Are You an Acolyte or a Rejector?
Steve Jobs had a brash personality that lends itself to very different interpretations, depending on who you are. Based on these anecdotes from Walter Isaacson’s biography, which camp do you fall into? —B.A.
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In 1975, Atari paid Jobs and Steve Wozniak to create the iconic game Breakout. Woz pulled four all-nighters to get it done—but Jobs pocketed the whole bonus that Atari paid for the game’s efficient design.
You can push colleagues to extraordinary lengths. Don’t screw over your friends.2In 1981, Jobs refused to give founding stock to Apple employee number 12, Dan Kottke. A fellow employee intervened, offering to match whatever options Jobs was willing to spare for Kottke. “OK,” Jobs replied, “I will give him zero.”
Good leadership is unsentimental. To foster loyalty in employees, you need to be loyal to them.3In 1994, Jobs announced he was firing a quarter of the Lisa computer team, telling them, “You guys failed … Too many people here are B or C players.”
Tolerate only A players. Scared employees don’t take risks.4
In 2005, Jobs ordered a smoothie at Whole Foods, but when the aging barista didn’t make it to his taste, he railed about her incompetence.
Force the whole world to bend to your vision. Understand the limits of your power.
Chalk me up as a rejector. The man was a total asshole. He might have been a genius, but there are evil geniuses. I'd rather be a decent person as opposed to being a visionary. Especially a dead visionary. When he died, most people thought Steve Jobs would be remembered forever for his accomplishments. I'm not so sure of that.
I am fortunate enough to have first hand knowledge of Steve and Apple. Steve was a perfectionist and expected the same from everyone he touched. Working for him was not for the faint of heart. If you pride yourself on being a decent guy or being folksy you would not have made it one day in the Steve regime. He would sniff you out and fire you on the spot. Even now the Steve culture is still very much a part of Apple. Disassemble a MacBook and you will see it looks just as nice under the keys as it does on the outside. Perfection taken to an extreme you might say but the results speak for themselves.
ReplyDeleteBeing "decent" might help you sleep at night but the courage to be a visionary takes brass balls.
What the inside of a MacBook looks like means jackshit to me. Have you ever looked inside of a person? Not that pretty. Yes, being "decent" helps me sleep at night, and I generally try to steer clear of assholes like Steve Jobs. In his case, I don't have to worry, since he's dead. Just because a bunch of folks will buy anything Apple turns out doesn't impress me much. Maybe I'm an imperfect loser, but I'm an imperfect loser who doesn't need some asshole treating me like shit. I'm glad you feel privileged to have known the man. I'm glad I was privileged to not know him.
ReplyDeleteI would say 99.9% of people feel the same way. But that is the short-sighted, naive view of course. It is so much more than that. Apple's success is hinged upon it avoiding the temptation of falling into the "me-too" approach. There have been a lot of those me-too's come and go in the last 20 years. Building Apple to what it is today would never have happened had they gone down that path.
ReplyDeleteI might be wrong but I think you might feel differently if you had built your opinion on actually experiencing what you so eloquently pontificate about. You can surf the Internet and read all the books in the world but there is no substitution for actually experiencing the world and the fascinating personalities that make it up.
I've met plenty of assholes. They can be brilliant and fascinating, but they are still assholes. There are plenty of people out there who are brilliant and fascinating, but they aren't assholes. I'll try to hang around with them. As for Apple and the "me-too" approach, the company may avoid that, but their customers don't. I can get through life perfectly fine without the latest iPhone, but a lot of people think they have to have it. They are the people who made Steve Jobs rich.
ReplyDeleteI'm comfortable with the life I have. I've experienced enough of it to decide what I like and what I don't like. People who treat others like shit, regardless of what they bring out of those people, I don't like. Maybe that makes me limited, but I'm ok with that.