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An Ex-Apple CEO on MIT, Marketing and Why We Can't Stop Talking About Steve Jobs

2 points by madars 11y ago

DiabloD3 11y ago
We can't stop talking about him because he was a charismatic asshole. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to insult his memory: he was a type-A personality, extremely driven, and knew when to try alternate methods of attack to conquer a problem instead of trying to just ram through. Steve Jobs is a benchmark on what CEOs should be, even though his story is extremely unique: what Apple is today is because, as a founder, he was thrown out by his own shareholders... and then came back with his own NeXT army when the shareholders realized they made a mistake. To make a political metaphor out of this, it'd be like Taiwan (aka the Republic of China) marching back into China (aka the People's Republic of China) and becoming the legitimate government again after being invited to do so. Steve Jobs never quit. He never stopped. His self-perceived imperfections were magnified ten-fold in his internal mirror, and in the mirrors of others. He knew what he disliked about himself, and he did everything possible to eliminate it. Even when the Universe singled him out and tried to fuck him over, he kept going, and going, and going. He was one half Genghis Khan, one half Energizer Bunny, and one half salesman. Most of us only get two halves, he picked up another one along the way. The Apple of today is the largest company in the world by market cap (trading it back and forth with Google), and almost twice the size of Exxon, Berkshire Hathaway, and Facebook, and bigger than Microsoft. If Steve Jobs died a decade earlier, and the Tim Cook of today became CEO then, Apple would not have become the juggernaut it is today. However, he was still a man. This is largely what irks me about the idol worship that goes on. He was a man, he was flawed, his personal relationships with family and friends were horrendously bad, but he also never prioritized those: he was friends with people whose relationships served him, and when they stopped serving him and his goals he put them on the back burner. That isn't a bad practice in of itself: but you typically only do that to people who are seriously toxic, those people you consciously cut off. Steve Jobs did it to basically everyone. I'm not passing judgement on him, just stating the facts. The way he was served him in life, right or wrong. It's a compelling story to tell. He's like a modern day pharaoh, and the story we tell of Apple is the pyramid he was entombed in.

2 points by madars 11y ago

We can't stop talking about him because he was a charismatic asshole. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to insult his memory: he was a type-A personality, extremely driven, and knew when to try alternate methods of attack to conquer a problem instead of trying to just ram through. Steve Jobs is a benchmark on what CEOs should be, even though his story is extremely unique: what Apple is today is because, as a founder, he was thrown out by his own shareholders... and then came back with his own NeXT army when the shareholders realized they made a mistake. To make a political metaphor out of this, it'd be like Taiwan (aka the Republic of China) marching back into China (aka the People's Republic of China) and becoming the legitimate government again after being invited to do so. Steve Jobs never quit. He never stopped. His self-perceived imperfections were magnified ten-fold in his internal mirror, and in the mirrors of others. He knew what he disliked about himself, and he did everything possible to eliminate it. Even when the Universe singled him out and tried to fuck him over, he kept going, and going, and going. He was one half Genghis Khan, one half Energizer Bunny, and one half salesman. Most of us only get two halves, he picked up another one along the way. The Apple of today is the largest company in the world by market cap (trading it back and forth with Google), and almost twice the size of Exxon, Berkshire Hathaway, and Facebook, and bigger than Microsoft. If Steve Jobs died a decade earlier, and the Tim Cook of today became CEO then, Apple would not have become the juggernaut it is today. However, he was still a man. This is largely what irks me about the idol worship that goes on. He was a man, he was flawed, his personal relationships with family and friends were horrendously bad, but he also never prioritized those: he was friends with people whose relationships served him, and when they stopped serving him and his goals he put them on the back burner. That isn't a bad practice in of itself: but you typically only do that to people who are seriously toxic, those people you consciously cut off. Steve Jobs did it to basically everyone. I'm not passing judgement on him, just stating the facts. The way he was served him in life, right or wrong. It's a compelling story to tell. He's like a modern day pharaoh, and the story we tell of Apple is the pyramid he was entombed in.