It's every start-up employee's dream: to join a super-dynamic company in its infancy that grows to become a hugely successful business, especially if generous share options form part of the remuneration package. Starting with Microsoft, whose first employees are pictured in this iconic photo from 1978, click or scroll through to take a look at the staff members that kicked off today's most valuable global giants, and find out what they're up to today.

Microsoft's very first salaried employee, Marc McDonald (pictured left in 1978, and right more recently) was hired in April 1976 to adapt BASIC for the firm's NCR 7200 machine. McDonald quit in January 1984 but ended up working for the company again in 2000, albeit indirectly, when Microsoft acquired Design Intelligence, where he was principal software scientist. Now presumably retired, he left his last role, software architect at start-up Paper G, in June 2016.

In 1977, two years after launching Microsoft, Bill Gates hired his former Harvard classmate Bob Greenberg to work as a BASIC programmer. Interestingly it was Greenberg’s knowledge of assassinated presidents, which won him a photoshoot via a phone-in radio competition, that led to the creation of the famous 1978 image of the early Microsoft team. After quitting the company in 1981, Greenberg helped Coleco, the company owned by his family, develop the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, which went on to become a massive 1980s craze. Now he reportedly develops software for golf courses.

Microsoft's first technical writer Andrea Lewis, pictured in 1978 and more recently, started at the company in 1977 and was the only staff member hailing from Albuquerque, where the firm's first headquarters was located. Lewis left the fold in 1983 and is now a highly-regarded freelance writer. In 1996, Lewis co-founded literary retreat Hugo House in Seattle.

Apple's first-ever hire, Bill Fernandez is officially employee #4. A high school friend of Steve Jobs, Fernandez introduced the late co-founder to Steve Wozniak, who was his neighbour. After working at Apple in a variety of positions from 1977 to 1993, the IT professional held senior interface architect positions at database company Ingres, Documentum and Omnibiotics, and is now user experience architect at the eponymous design firm he founded in 1998.

Next up is Randy Wigginton, Apple employee #6. He started out in the company as a teenager in 1977 and was the company's first programmer. Wigginton went on to create numerous Mac applications including Full Impact and MacWrite. He quit in September 1981 and has worked for tech giants such as eBay, PayPal and Google over the years. His current position is director and engineer at finance company Square.

Michael Scott is officially Apple employee #7. He was hired by investor Mike Markkula as CEO in February 1977 and chose his employee number himself as a joke homage to James Bond, aka 007. Scott left in July 1981. He then took the helm at satellite company Starstruck until 1988. Scott has since left the world of business, and is now a world-renowned gemstones expert. He boasts a stone collection that was dubbed as “one of the world’s greatest” by the Royal Ontario Museum, and Scott has even written a book about his hoard of gems (pictured).

Apple employee #8, Chris Espinosa was the company baby. He joined Apple in 1976 when he was a 14-year-old high school student, working part-time at first writing BASIC programmes. Apple's longest-serving staff member, Espinosa continues to work at the firm. Over the years he has held a variety of positions in developer support, AppleScript engineering, and more.

Described by Jeff Bezos as "the most important person ever in the history of Amazon.com", Shel Kaphan was the company's first official hire, joining what was then a yet-to-launch online book retailer in October 1994. Kaphan played a pivotal role building Amazon's technical infrastructure from the Amazon HQ garage in Bellevue, Washington, near Seattle, which is pictured here. The firm's VP of research and development left in 1999 and is now a major philanthropist. He has also recently said that breaking up the e-commerce giant “could potentially make sense”, and while he’s proud of what Amazon has become, it also “scares him”. 

Founder Jeff Bezos' now ex-wife MacKenzie was Amazon's first accountant and also helped out with hiring staff in the company's early days. The former Mrs Bezos is currently worth $36 billion (£28.8bn), having agreed a record-breaking divorce settlement last year, making her the fourth richest woman in the world, according to Forbes. With two acclaimed novels under her belt, she devotes her time to writing and is a notable philanthropist and anti-bullying campaigner.

Paul Davis was hired by Jeff Bezos in the autumn of 1994 back when the company was headquartered in the Bezos' garage in Bellevue. Working as a developer, he pretty much created the early site's infrastructure. Davis didn't stick around for long, however, leaving Amazon in 1996, and he currently juggles heading Linux Audio Systems and completing ultramarathons.

Google's very first hire and its original director of technology, Craig Silverstein was recruited by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin way back in September 1998 when the company HQ was a suburban garage. Silverstein had studied for his PhD alongside the pair at Stanford University. After writing early code and helping to build the company, he left in 2012 to work for online education non-profit Khan Academy, where he remains today as dean of infrastructure.

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Heather Cairns was Google's first ever HR manager. After joining the company in the autumn of 1998, she hired 200 staff, initiated HR policies that are still in use today and her voice can still be heard on the firm's voicemail. Cairns left Google in 2005 and spent time travelling, as well as engaging in philanthropy and angel investing. The multi-talented professional is now president of Coastal Streets, a real estate development enterprise based in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Fresh from a stellar four-year stint at web company Netscape, Omid Kordestani was snapped up by Google in May 1999 to work in sales and business development. He left the role in 2009 and sat on the boards of Spotify and Vodafone before returning to Google in August 2015 to take up the position of chief business advisor, then senior advisor. After leaving Google for the second time in October 2015, Kordestani is now Twitter's executive chairman.

One of Google's longest-serving employees, programming legend Jeff Dean was hired in August 1999, a year after the company was founded. Dean, who started out as a senior engineer, has been instrumental in designing everything from the search engine's query retrieval systems to its advertising serving architecture. At present, the genius computer scientist is a senior fellow at the firm.

Yan Pujante was part of LinkedIn during its formative years – even before the team had an office and ‘getin.com’ was still a possible name. After rising through different roles at the company over the course of eight years, including chief software architect and director of technology, Pujante moved onto his true passion: electronic music. The former LinkedIn employee now works for himself as both a musician and producer, creating chill-out, deep house, dance and progressive music under his artist name NH2MF. 

Stephen Beitzel worked as a software developer at numerous small tech companies and spent almost three years at Apple before joining the team at LinkedIn. Beitzel worked at the professional networking site for almost two years and then left while it was still in its early days. Despite his short stay he made a decent profit, managing to sell his stake in the company for a cool $1.3 million (£1 million) at LinkedIn’s IPO in 2011. After a seven-year stint at Netflix, Beitzel took time off to be at home with his family and has spent the last four years honing his bagpipe skills as "piper in residence" at what he and his partner Lise Quintana call the Quintana-Beitzel Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Arguably the most well-known of Facebook's early employees, Sean Parker was already a tech industry bigwig when he joined the social network as its president in June 2004, having co-created free file-sharing service Napster, as well as co-founding online address book Plaxo. At the current time Parker, who was fired from his role as Facebook president in 2006 due to a drug-related incident, is the founder and chairman of online campaigning platform Causes and video chat app Airtime, as well as a Spotify board member. Parker has a net worth of $2.7 billion (£2.1bn).

Ezra Callahan, who describes himself on his Linkedin profile as an “early Facebook dude”, was taken on in December 2004 as the social media site's first product manager and assumed the role of internal comms manager in 2008. He left the company in 2010 and eventually co-founded ARRIVE Hotels & Restaurants, where he currently serves as chief investment officer.

Taner Halicioglu was Facebook's first 'real' employee, leaving an engineering role at eBay to join the business in 2004. He was employed at Facebook as a senior software and operations engineer, and pretty much built the site's hardware infrastructure. Halicioglu worked at the social media giant until 2009. These days he's a top angel investor, sits on the board of an animal care and education centre and has even established a data science institute that bears his name at UC San Diego.

The founding of Facebook has produced a fair few billionaires over the years, and the social network’s earliest employees have gone on to have enviable careers even after leaving the company. Steve Chen, for instance, worked as a senior software engineer at Facebook for just a few months in 2005, but then went on to co-found YouTube that same year. He is currently an angel investor in Silicon Valley.

Evan Henshaw-Plath was the first official employee at Twitter, where he worked as the lead developer from 2004, when podcast platform Odeo was the team’s main focus, through until 2006. After more than a decade of developing software across a number of companies and even teaching at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Henshaw-Plath founded Planetary, a decentralised social network looking to disrupt the market with its user-controlled algorithm and advert-free site.

Starting out at the unsuccessful Odeo in 2005, Tim Roberts was part of the same team that then went on to launch Twitter, which had thousands of users by the end of 2006. In that year Roberts left the young company and then went on to be employee #8 at wearable tech company Fitbit in 2010. The first non-founder executive to join the team, Roberts helped Fitbit to grow into a company fit for its IPO in 2015 , and now works as an adviser to a number of digital health and fitness companies.

Director of business development at Twitter in its early days, Adam Rugel moved on from the social network scene in 2007. He took up various media roles in the following years, including senior director at cable TV channel ESPN, and a director position at global media company Condé Nast. Rugel is now using his digital expertise in a relatively new venture called The Seventh Spark Company, which brings together faith communities using mobile technology.

Like the other ex-Twitter employees in this round-up, Stubblebine joined Twitter in its very early days and then moved on before the network really hit its peak. In 2011 he created goal tracking app Lift Worldwide, which formed the basis of his next venture Coach.me, a website and app created in 2015 that wants to revolutionise the way that coaches and clients interact. It currently hosts eight coaching verticals, including meditation and writing, and the company also has its own app designed to track and build habits. In 2013, Stubbletine also launched a publication called Better Humans, offering self-improvement advice, followed by sister projects Better Programming and Better Marketing in 2019.

In January 2010, Uber founder Travis Kalanick took to Twitter for “tips” on people to hire for his brand new start-up – Ryan Graves replied with his email address and two months later he was Uber’s first official employee, stepping into the role of CEO. Seven years later Graves resigned, two months after Kalanick was ousted. However, Graves remained on the board of directors until May last year, when the company went public for the first time and had the largest IPO of 2019. The ex-Uber employee had a net worth of $1.6 billion (£1.3bn) last year and is now the CEO of private investment company Saltwater Capital, which he founded in 2018.

 

Uber employee #4 Austin Geidt started out as an intern, covering everything from flyering on the streets to recruiting new drivers. As the company grew, Geidt climbed the ranks and 10 years later she is Head of Operations at the world’s largest taxi company. Geidt even got to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange at Uber’s IPO last year.

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