• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 431 0

push into the background some of the conflicts that had resulted from mismatched corporate blood types. A growing fund of common experience tended to do the same thing. The divisions presented an entirely new set of tensions. Their physical separation led to a technical isolation. They created fresh allegiances and new lines of reporting. As the divisions started to flex their muscles Apple came to be divided by the pull of fashion and the movable squabbles of fiefdoms. The divisions were allowed, for example, to hire their own technical writers and order their own printed circuit boards, and on occasion, they tried to exercise control over what others were doing. The Peripherals Division, to cite just one case, wanted to set the standard for what should be plugged into peripherals. It didn’t take a translation expert to understand that this amounted to an attempt to dictate corporate product planning.

More important the people working within the different divisions became aware of distinctions. The glamour of the hot divisions, where work proceeded on new computers, cast a pall across areas where the primary task was to support existing machines. The nature of the work appealed to different emotional and intellectual interests and attracted different sorts of people. Many of the engineers and programmers who had been caught up in the success of the Apple II preferred to work in the Personal Computer Systems Division (PCS). Others, who wanted a brighter future, respectability, and the opportunity to work with newer technologies, knocked on the door of the Personal Office Systems Division (POS), which was formed from a core of people developing the Lisa system.

The subtleties were subjected to microscopic inspection. Rick Auricchio was a programmer who worked in PCS. “We felt that the Lisa Division was full of prima donnas. They wanted a thirty-thousand-dollar laser printer and they got it. They went out and hired high-powered people. We didn’t. Their working cubicles were bigger. They had more plants. Even though we were paying all the bills and pumping cash across the street, we were dull and boring and not doing anything. There was a perception that they would be nine feet tall, scowl at you, and turn up their noses. Without the right color badge and an escort, you couldn’t get into the Lisa building. That was an insult. People started thinking that they didn’t want to be cretins for the rest of their lives so they left PCS and joined POS.” The people who worked in the Lisa Division returned the compliment. One said, “We took a look at the Apple III and didn’t take it very seriously. We just took a look and said, ‘They don’t know what they’re doing.’”

As the divisions solidified, a corporate bureaucracy began to emerge. Again, there wasn’t really any way to escape the stultifying drag of growth. Coping with several hundred people (let alone several thousand) requires some codes if only to free managers from having to explain exceptions all day long. Some of this was reflected in companywide memos. Occasional bulletins kept employees posted on budgets “which reflect efficiency and frugality” and registered alarm when the phone bill topped $100,000 a month. Others provided information on FICA taxes, profit-sharing plans, stock programs, official company holidays, a new Xerox reproduction center, and insurance schemes. Performance reviews (scheduled every six months) came complete with a “review information matrix.”

A memo from the legal department asked people not to abbreviate the name of the company to Apple Computer or Apple and stated: “The legal name of the corporation is Apple Computer, Inc. (note the comma) . . . . Please don’t hamstring our efforts by casually misusing the corporate symbols.” Other notices kept people abreast of schedules of shuttle buses that ran between the Apple buildings, urged them to use up stationery supplies, drop by a corporate engineering library, or sign up for television classrooms that were connected to the Stanford instructional television network. There were other announcements