

However, Li Zetian is now more worried that the progress on his side must be slower than that of MITS in developing so many things, and Wozniak is also a part-time job, which leads to slower development of the project.

"Three cobblers are as good as Zhuge Liang!"

A month later, Li Zetian decided to recruit one or two more people.So he placed a job ad in a local newspaper.Li Zetian did not lie to others, stating that this is a garage company and the company has just been established.As a result, it is not good to be too honest. After a week, no one came to apply for the job.

At 7:[-] in the morning, Tian Shuai went to work, and happened to run into Li Zetian again. The two chatted for a while. When Li Zetian complained that he could not find anyone, Tian Shuai smiled and said: "I know a very skilled engineer, and he is also Chinese. , do you want to introduce it to you? However, his fee is not worse than Wozniak's!"

"It doesn't matter, as long as he is skilled, I can pay him the same salary as Wozniak!!!"

Tian Shuai added: "Besides, he has a job now, so he can only work part-time!"

"also!!!"

"Okay then, I'll make a call and ask him to come over and have a talk with you after get off work at night."

"Thank you very much!"

"It's a little effort, it's no big deal!"

……

evening.

A Chinese came to Apple headquarters.

"Hello?! Is this Mr. Li Zetian?" He called inside.

"It's me, you are the engineer Tian Shuai mentioned!" Li Zetian looked at him carefully. He was about 30 years old and very calm.

"Yes, my name is Zhang Han!"

The two were still talking, when a voice suddenly came from outside the garage, "Kevin Zhang, why are you here?"

It was none other than Wozniak who spoke.

"Uh, do you know each other?" Li Zetian was startled and asked.

"We are HP colleagues!" Zhang Hao laughed.

(End of this chapter)