How did Steve Jobs get his first tech job?
Steve Jobs’ life is a story of success, and has become a source of inspiration for many tech pros across the world. His inspirational speeches have become a cornerstone upon which many young people have built their own careers. The famous “Stay hungry, stay foolish” one has probably changed our society forever and gave us a fundamental lesson: that if you have a talent, you must trust yourself and your ability to keep going forward to achieve your goals.
Jobs’ early life was full of financial struggles, and his path to success paved with hardships that he always met with a fierce scowl. We know all about what happened when he was fired by the Board of Directors of Apple in 1985 and the subsequent events that put him at the head of the world-famous animation studio Pixar. But we know (or seem to care) much less about how he got his first job at Hewlett-Packard (HP) when he was only 12 years old.
In a nutshell, he simply picked up the phone and cold called them. He was looking for some spare electronic parts for a school project, and boldly decided that the best person who could provide him with them was none other than co-founder and president William Hewlett. The high-level exec was so amused and impressed by that smart 12-year-old boy that he took him seriously, gave him the requested parts, and offered Jobs a summer internship at HP. He worked “on the assembly line putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters” as Jobs recalled during a 1994 interview. “He got me a job in the place that built them and I was in heaven.”
That internship revolutionized Jobs’ entire life. It was there that he met a young Steve Wozniak, an engineer five years his senior. The two became great friends, and we all know how much they changed the world several years later in 1975 when they started Apple in Steve’s parents’ garage. Personally, I understand Jobs’ story very well, since I got my first prestigious internship in the same exact way – by asking for it directly to the person who was in charge.
The lesson here is that a lot of opportunities are missed in life because we’re scared to face a refusal. There’s nothing to lose in asking – we will face disappointment so many other times in life, that being rejected one more time won’t change things in any significant way. What Jobs taught us is that we’ve only got one life to live. And it’s too short to risk losing a potentially life-changing opportunity because we couldn’t muster the courage to do the simplest thing ever: open our mouths and ask for what we want.
Tags
Written by Claudio Buttice | Data Researcher, Contributor

Dr. Claudio Butticè, Pharm.D., is a former clinical and hospital pharmacist who worked for several public hospitals in Italy, as well as for the humanitarian NGO Emergency. He is now an accomplished book author who has written on topics such as medicine, technology, world poverty, human rights, and science for publishers such as SAGE Publishing, Bloomsbury Publishing/ABC-Clio, and Mission Bell Media. His latest books are "Universal Health Care" (2019) and "What You Need to Know about Headaches" (2022).
A data analyst and freelance journalist as well, many of his articles have been published in magazines such as Cracked, The Elephant, Digital Journal, The Ring of Fire, and Business Insider. Dr. Butticè also published pharmacology and psychology papers on several clinical journals, and works as a medical consultant and advisor for many companies across the globe.
More Q&As from our experts
- Is artificial intelligence a tool or a threat to cybersecurity?
- Which medical professions can ethically be replaced with AI?
- How is AI technology going to affect the workplace in the near future?
Related Terms
- Steve Jobs
- Steve Wozniak
- Macintosh Computer
- Atari
- Silicon Valley
- Bioinformatics
- C++ Software Engineer
- Network Support Engineer
- Project Analyst
- Project Director
Related Articles

Creating The iWorld: A History of Apple

4 Top Tech Companies That Failed, Survived (and Even Thrived)

Computer Programming for the People?

Milestones in Digital Computing
Tech moves fast! Stay ahead of the curve with Techopedia!
Join nearly 200,000 subscribers who receive actionable tech insights from Techopedia.
- The Business' Guide to Building Responsible AI
- The CIO Guide to Information Security
- Robotic Process Automation: What You Need to Know
- Data Governance Is Everyone's Business
- Key Applications for AI in the Supply Chain
- Service Mesh for Mere Mortals - Free 100+ page eBook
- Do You Need a Head of Remote?