Before he became a multi-millionaire and one of the biggest names in tech, Steve Jobs wasn't the best employee. In fact, he was pretty much an outcast.
At least, that's how his old boss Allan Alcorn remembers him.
After Steve dropped out of college, he found a job as a technician in computer game company Atari before he went on to found Apple. But despite his obvious talent, the young dropout was apparently very unpopular with his co-workers.
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Allan Alcorn, who created Atari's first successful game Pong, was the one who hired Jobs, but it wasn't long before he was forced to move him to the night shift to avoid problems cropping up.
"It was 1973 and there was this kid, maybe 18, who was just so passionate about technology - said his name was Steve Jobs", Allan told The Post. "So I hired him."
He recalled: "[Steve] was kind of a pain to work with and he had this real problem with body odour, so we made him work nights. It was better for everyone."
Even though he moved him to the night shifts to tackle the body odour problem, Allan managed to stay in Steve's good books when he went on to create his own computer company.
Five years after Allan gave Steve a job, the tech whiz went on to co-found Apple with buddy Steve Wozniak - a company that today is worth a mind-blowing $241 trillion.
But if only Allan had known that at the time, he might have been a much richer man today.
You see, Steve got in touch with the Pong creator during the early Apple years to ask for help with a technical issue.
And in exchange, he offered Alcorn equity in the company.
"I told them to just give me one of their computers instead," he recalled.
Ouch. That turned out to be a pretty costly mistake in the long run, didn't it?
Eventually, Allan did get a second chance to get in on the Apple glory, so not all hope was lost.
After Warner bought Atari, Allan left the company to become an Apple Fellow for Steve Jobs, working on digital video compression, though the tech expert did confess that, despite Apple's success, he was nervous about working with Job again.
“I didn’t really want to work for the guy. He could be a real nasty guy to work for," he said. “But it sounded interesting and, you know, it was Apple."
One of the projects that Allan worked on for Apple was making video compression more versatile, which has gone on build one of the most essential parts of the internet we know and love today.
"Little did I know that it would end up filling the internet full of puppy and cat videos."
Featured Image Credit: Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Richard Lewisohn/Alamy
Topics: Technology, Apple, US News
