In 1967 I was a grad student at Cal Berkeley. In December of that year my wife to be and I got engaged to be married. I was supposed to get my master’s degree in December of ’68, but once we worked out all the details, we realized that I’d have to go to school over the summer of ’68, get the degree in September, and get a job. We were broke and couldn’t afford the extra three months of expenses with little or no income. Berkeley was set up with biannual college recruiting programs during which corporations would come in to interview prospective new hires. One of the sessions was in March and one was in November. My original plan was to go through the college recruiting process in the November session, but the wedding plans changed that.
Since I wouldn’t be ready to go to work until September, the March recruiting session seemed too early. So — how to get a job? That was the question.
I wrote 40 or 50 letters. There was a college placement handbook that had the addresses of the important companies. I wrote to them basically saying “Dear Sir, you don’t know me, but I want a job.” I got back just three responses which was a little depressing. One was from IBM, where I then interviewed and didn’t get a job offer. One was from HP where I interviewed and didn’t get a job offer. But one was from Fairchild. All I knew about them — or thought I knew — was they made cameras. (The official company name at that time was Fairchild Camera.) I interviewed with them and they were excited about me. They brought me back a short while later to have lunch with two of their executives: Jerry Briggs – an HR guy (Except what is now called Human Relations was called Personnel in those days) — and Gene Flath – a product line manager. That was my first business lunch. It turned out that in those days, business lunches involved large quantities of martinis and the like. They thought I was the greatest guy in the world (Possibly because of the martinis?) and they offered me a job on the spot. This was in roughly May of ’68. They knew that I wasn’t going to be done with school until September, but they said, “That’s not a problem. We’ll wait for you. You’re going to be wonderful. In fact, you don’t even need to communicate with us in the interim. The day before you’re done, just call us and we’ll make arrangements for you and everything will be great.” Then they both gave me their business cards.
When I had one day to go —that is I had just taken my last final and was ready to go to work—– I picked up the phone and called Fairchild HR. A lady answered the phone. I asked, “Can I please speak to Jerry Briggs?” The lady who answered the phone said, “You must be mistaken. Are you sure you called the right number? There’s no Jerry Briggs here and I’ve never even known a Jerry Briggs.” We debated for a while and after a bit I asked her “Well, how long have you been there?” It had been a couple of months. I asked to speak to someone who had been there in May. There was no one. The department had turned totally over between the time of the offer in May and my call in September. I thought to myself, “Wow. Are you kidding? But that’s not a problem because I’ve got Gene Flath’s card as well. I’ll just call Gene Flath.” So — I called Gene Flath’s number and got a secretary. She said, “You must be mistaken. Are you sure you called the right number? There’s no Gene Flath here and there’s never been a Gene Flath here in all of the time I’ve been here.” “Well, how long have you been there?” “A couple of months.” Uh-Oh!! Red flag!! I asked myself, “What the heck is going on here?” I needed that job! Fortunately, I had the offer letter. I called the HR department again and told them so. Some guy who I had nev- er met said “Well, okay, we’ll honor it. Come in at 9:00 on Monday morning and we’ll figure out what to do with you.”
What the heck was going on? I found out later that Bob Noyce, the President of Fairchild, had just left to form Intel Corporation and taken a cadre of the really good people with him. Sherman Fairchild (the Chairman of the Fairchild Board of Directors) had brought in Les Hogan from Motorola to be the new CEO. Hogan, then, brought in eight of his top lieutenants to help him run things. They were referred to as ‘Hogan’s Heroes’. (That was the name of a popular TV show in those days.) Hogan and his Heroes proceeded to fire about a third of the upper ranks. Roughly another third of the upper ranks said to themselves, “Well, wait a minute. If I stay around, they’re going to fire me, too.” So, they left as well. Everything had turned over in that four-month window. Gene Flath had gone to Intel. I have no idea what happened to Jerry Briggs. When I got there nobody knew what was going on. Nobody knew who their boss was. What a zoo it was, but that made it almost seem like fun. One thing that was particularly noticeable was —- in the other companies where I had interviewed the managers were 40-year-old or 50-year-old people. Today that doesn’t seem very old, does it? But then it seemed ancient. “You mean, I’ve got to be around for twenty years before I can get a manager job? That’s terrible.” At Fairchild, the managers were kids. They were 25 and 30 years old. And not only were they kids, but they were also kids viewed as being experts in their field because the field was that young.
I thought, “I’m going to like this place.”