Some of the most consequential careers in history started with joining the right company.
AppleEmployee No. ~11,000
Jony Ive
Arrived years before the comeback. His designs for the iMac and iPhone made Apple the most valuable company in the world.
SpaceXEmployee No. 11
Gwynne Shotwell
Sold the launches that kept SpaceX alive in the early years and now runs the company as President.
StripeEmployee No. 1
Greg Brockman
Became CTO and built Stripe's engineering team, then went on to co-found OpenAI.
MicrosoftEmployee No. ~17,000
Satya Nadella
Rose from engineer to CEO over 22 years and led Microsoft's reinvention around cloud and AI.
GoogleEmployee No. 25
Jeff Dean
Built the systems behind Search and went on to lead Google's AI research.
TeslaEmployee No. ~500
Franz von Holzhausen
Joined a startup that had built one car and designed everything since, from the Model S to the Cybertruck.
IntelEmployee No. 3
Andy Grove
Intel's first hire. As CEO he bet the company on microprocessors and defined modern management.
FacebookEmployee No. ~550
Sheryl Sandberg
Joined as COO when Facebook was 500 people and built the ad business that made it a giant.
GoogleEmployee No. ~3,000
Sundar Pichai
Joined as a product manager, shipped Chrome, and now runs Google and Alphabet.
AppleEmployee No. ~7,000
Tim Cook
Left Compaq for an Apple weeks from bankruptcy. His supply chain made the iPhone possible, then he became CEO.
Morgan StanleyEmployee No. ~7,000
Mary Meeker
Joined as an analyst and became the internet's definitive scorekeeper. Her trends report moved the whole industry.
AmazonEmployee No. ~600
Andy Jassy
Turned a memo into AWS, the business that powers the internet, then became Amazon's CEO.
RyanairEmployee No. ~500
Michael O'Leary
Joined a small loss-making Irish airline, became CEO, and turned it into Europe's largest carrier.
AMDEmployee No. ~10,000
Lisa Su
Joined a fading AMD, became CEO within two years, and rebuilt a chipmaker left for dead into one worth hundreds of billions.
CERNEmployee No. ~3,500
Tim Berners-Lee
Invented the World Wide Web as a side project at CERN, then gave it away to everyone.