Chris Espinosa, hired by Steve Jobs at age 14, remains the only Apple employee to have worked continuously through the company’s half-a-century history.

Apple marked its 50th anniversary on April 1, tracing its origins to 1976 when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer in Jobs' garage in Cupertino, California, U.S.

Over five decades, Apple has grown into one of the world’s most valuable companies, with a market value nearing US$4 trillion, annual profits exceeding $100 billion, and 2.5 billion devices in use globally.

Espinosa, now 64 and Apple’s eighth employee, has had a front-row seat to that rise.

"It was a time of both great promise and great trepidation," Espinosa recalled in an interview with The New York Times. "The ability to have a great idea, start a company and then either not find your customers and go out of business or not manage growth and go out of business — that was just the rule."

He represents a rare case in today’s workforce: someone who has spent his entire career at a single company. Such longevity is particularly uncommon in Silicon Valley, where startups often fail quickly and professionals frequently change jobs.

Jobs, Wozniak, Espinosa and several early employees attended Homestead High School in Cupertino and connected through the Homebrew Computer Club in Menlo Park.

In 1976, Espinosa met Jobs at the Byte Shop, a computer store in California, where he was recruited to write software for the Apple II using the BASIC programming language. The product later became one of the first widely adopted personal computers.

"It was really, really fun, because that was the time when people were starting the entire industry from scratch," Espinosa said.

From 1978 to 1981, he paused full-time work at Apple to attend the University of California, Berkeley, while continuing part-time, including writing a user manual of more than 200 pages for the Apple II. In 1981, Jobs persuaded him to leave university and return full time.

In 1985, Jobs left Apple following conflicts with leadership and then-CEO John Sculley, leading to a period of strategic drift and financial decline. During those years, Apple conducted repeated layoffs "again and again and again," Espinosa said, adding that he was concerned because he had no college degree and had only worked at one company.

His manager later told him he had been retained because his long tenure made severance costs too high.

"I was wondering what I was going to do because I had no college degree and I had only worked at one company," Espinosa said. Then he figured: "I was here when we turned the lights on. I might as well stick around until we turn the lights off."

Espinosa described 1997 as a turning point, when Jobs returned. He said the company’s first 20 years had been an era of "arrogance," while the following decades, marked by the launch of the iPod and iPhone, reshaped consumer electronics.

Today, Espinosa is working on the operating system for Apple TV. The 2,000 shares that Wozniak gave him shortly after Apple went public in 1980, as part of the "Woz Plan" to offer his shares to early employees, would now be worth nearly $57,000 each, a combined $114 million.

Reflecting on the many companies that have risen and fallen over the years, he said many were built by ambitious founders trying to imitate Steve Jobs, find their own Steve Wozniak, raise venture capital and sustain businesses that ultimately failed.

Despite industry shifts, Espinosa has remained at Apple as its longest-serving employee. "I was here when we turned the lights on," he said. "I might as well stick around until we turn the lights off." (VnExpress International)