Chris Espinosa

Chris Espinosa is a senior employee of Apple Inc., officially employee number 8. Having joined the company at the age of fourteen in 1976 when it was still housed in Steve Jobs' parents' garage, writing software manuals and coding after school, he is the company's longest-serving employee.

Career

Espinosa met Steve Jobs at Paul Terrell's Byte Shop while the former was installing an Apple I, and later became friends with Steve Wozniak, despite having been warned against the two by his teachers at Homestead High School, where Jobs and Wozniak had also been students. In 1976 the 14-year-old Espinosa began working for Apple, making him one of the company's youngest employees. Officially he was Apple employee number eight. He began writing BASIC programs in Jobs' garage, and has worked his entire life at Apple, with the exception of a brief hiatus during which he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where his freshman advisor was graduate student Andy Hertzfeld, who along with Barney Stone, had started a local Apple user group. In 1981 Jobs convinced Espinosa to drop out of school to work in Apple's publications department. Although Espinosa did not participate in the company's initial public offering, Wozniak had offered up to 2,000 pre-IPO shares at $5 a share to a group of 40 employees, including Espinosa, whom he thought were undervalued, which became known as the Woz Plan. Espinosa worked in a variety of different positions during his time at Apple, including as an AppleScript engineer and in-developer support.