Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs

by Daniel Lyons

  Except today. Today it is raining. I mean raining. The drops are as big as grapes, and they’re falling so hard they’re carving divots in the grass. It’s noon, and the sky is pitch black. Sheet lightning keeps blasting out of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Trees are bending sideways in the wind. They look as if they might rip up out of the ground and fly away.

  So we’re stuck, maybe fifty of us, waiting for the storm to blow over, when in walk three FBI agents and a bunch of uniformed San Jose cops. Right behind them is a crew from KSJT, the local TV station.

  The cops go up to Sanjay Dash, the CEO of Altona Semiconductor, and three of his executives, and start reading them their rights. Handcuffs, the whole thing. The FBI guys make a big show, I suppose to be sure that all the rest of us see what’s happening. They perp walk the guys out to a van and haul them away. When they’re gone the TV idiots come back inside and try to get interviews. The reporter is a woman in her twenties with blonde hair, a black suit and sneakers. She rushes around shoving her microphone at people. Nobody will talk to her. She tapes a spot anyway, and makes it seem as if Sanjay and his guys were arrested while trying to flee the country, which is apparently what the FBI guys told her. Nice touch.

  It’s the third big arrest in less than a week. Nick Malone of MTware and Dave Tsao of Mantis Networks were perp-walked out of their offices. Mark Broder of Xictel, a chip company, was picked up at Bentley’s in Woodside, leaving his wife sobbing into her duck confit and pommes salardaise.

  “It’s not going to stop,” Misho Knedlik says. “Now that there’s blood in the water, there’ll be more, not less. Trust me, this was how it happened in Bratislava, back in the Communist days. In Bratislava it was always at the train station. So everyone could see you being humiliated. It sends a message: You could be next. Scares the shit out of people. Look at this place.”

  He’s right. People are freaking out. Most of them are on their cell phones, looking frantic. A few are just sitting down, staring out at the rain, looking scared and dumbfounded. Larry and I and Misho are sharing a green plastic table beside a window overlooking the runway.

  “I’ll tell you what, I’m glad I’m retired,” Misho says.

  “So’s everyone else,” Larry says.

  Misho is the former CEO of Bronson Microelectronics. He’s seventy-five years old, a trim little Jewish dude with curly hair and twinkly eyes that almost make you forget what a monster he was to everyone who ever worked for him—or did business with him, or bought products from him, or, God forbid, tried to compete against him. He’s a Slovak who escaped from Czechoslovakia in the fifties with the clothes on his back, got a Ph.D. in engineering, joined a semiconductor company, worked his way up to CEO, and got rich. Then he invested in a venture fund and got ten times richer.

  Misho is nowhere near being rich the way Larry and I are rich, but he’s done well enough. He’s also the rudest person in the Valley and definitely the most hated, ever since he published a memoir called Everyone Wants to Kill You, which managed to offend pretty much everyone in the industry. Larry was one of the guys who got stung the worst by the things Misho said about him. Not that they weren’t true; they were. Everyone out here knew the stories. Still, nobody had ever dared put them in print.

  “They’ll be after you next,” Misho says, meaning me.

  I just shrug. He’s probably right, but I don’t want to let on that I’m scared.

  “You know what I’d do if I were in your shoes?” he says. “I’d walk out. The way they’re treating you? Come on. Let some other asshole run the company. Besides, how many more years you think you’re going to live? Go spend those years with your kids. Move to Maui. Spend your days on the beach.”

  “I’d last about a month,” I say, “before I’d go nuts.”

  “Why, you think what you do here matters? You think it’s important? Who gives a shit about computers? I wish I’d bought my place in Hawaii twenty years ago.”

  “He’s right,” Larry says. “I’m thinking about retiring myself.”

  “You? Retire?” Misho bursts out laughing. “Retire from what? Sailing? Fucking interns? When was the last time you showed up at the office three days in a row and put in a full eight hours? You’re gonna retire? Who could even tell? You lazy cocksucker.”

  Misho takes a sip of his coffee and spits it out onto the floor.

  “What the fuck is this,” he says.

  “Nescafé,” Larry says, “and Coffee-mate. It’s all they’ve got. I put in two sugars.”

  “I’d rather drink hemlock.”

  “Let me go see if they have some.” Larry heads off to the men’s room.

  “Why do you hang around with that asshole?” Misho says.

  “He’s a good guy.”

  “No he’s not. So tell me. You had any shareholder suits yet?”

  “Five so far. More coming, I’m told.”

  “Bloodsuckers. Your stock’s done what? Tripled since you took over?”

  “Quadrupled. Whatever. We’ll settle the cases.”

  “You know how I’d settle them?” Misho says. “A bullet in the back of the head. Fucking lawyers.”

  He turns to the window. It’s raining even harder now.

  “Look at this shit,” he says. “We’re never gonna get out of this shithole. I hate this place. This whole fucking Valley. I hate it. It’s changed. It used to be a good place. Now it’s just shit. Just scammers. Idiots trying to make a buck.”

  “I found a janitor,” Larry says when he returns. “He says they don’t have hemlock, but they do have some rat poison if you want to eat that instead.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Misho says.

  Larry stands at the window watching the rain bucketing down. “Only time I’ve seen rain like this was during the monsoon season in Nam,” he says,

  “You were in Vietnam?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “What were you? Marines?”

  “Oh, not the war,” Larry says. “Vacation. Bunch of times. Beautiful place. Amazing women. You can order them by the dozen. Incredible.”

  “Oy.” Misho makes a big deal out of being repulsed by Larry. I’m never sure if it’s an act or if he really hates him. But Misho has been married to the same woman for fifty years, so I’m guessing Larry pretty much makes him sick.

  The other thing that makes Misho sick is Communism, and it’s also one of his favorite subjects, and now that he’s got his teeth into it he can’t let go.

  “They used to come through the neighborhood and round people up,” he says. “You’d get a knock at the door in the middle of the night. They’d take your house, your land. Liberation, they called it. They’d liberated you from your property. Oh, and freedom. That was their big cause. All it meant was they were free to take your stuff.”

  He goes on about army camps and gulags, and I’m trying to pay attention, but Larry keeps leaning back on the couch making yap-yap-yap gestures with his hand and twirling his index finger in little circles beside his head.

  Fair enough. We’ve all heard Misho’s stories a million times. And yes, they’re boring. But the thing is, I kind of love Misho. I can’t bring myself to be rude to him. Larry is now miming a blowjob, jamming his fist toward his open mouth and poking his tongue against his cheek. Then he starts pretending to hang himself, tugging at an invisible noose around his neck and sticking out his tongue.

  “That’s what this country is coming to,” Misho says. “These rules. This Sarbanes-Oxley bullshit. What is this? They’re making it a crime to run a company. Whose great idea was this?”

  “It’s an epidemic,” Larry says. “It’s like AIDS, back in the early eighties, back when nobody knew what caused it.”

  “I bet you were scared shitless back then, weren’t you? Mr. Gay Guy.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m sure you’ve been gay. You’ve got that look. You’ve got the gay eyes.”

  “Misho, do you have Alzheimer’s? Have you been checked?”


  “Those big eyelashes. Very effeminate. That’s how you can tell a gay, did you know that, Steve? The eyes. Plus, the guy’s had a fucking facelift, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Two face lifts,” I say. “And two eye jobs.”

  “What straight man gets a face lift? And you wear makeup.”

  “That was one time,” Larry says, “and I’d just been on NBC. I came straight from the studio.”

  “Maybe you came from the studio, but not straight,” Misho says. He turns to me. “Guy shows up at Chantilly looking like a drag queen. The waiters were jumping into his lap. And don’t tell me you have to wear makeup on TV. I’ve done plenty of TV. They want to talk to me, fine, bring in the camera and turn it on and start asking questions. You don’t like how I look? Fuck you. Don’t do the interview. They tried putting that shit on me once and I told the guy, ‘Get away from me or I’ll stab you in the eye with your makeup brush, you fruitcake.’”

  “Steve wears makeup,” Larry says. “When he’s on stage. Giving speeches.”

  “It’s not makeup,” I say. “It’s a base layer. More like a moisturizer.”

  “Jesus, the two of you.” Misho shakes his head. “You know, it used to be men out here. Engineers. You had to know something. Now it’s fags like you. No education, no training. Over at HP they had those two broads running the place. What the fuck was that, can you tell me?”

  “Always uplifting to hang out with you, Misho,” Larry says. “A real pleasure. Total edification. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Misho lifts his ass cheek and farts in Larry’s direction. He looks across the lobby at Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Google. “And don’t even get me started on those idiots.”

  The Google guys are here with a bunch of SOMA-type guys from Web 2.0 social networking and video-sharing companies— zippr, zaggl, I can never remember—and a busload of college girls. They’re whooping it up, passing around a bottle of tequila and shouting, “Vegas, baby!” which is I guess where they’re going on the Google jumbo jet. The guys are wearing T-shirts and ripped-up jeans, and they’ve got those haircuts where you pay two hundred bucks to make it look like you just got out of bed.

  “All the money they’ve got, it would kill them to go buy some decent clothes? And maybe shave in the morning? Bunch of bums. In the old days there was a certain standard.”

  Misho isn’t the only one who hates these guys. None of the old-school guys can stand what’s happened to the Valley since the Internet was created.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Larry says, “but for once I actually agree with you. This stuff these kids are making, a monkey could do it. Try writing an enterprise database program. Fifteen million lines of code.”

  “Try designing a microprocessor,” Misho says. “Try investing five billion dollars every time you need to build a new wafer fab. You gotta have balls like a gorilla,” he says, grabbing his crotch, “to be in the chip business.”

  “You know what? It’s over,” Larry says. “The computer business, the chip business, the software business. We did it, it was fun, we all got rich, but it’s over. I’m putting my money into biotech. Anti-aging products. Life extenders. We’ve got this huge generation of boomers who suddenly realize they’re gonna get old and die, and guess what. They’re not thrilled about this. Next big boom is going to be bioengineering, stuff that will let you live to be a hundred and forty.”

  “I can barely stand being seventy-five,” Misho says. “I look in the mirror after my shower and I disgust myself.”

  “I’m talking about being a hundred years old and looking like you’re fifty,” Larry says. “And a good fifty. You’re telling me you wouldn’t spend a million bucks to live another seventy years?”

  “I’d spend a million to make sure it doesn’t happen. I’d spend two million to make doubly sure it doesn’t happen to you. No sir. No thank you.” Misho turns to me. “Let me tell you something. You and I are not going to live to be a hundred years old. And we both know the one thing that money can’t buy. Time. Every day it’s ticking down. Tick, tick, tick.”

  Larry starts playing an invisible violin. Misho ignores him.

  “Twenty years ago I missed my daughter’s high-school graduation. You know why? I was in Taiwan, beating the shit out of some equipment supplier. Told myself it was real important. Right. My daughter’s grown up now. She’s got kids. To this day she holds it against me. You know how much I’d pay to get that day back?”

  “I hear what you’re saying.”

  “Then do something about it. Before these assholes from the government start tearing you to pieces.”

  “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do,” Larry says. “We’re going to organize a war council. We’re going to start calling in favors from these assholes in Washington who’ve been taking our money and doing nothing for us. I’m going to call Bill.”

  Larry gave Bill Clinton twenty million dollars over the course of his presidency, and ten million more for his library after he left office.

  “Fantastic,” Misho says. “Another guy who can’t keep his dick in his pants. You two must get along great. How do you lure him out here? Tell him you found a new glory hole up in the Castro?”

  “That’s it exactly,” Larry says.

  “Well, ladies.” Misho slaps his knees and stands up. “It’s been a pleasure. But I’m leaving. I promise I’ll come visit you in prison. Or I’ll pay someone to do it for me, probably. Okay? Good luck to you.”

  So Larry actually manages to put together a war council. He sets it up at John Doerr’s house in Woodside, because Doerr is tight with Bill Clinton these days and supposedly he’s angling to get some cabinet post in a Hillary administration.

  I arrive late, because to hell with getting anywhere early and sitting around waiting. The house looks like some drug lord’s palace from a Chuck Norris movie, with a bunch of black armored SUVs and—I swear to God—a helicopter hovering overhead. They’ve got snipers on the roof, and a bunch of ape-looking guys with the earbuds standing out front. I’ve been to enough of these things to know what Secret Service agents look like. I’m pretty sure the show is Larry’s doing, because he gets off on the whole James Bond effect.

  The gorillas frisk me and find a lighter in my jeans. They tell me I’ll have to leave it with them and pick it up on the way out and I say, “Well, there goes my plan to torch the place, but whatever.”

  I go inside and there’s little Doerr, all ninety-seven pounds of him, with his too-big eyeglasses and his freako metabolism and the usual stick up his ass. He takes me to this room where all the big-shots from the Valley are sitting around a table. It’s like the meeting of the Five Families scene from Godfather One. There’s Otellini and Ruiz and T.J. Rodgers and some other chip guys, plus the Googletards who are playing with Legos, and McNealy, Schwartz, Hurd, Barksdale, Andreesen, Chambers, plus the money guys like Khosla and Jurvetson and McNamee and a bunch of other random VC assholes. Then there are a dozen or so guys I sort of kind of recognize from conferences, guys who work for second-tier outfits.

  I figure there’s two hundred billion dollars sitting in this room. That’s just personal net worth. If you added up the market value of the companies these guys control, you’re talking close to a trillion. They’re all sitting around with notepads in front of them, expecting, I guess, to make big speeches.

  In walk the Clintstones with George Soros. No smiles, no small talk. Hillary sits down and tells us in this pissed off Tony Soprano voice that there’s two years till this motherfucking election but she isn’t gonna fuck it up like Kerry and Gore, she’s gonna lock this motherfucker down now, she’s goddamn well gonna win and nobody is gonna get in her way, so we can all either get on the train or get run over by it, and she’s here to tell us how much money she wants each of us to put in.

  Larry butts in and says that we’d arranged this meeting hoping to discuss ways in which we might put an end to the persecution and witch hunt that is currently taking p
lace in the Valley. He’s smooth enough not to mention words like “coup” and “assassination,” but Hillary gives him this withering look anyway and says, “If you don’t mind, Barry, I’d like to continue.”

  Larry looks at Bill, and in a voice that’s pretty controlled, considering that he’s given these people thirty million dollars over the years, he says, “Um, did we get our wires crossed here or something?”

  Bill gives him this battered spouse look, as if to say, Hell, brother, don’t get me into hot water here, okay? Ix-nay on the alking-tay.

  “Excuse me, Bill’s not running this meeting,” Hillary says, and then she starts in again, saying everybody else pays their share, the oil guys pay five percent of net right off the top, and meanwhile we’re out here making our little chips and paying whatever we feel like, which for some of us, too many of us in fact, is zero.

  “That bullshit,” she says, “is gonna stop. Right here and now.”

  She tells us we can all check with George Soros on the way out and he’ll tell us how to move the money so it can’t be traced, using a bunch of these phony baloney environmental groups. She goes right around the table and gives everyone their number and what they’ll get if they do or don’t play ball.

  Doerr gets oil prices bumped to a hundred bucks a gallon so his green tech fund can pop out a few winners. The Googletards get net neutrality so they can keep abusing copyright and selling ads against other people’s content. McNealy can sell his overpriced Sun boxes to government agencies, and Hillary will lift some export restrictions so he can sell supercomputers to the North Koreans. McNealy says he’d also like a fresh DOJ case on Microsoft, but Hillary says no can do because Gates is putting up half a billion to buy a free pass.

  In my case the nut is twenty million dollars, and if I go along, the SEC and U.S. Attorney drop the charges on the options stuff and the feds buy iMacs for every school system in America. If I don’t, the options hassle continues, plus the DOJ will join with the Europeans who are raping us over the iPod being a closed system.