Apple's Longest-Serving Employee Has Been There Since Age 14

The summer of 1976 found a 14-year-old Chris Espinosa commuting by moped to a job at a garage on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, demonstrating early computers for a company that had only existed since April Fool's Day. As Apple celebrates its 50th anniversary today, Espinosa remains on the payroll, holding the distinction of being the company's all-time longest-serving employee.

Espinosa, born September 18, 1961, grew up in Cupertino and attended Homestead High School, the same institution where both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had studied before him. His path into Apple's orbit began at Paul Terrell's Byte Shop, the first retail store ever to carry an Apple computer, where a teenage Espinosa encountered Jobs installing an Apple I. He later befriended Wozniak, despite explicit warnings from Homestead teachers against associating with the two Steves. When Espinosa's mother grew tired of driving him to Homebrew Computer Club meetings, the Silicon Valley hobbyist group that had inspired Wozniak to build Apple's first machine, Wozniak simply gave him a ride himself.

Apple had formally launched as a partnership among Jobs, Wozniak, and a third co-founder, Ronald Wayne, on April 1, 1976. Wayne, a former Jobs colleague who signed the original three-page founding contract, resigned just 12 days later and was bought out for $800. The company was officially incorporated on January 3, 1977. The following March, Apple's first president, Michael Scott, issued employee badge numbers to simplify payroll. Espinosa received badge number 8, dated March 17, 1977.

While still in high school, Espinosa wrote BASIC code and software manuals for Apple's earliest machines. He later enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, but in 1981 Jobs personally persuaded him to leave and join Apple's publications department full-time. Espinosa had not participated in Apple's 1980 IPO, but Wozniak extended him an offer through what became known as the Woz plan, making available 2,000 pre-IPO shares at $5 each to roughly 40 employees who had been left out. Espinosa declined. Those shares would be worth more than $104 million today.

The company Espinosa joined in that Los Altos garage now carries a market capitalization of approximately $3.5 to $3.7 trillion, with over 2.5 billion active devices in use worldwide. On March 11, 2026, the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley hosted an Apple@50 panel featuring Espinosa, describing him as "a part of Apple for its entire 50 years." Apple marked the milestone with events globally, including a surprise concert at its Grand Central store in New York City. A book titled "Apple: The First 50 Years" was published to accompany the anniversary.

Espinosa's tenure spans the full sweep of the company's history: from soldering circuit boards in a residential garage to the iPhone era, from floppy disks to cloud infrastructure, and from a three-man April Fool's Day partnership to one of the most valuable corporations in human history.