(continued from previous page)
for the Valley's other principal archetype, the Psycho Nitpicker) branded the defectors the Traitorous Eight when they quit. Shockley may have engaged in questionable behavior--like publicly humiliating employees and threatening to give them lie detector tests--but he had a huge reputation. Few wanted to back the upstarts.
"Every company (except Fairchild) turned the idea down flat, without even asking to meet the men involved. Some firms may have found the pith of the letter--please give a million dollars to a group of men between the ages of 28 and 32 who think they are great and cannot abide working for a Nobel prize winner--unpalatable," Berlin writes.
Modern-day venture capital--which seems to run on its own, often abrasive, version of buoyancy--also came out of the deal. The banker who cut the Fairchild deal was Arthur Rock, a founder of Venrock Associates, which later backed Intel and Apple Computer. One of the Eight also discovered he had an aptitude for finance: Eugene Kleiner, who founded Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.
Noyce also helped popularize employee stock options. Fairchild was the birthplace for Intel, National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices, among others for a very good reason. Management there viewed stock options as a form of "creeping socialism" and kept most of the rewards for themselves.
Subsequent years saw the tech industry embrace the cubicle (a way to level the distinction between office execs and regular employees), bonuses for individual rank-and-file employees, and company cafeterias where everyone mingled.
Noyce, of course, had his flaws. Not one for details, he inevitably had to step away from hands-on management in all of his ventures. He avoided confrontation and often got credit for other people's work. During his first marriage, he had his girlfriend, an Intel employee, deliver packages to his house to experience the thrill of almost being caught.
Nonetheless, he clearly changed the way corporate America worked. Julius Blank, one of the Traitorous Eight recalled his first meeting with Noyce. To make it to the inaugural party at Shockley, Noyce drove straight from Utah to California in a rainstorm with a broken windshield wiper, chain smoking to stay awake.
"He hadn't shaved, he looked like he'd been living in his suit for a week and he was thirsty," Blank once said in an interview. "There was a big goddamn bowl of martinis on the table there. Noyce picks up the goddamn bowl and starts drinking it. Then he passed out. I said to myself, 'This is going to be a whole hell of a lot of fun.'"
Biography
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. He has worked as an attorney, travel writer and sidewalk hawker for a time share resort, among other occupations.
See more CNET content tagged:
Fairchild Semiconductor Corp., legacy, Nobel prize, Silicon Valley, electronics
