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“Very rarely did I see him become completely unglued. It happened. But mostly he just looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice, ‘You

• sverige 10y ago
  I don't really think it's debatable. Jobs was a crazy asshole. No need to hedge the assertion with all the evidence.
• overcast 10y ago
  Acting like that to your employees is a quick way to make them disappear. Apple was Apple, nothing was going to make them leave, no matter how much of an asshole Jobs was. I would listen to a CEO/Managers tirade once, before I started looking elsewhere. It's only a job.
  • Cthulhu_ 10y ago
    Good. If someone (like Jobs) want to create the best product(s) out there, either you Be Better, or find somewhere where anything less than the best is good enough. Shape up or ship out.
    • overcast 10y ago
      That's not how the world works. Number one reason for employees leaving, is management. Just because it worked for Apple, absolutely does not mean it works for all companies. Else that would just be the norm, and we wouldn't be talking about it. Being a tyrant, and ruling with an iron fist, does NOT work historically.
      • freehunter 10y ago
        What everyone forgets when they're trying to talk about how to be as effective as Jobs is that yes, he was a tryant ruling with an iron fist, he was a crazy asshole, etc, but he was also right, almost all the time. He knew what he wanted and he knew what would work and he knew what what in his power to create, and he made sure it got created. People try to replicate his management style without having that last quality. If you're a madman tyrant asshole and your product is OnLive[1], you're just a madman tyrant asshole with a failed product because you didn't realize that your company's problems are far outside your scope of control. If you're a madman tyrant asshole and your product instantly destroys two of the only three major smartphone OSes on the market at the time, you're Steve Jobs. [1](I'm just picking on them as a failed startup, I have no idea what their CEO's management style was.)
        • Swizec 10y ago
          Otherwise known as survivorship bias. Jobs was an asshole etc who happened to turn out ti be right. It's virtually impossible to know in advance which asshole will be proven right and which won't.
          • mgkimsal 10y ago
            More specifically, he wasn't right because he was an asshole or tyrant. I've run in to folks who worshipped at the Jobs alter, and adopted his personality, in the thought that this leads to success (one person basically said it in so many words - 'it if worked for him...'). Jobs' legacy on the behaviour of so many future companies will be an interesting one, because some people only looked at that one side, and ran with it.
            • Swizec 10y ago
              As somebody who used to be like that: startups/businesses are hard enough without burning employees out and people hating you. Your job is to remove negative factors, not create them.
            • 10y ago
    • wyager 10y ago
      Anyone of particularly high quality is capable of finding work elsewhere without much difficulty, so high-quality employees are actually less likely to put up with crazy tirades.
      • astrodust 10y ago
        In other words, if you want to hire and retain the best talent, try not to be so much of an asshole. This "my way or the highway" attitude is how companies turn into shitty little fiefdoms filled with incompetent losers lorded over by a bunch of goons.
      • GuiA 10y ago
        Anyone of particularly high quality isn't going to be happy with 90% of the work available elsewhere. When you're at the top, you don't want to be managed by scrubs.
        • ryandrake 10y ago
          That's a bold claim. There are plenty of high performers who would rather be managed with dignity by a "scrub" than be berated by an genius asshole.
  • user837387 10y ago
    No, if the employee keeps not reaching his potential then it is right to call him out on this. Do this only if the employee is not carrying his own weight when you know he is capable of more, otherwise just fire him. Of course, if your manager is being an abusive asshole then leave to another company. Also, if you have to do this more than once then just fire the guy. I agree, never take abuse from anybody.
    • overcast 10y ago
      Sitting someone down personally, and explaining the situation with respect. Is a lot different then screaming at someone, telling them they are the single point of failure, swearing and calling them out in front of their peers.
      • user837387 10y ago
        I know what you are saying, but reality is reality. He was an asshole to everybody. I don't like assholes but he definitely got things done.
        • overcast 10y ago
          He got things done, because he actually knew what he was doing, but happened to be an asshole. For every one of those, there is a million other assholes that will sink the ship.
      • zeveb 10y ago
        Of course, there's a place for calling someone out in front of his peers, too. Part of the art of leadership is to do that when necessary (because if not, one's failing to do what's necessary), but only when necessary.
      • erikpukinskis 10y ago
        You're fighting back even though you seem to agree with user837387. In order to facilitate continuing to argue, you seem to be shifting the goalposts so that you can continue flagging the behavior as bad behavior: OP said: "looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice" Your edit: "screaming at someone, swearing and calling them out in front of their peers"
• 1123581321 10y ago
  I think any anyone who has worked with others can sympathize, but that's still not okay to say to someone, and there's not very much chance that it's entirely true. Especially at new startups, the founders are the primary reason for failure. However, I do concede that this kind of language motivates a certain kind of employee in desperate situations.
  • aluhut 10y ago
    Extremes are always bad. Jobs was just lucky and now he becomes the Asshole Jesus. As if we wouldn't have enough of them already out there.
    • astrodust 10y ago
      I think people misunderstand Jobs and the asshole component. He was extremely driven and passionate, not unlike an artist, and was highly temperamental. Yet at the same time he was not 100% asshole 100% of the time. He had a kinder side that was less often reported, the circumstances often highly personal and less newsworthy. The reason people tolerated his outbursts or his general dickishness is because they saw what he was doing and they respected his vision. Being a dick may have helped him at times and hurt him at others, but it's just how he was. Everyone else seeking to emulate him on those terms is going to be an insufferable dick because they're missing the other elements.
      • adrienne 10y ago
        Yeah, ask Lisa Brennan-Jobs about his "kinder side". Ask Steve Wozniak. He spent his whole life throwing people under the bus and using them to get his way. He was a manipulative, terrible human being, and it's frankly zero surprise to me how much of the Hacker News community idolizes him.
        • 3adawi 10y ago
          because they understand most people are complex and not either assholes or nice/kind people, his close friends/colleagues don't seem to have a problem and remember him every year.
• at-fates-hands 10y ago
  >> ‘If we fail, it will be because of you.' I don't understand how anybody could take this seriously. I mean, one of the hallmarks of Apple was its focus on secrecy. How could one person make a product fail when 90% of the people working on a product had no idea what they were actually working on to begin with?
  • mhurron 10y ago
    The flip side is that if they succeed, it was because of Jobs. I really wonder what the turn over at Apple is, and if it was higher among employees that were not upper management but had to deal with Jobs. Thankfully I am in no danger of finding out about Apples work environment first hand.
  • alain94040 10y ago
    For a product to succeed, you need a lot of different pieces to all go right. So even though you personally may not have full visibility on all the pieces, if you mess up the one piece you are responsible for, you may indeed mess up the whole product.
• logicallee 10y ago
  It's not just a "way of feeling" (>"I can now completely sympathize with how he felt in this moment.") It's a way of communicating.
• rayiner 10y ago
  He was a perfectionist and an asshole; you can be a perfectionist without being an asshole. It's hard to overcome the fact that employees mostly aren't interested in perfection (with good reason--it's not like most of the benefits of perfection accrue to them). But perfection is valuable. When you've got something that is the product of dozens of groups' work, everyone letting one or two things slide because it'd be a lot more work to fix them can mean a pretty compromised end result.
• throwanem 10y ago
  > I would've thought that Jobs was a crazy asshole When the device on which he's bet the company is still misbehaving an hour before the critical keynote demo, it's not too terribly hard to understand how someone would use this kind of language, harsh though it be. Jobs was Jobs, of course, and whatever else could be said of him, I have never gotten the impression that he had a lot of patience for people or prototypes which he did not regard as being up to snuff. But this is a context in which perhaps it's harder to blame him than in a lot of others.