When Steve Jobs introduced the first iMac in 1998

When Steve Jobs took the stage to introduce the “iMac” 26 years ago, he was beaming with pride. He had returned to the company he co-founded and from which he had been fired; within nine months of his return, he had managed to change the image of Apple with his “Think Different” campaign and presented the first products of its new era. The most important thing that happened that day, however, was not about the “iMac” itself, but about the speech he gave during the presentation, in which he said that:

“…Apple has some very talented employees and the most important thing for her is not to lose them.”

The concept of talent absorption and loss

All serious companies want to hire the best employees they can. But how many of them continue to stay with the company that hired them at the end of each year?

According to Jobs, Apple’s turnover rate of all employees was 33% before he returned to the company, and less than a year later it had dropped to 15%, lower than the average for companies at the time of Silicon Valley.

What he said was so important that twenty-six years later it overshadows the very launch of the “iMac”, the design and capabilities of which are no longer revolutionary, only of historical significance.

The question of whether a company absorbs or loses talent, however, continues to be meaningful, especially after a pandemic that led to mass layoffs and resignations, changed the very nature of work and produced the phenomenon of “quiet quitting.”

The only thing better than finding a fantastic new workplace to go to is finding a fantastic new reason to love the company you already work for. Accordingly, for a business, there is no better thing than to hire a “goose that lays golden eggs” and she stays loyal to her.

Steve Jobs was already rich in 1998, yet he was not included in the list of the 200 richest people in the world, a list he later entered and, today, twenty-six years after his historic speech, we are still talking about him and use Apple devices. None of this would have happened if during his lifetime he had not found ways to keep his great employees close to him.

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