On effectiveness
I love the following story from “On the Edge. The spectacular Rise and Fall of COMMODORE.” I love it, because startups are all about effectiveness. And this one shows that often you gotta play beyond standards to achieve goals.
The microprocessor would be useless to engineers without documentation. Peddle recalls, “We were coming down to launching, and my buddy [Petr Sehnal] kept telling me, ‘Chuck, you’ve got to go write these manuals.’ I kept saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll get around to it.’” Peddle did not get around to it.
With Wescon rapidly approaching, and no manual in sight, Sehnal approached John Pavinen and told him, “He’s not doing it.”
“John Pavinen walked into my office with a security guard, and he walked me out of the building,” recalls Peddle.
According to Peddle, Pavinen gave him explicit instructions. “The only person you’re allowed to talk to in our company is your secretary, who you can dictate stuff to,” Pavinen told him. “You can’t come back to work until you finish the two manuals.”
Peddle accepted the situation with humility. “I wrote them under duress,” he says. Weeks later, Peddle emerged from his exile with his task completed. The 6502 would have manuals for Wescon.