Paul Jobs worked in several jobs that included a try as a machinist,^[2] several other jobs,^[3] and then "back to work as a machinist". Paul and Clara adopted Jobs's sister Patricia in 1957^[4] and by 1959 the family had moved to the Monta Loma neighborhood in Mountain View, California.^[5] Paul built a workbench in his garage for his son in order to "pass along his love of mechanics". Jobs, meanwhile, admired his father's craftsmanship "because he knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work with him … I wasn't that into fixing cars … but I was eager to hang out with my dad.^[6] By the time he was ten, Jobs was deeply involved in electronics and befriended many of the engineers who lived in the neighborhood.^[7] He had difficulty making friends with children his own age, however, and was seen by his classmates as a "loner".^[7]

Jobs had difficulty functioning in a traditional classroom, tended to resist authority figures, frequently misbehaved, and was suspended a few times. Clara had taught him to read as a toddler, and Jobs stated that he was "pretty bored in school and turned into a little terror... you should have seen us in the third grade, we basically destroyed the teacher".^[7] He frequently played pranks on others at Monta Loma Elementary School in Mountain View. His father Paul (who was abused as a child) never reprimanded him, however, and instead blamed the school for not challenging his brilliant son.^[8]

Jobs would later credit his fourth grade teacher, Imogene "Teddy" Hill, with turning him around: "She taught an advanced fourth grade class, and it took her about a month to get hip to my situation. She bribed me into learning. She would say, 'I really want you to finish this workbook. I'll give you five bucks if you finish it.' That really kindled a passion in me for learning things! I learned more that year than I think I learned in any other year in school. They wanted me to skip the next two years in grade school and go straight to junior high to learn a foreign language, but my parents very wisely wouldn't let it happen." Jobs skipped the 5th grade and transferred to the 6th grade at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View,^[7] where he became a "socially awkward loner".^[9] Jobs was often "bullied" at Crittenden Middle, and in the middle of 7th grade, he gave his parents an ultimatum: either they would take him out of Crittenden or he would drop out of school.^[10]

The Jobs family was not affluent, and only by expending all their savings were they able to buy a new home in 1967, allowing Steve to change schools.^[7] The new house (a three-bedroom home on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California) was in the better Cupertino School District, Cupertino, California,^[11] and was embedded in an environment even more heavily populated with engineering families than the Mountain View area was.^[7] The house was declared a historic site in 2013, as the first site of Apple Computer.^[7]

When he was 13, in 1968, Jobs was given a summer job by Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett-Packard) after Jobs cold-called him to ask for parts for an electronics project.^[7]