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Some of the Hewlett-Packard men began to see themselves as civilizing influences and were horrified by the uncouth rough-and-tumble practices of the brutes from the semiconductor industry. They came to believe that semiconductor men were hopeless male chauvinists—an impression that wasn’t dispelled when Markkula warmed up a managers’ meeting with the rhetorical question “Why did God invent women? Because he couldn’t teach sheep to cook.” The knights from Hewlett-Packard muttered that Apple’s directors were opposed to contributions to charities like the United Way, that the company had no commitment to affirmative action, underpaid its secretaries, and was, at least during the first two or three years, a difficult place for women to gain promotion. So it was no wonder that cartoons of Mollard, the one-time National Semiconductor manufacturing man, appeared with him outfitted in Gestapo regalia and armed with a swagger stick.

Those who were either from, or shared the sympathies of the people from, Hewlett-Packard were surprised at stories that some National managers bounced expense reports. One of the daintier managers looked at the pressures to ship that built up toward the end of every quarter as an effort was made to meet planned targets, have a “big push,” and “make the number,” and felt that the National managers kept their own code. “There was a real sense that they were going to ship this shit one way or another and they were going to get the dealers to fix it. They more or less said, ‘We’re going to ship this sucker, to hell with the customer.’” Another summed up the approach his National colleagues took toward suppliers and others who stood in the way, and talked of them as if they were hoods. “Their style ran like this, ‘We’d like to kill those sonuvabitches legally if we can. But if we cannot we’ll still have to kill ‘em.’”

Many of the men from National Semiconductor and other stern backgrounds harbored a similar contempt for the Hewlett-Packard recruits. They came to look on them as prissy fusspots. They didn’t question their professionalism; they just seemed to feel that they were too professional. Rod Holt felt, “The Hewlett-Packard types . . . spend more time writing down what they are supposed to do and what their subordinates are supposed to do than they do doing anything.” Someone else characterized a colleague as “another one of those country-club H.P. types,” and Michael Scott complained, “They’re not penny pinchers. They gloss over things.”

Though the differences were most pronounced between the men from Hewlett-Packard and National, others also brought the practices they had become accustomed to. When Ann Bowers, who had spent some years working at Intel and was the wife of one of its founders, was placed in charge of Apple’s personnel matters, Sherry Livingston observed, “Everything had to be done the Intel way. She wouldn’t go to the left or the right.” Since Apple tapped companies like Hewlett-Packard, National, and Intel for particular strengths, and since some of the trailblazers were instrumental in luring others from their old stomping grounds, it was common for them to wind up working in small enclaves. This, combined with the ferocious pressure and the friction between young and old, tended to exaggerate the normal sorts of conflicts that spring up between departments of any company.

The engineers, for example, felt the manufacturing men were concerned only with eliminating bumps and swings to keep the line running smoothly and to meet production schedules. “The manufacturing people,” Rod Holt insisted, “by and large have taken Apple for a ride.” The feeling was mutual and certainly was not improved when the production people raided the engineering files and removed all the carefully plotted test procedures and descriptions of final assemblies. The production men tended to think that the engineers were treated too daintily and should have been disciplined with rigorous schedules and milestones. They