Success Quote by Steve Wozniak

There’s a peculiar kind of Silicon Valley humility in Wozniak calling “being an employee” an honor, and it lands because it flips the usual tech mythology on its head. The garage-genius narrative sells freedom: founders, rebels, visionaries who refuse to be managed. Wozniak, a co-founder, frames the relationship in the most unglamorous corporate language imaginable. It’s funny, but it’s also a small act of truth-telling about how power actually worked at Apple.

The intent is affectionate, even grateful. Wozniak isn’t taking a shot at Jobs so much as showing how the Jobs reality-distortion field could reorder a room. “He lets me” is doing heavy lifting: it implies permission, a gatekeeper, a hierarchy that doesn’t care about origin stories. In one sentence, Wozniak sketches Jobs as benevolent monarch and himself as willingly subordinated court genius. That dynamic was central to Apple’s legend: Jobs as the charismatic decider; Woz as the engineer who made the magic real.

The subtext carries a sting of self-awareness. Wozniak knows how absurd it sounds for a founder to describe employment as a bestowed favor, which is why it works. He’s signaling both loyalty and the cost of proximity to Jobs: status comes through Jobs’ approval. In context - decades of biographies casting Wozniak as the kinder, more technically grounded half of Apple’s creation - the line reads like a diplomatic way to acknowledge ego, control, and the strange bargains people make to stay near a myth.