Meet Chris Espinosa: Apple’s longest-serving employee, who joined the company at age 14

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs hired Chris Espinosa when he was 14 years old and still in school, making him the tech giant’s longest-serving employee. Chris Espinosa joined Apple in 1977 and initially worked for the company part-time. The company was founded in 1977 by Steve Jobs and Steve “Woz” Wozniak. After that, Chris Espinosa became an official employee – employee number 8 at the company.

At that time, Chris Espinosa was testing the Apple II BASIC operating system during his Christmas vacation. When Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985 to start the educational computer company NeXT, Chris Espinosa was an executive at Apple and retained that position even after Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997.

In an interview, Chris Espinosa talked about the company’s success and its marketing principles, saying, “There were three words. Empathy: Know your customer, know what they want. Focus: Do fewer things better. And Attribution: Always add value in everything you do. Those are the things we do today.”

In another interview, he talked about Steve Jobs and said, “He’s a madman… a mad genius. His job is to mess everything up… He leaves nothing alone. He doesn’t tolerate inadequacy or compromise.”

Earlier this year, Chris Espinosa tagged a fake old Apple employee ID on eBay, saying, “This was not taken with a Polaroid with a flash. The laminate measurements are all wrong. This is a computer font, not an IBM Selectric Orator type ball. This is not my original sketch that was on a national design block.”