Money
Comment from E-mail
My name is Matt S., I had come to your web site after searching for information on a unix file format. I have no idea how. Anyway, I have a few questions about you if you have a moment or two. I have seen pirates of silicon valley a few times and enjoyed it, I am glad to see that the movie has accurately reflected you (I’m not sure our worlds richest man is quite that stupid however). I want to know how you can work so much? Do you just view working with computers as a game or is it just extremely interesting to you? I am a programmer in a few different languages however I don’t care much about money. That is unfortunate in that everyone today cares about getting rich and it becomes disheartening to enjoy computers with everyone caring about starting the next IPO and making millions. I would love to know what motivates you. How many hours can you code in a day and how do you keep going like that. I hope that I have not inconvenienced you and I understand if you cannot reply. I thank you for your time.
Woz
Working with computers was a lifetime passion for me.
At one point it came time to accept a lot of money and start a real company. But I had to leave my ‘real’ job designing calculator chips at Hewlett Packard. I thought deeply inside to what I was meant for and what I wanted to do with my life and I concluded that I wanted to design computers and other things, and to write software. I could easily do that with no company, and keep my job with the company that I loved. So I told Steve Jobs and Mike Markkula that I wouldn’t start Apple.
I changed my mind upon being relieved of the stress of thinking that I had to run the company. I could still do the things that I loved to do within it, and make money too.