The Self-Educated Apple Genius

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images In Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar, James Marcus Bach reveals how he became a wunderkind Apple engineer with only an eighth-grade education.

I Am a Buccaneer-Scholar

I am a thinker with the temperament of a buccaneer. A buccaneer-scholar is anyone whose love of learning is not muzzled, yoked, or shackled by any institution or authority; whose mind is driven to wander and find its own voice and place in the world. For two decades, this has been the way I understand myself. I use the metaphor of buccaneering not just for learning but also to deal with the emotional battles within myself and the intellectual battles I sometimes fight with other people. It helps me feel better about being an outsider. Whenever I meet people who think for themselves, I see them as fellow buccaneers.

The pattern I experienced at Apple would be confirmed almost everywhere I traveled in the computer industry: Most people have put themselves on intellectual autopilot.

Catching the College Kids

I was a nervous man on my first day at Apple. At 20, I was the youngest manager in the building. In all the gatherings and reorganizations we went through during the four years I worked there, I never met a younger manager. I was younger than many of the interns.

Also, I was a contractor. That meant Apple could fire me without notice or severance. I had little money and no credit.

The worst thing was that nearly everyone around me had a university degree. A good many had graduate degrees.

Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar. By James Marcus Bach. 208 Pages. Scribner. $19.99. I had to catch up to the college kids. I brooded on it every day. I came to work with desperate fire in my soul to learn. Learn everything. Learn it now.

I began by scouting. The learning resources at Apple were overwhelming. I felt giddy. There were classes I could take. Visiting scholars gave seminars in the building. Our corporate fileservers were crammed with technical documentation.

The San Jose area (also known as the South Bay, Silicon Valley, or simply The Valley) is home to fabulous bookstores. And in those days Apple Computer had one of the best corporate libraries in the industry, fully staffed with reference librarians who—just like me—wanted to justify themselves through service.

As a manager, I supervised five testers, but no one closely supervised me. My boss, Chris, was in meetings most of the time. He needed me to get on with the work as best I could. This meant I could sneak away and read. I spent part of each afternoon in a donut shop across the street from my building, studying without interruption.

Chris was supportive. “You should not just read about software,” he suggested. “Try to find solutions to our problems in other disciplines.” Maybe Chris was more supportive than he ever knew. I treated that one casual suggestion as permission to spend work time to learn anything. I browsed many of the two hundred or so academic journals that came through the library. Even crazy stuff. I read Anthropometry of Algerian Women and Optimum Handle Height for a Push-Pull Type Manually Operated Dryland Weeder.

Of course I read every testing book I could find. I discovered software testing standards and studied those, too. I studied most evenings and weekends.