There are a lot of highlights to Nolan Bushnell’s career - he was a founder of Atari, the pioneering video game company, as well as of the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theater chain - but one of the more glorious footnotes is that he was one of Steven P. Jobs’s first and only bosses.
In 1974, Mr. Jobs sauntered into Atari’s office in Silicon Valley and demanded a job, which he got despite his sandals and scruffy appearance.
Mr. Jobs, who died in 2011, only spent a short time at Atari before leaving to co-found Apple, but Mr. Bushnell maintained a friendship with him.
Now Mr. Bushnell, 70, has compiled some of his memories of his former employee and blended them with advice about hiring and nurturing creative talent in a book called “Finding the Next Steve Jobs,†which was released Tuesday. The following are edited excerpts of an interview with Mr. Bushnell about the book:
Q.
How did you meet Steve Jobs
A.
We hired him. He basically showed up on our front door and wanted a job. Alcorn [Allan Alcorn, an early Atari engineer] was looking for engineers at the time, and though Steve wasn’t a full-fledged engineer, he seemed like he had all the right stuff. I met him that day.
Q.
How long did he work for you
A.
He worked for us for about a year and went to India and came back and worked for us again.
Q.
What inspired you to write a book about how to hire the next Steve Jobs
A.
I’ve always wanted to do a book on creativity. The idea for that title came from my publisher, who felt it was a timely thing and that Steve Jobs kind of underlined the power of creativity.
Q.
The Steve Jobs that worked for you must have been very different from the Steve Jobs in the latter part of his career. When you’re writing about Steve Jobs, are you writing about the man you first met or do you think your book is also geared to more mature executives
A.
I think the anecdotes I have about Steve, I felt that they tracked pretty much not just his maturation and his coming of age, but I think it also talks about the pathway of his process.
This is more about creativity than it is about Steve. What I really wanted to do is use Steve as an example of an out-of-the-box thinker. The book is about the prescriptives you can you use to really not keep the creatives out of your company, which too many people do.
Q.
Why do they keep them out of their company
A.
Because they don’t know any better. The truly creative people tend to be outliers. The minute the H.R. department says “college degree required,†you’re going to eliminate an awful lot of extremely talented people. We’re moving away from a credentialed society to a merit society.
Q.
What was it like having Steve Jobs in your office How was he different from other people who worked for you at the time
A.
He was very intense. One of the things that was remarkably different about Steve is he was very interested in things other than the technology we were working on. We used to engage in relatively deep conversations about philosophy. He enjoyed introspection. Determinism versus free will. Rationalism, that sort of thing.
Q.
Steve Jobs was also known as somebody who spoke his mind, often brutally so. What advice do you give to people about dealing with personalities like that in the workplace
A.
Grow up. The only thing that really offends me are people who are offended. When I was around Steve and somebody complained that he was being rough, I didn’t have much sympathy for them.
I said, “Was he right or wrong†“Well, he might have been right.†I said, “Well, okay, don’t be a baby.â€
