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So now we've seen a few Steve Jobs stores like this, including the one from John Carmack. A recurring theme is that Steve is such a bonehead that his underlings

So now we've seen a few Steve Jobs stores like this, including the one from John Carmack. A recurring theme is that Steve is such a bonehead that his underlings have to do things to "manage him." Whether that be doing things behind his back, withholding information from him, controlling who he meets and talks to. You also read about people working insane hours to complete things which probably didn't merit it, just to please steve's whims. Since there's a cult-of-personality around the guy, I think it's important to remind everyone that these behaviors are actually signs of poor leadership. If you work for someone like this, don't! You're better than that. Not saying Steve Jobs didn't do great things. But let's all agree he accomplished them in spite of these flaws, not because of them.

GoRudy 8y ago
I never worked for the guy but sure seems like he had a knack for hiring and inspiring world class talent. I'd work for anyone with that ability.
- vsdzvgfWE 8y ago
  > he had a knack for hiring and inspiring world class talent Never said the guy didn't have any good traits. Obviously, Apple and NeXT had lots of great people work there. > I'd work for anyone with that ability. Yeah you lost me. I won't work for someone who can't admit fault and treats their employees like dirt. I don't care how good they are at convincing people to work for them. You should have priorities in your life. "Not being abused" should be higher than "being able to say you've worked with the greatest talent."
  - GoRudy 8y ago
    I think i'm personally willing to make some concessions on personality in exchange for doing something like building the future. Does the end justify the means, sometimes? Kind of like the instructors at my workout classes, I don't always like them, they're not always that nice but they definitely make me better.
    - vsdzvgfWE 8y ago
      The instructors may be tough, in order to motivate you. But there's a difference between being tough and being mean. I would imagine your instructors wouldn't talk down to you outside of class. Working for an abusive boss can seriously take a toll on your mental health. And then the thing you get in return - building the future. You think that will make you happy. But I know people who have a long list of accomplishments, who are deeply unhappy, because of the crushing work schedule and toxic people they work for. And in the end, the future you build may not be what you hoped. You wake up and realize you sacrificed your wellbeing all for a phone app or a new piece of adtech. It's just not worth it. There are plenty of places where you can impact your industry and not be treated like shit. Your dignity is worth more than that.
  - chrisbennet 8y ago
    Totally agree. There is a reason this sort of thing happens though. Some people (like yourself) have more of a sense of agency than others. It's not my cup of tea but some people prefer to implement the goals of others ("be part of something bigger"). Sometimes they get sucked in by abusive leaders.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    Oddly, I've never heard any stories of people standing up to Jobs. They just stand there and take it. What was the worst he or any boss could do? Fire you? So what. Quitting is not your only option.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      There are plenty. Two that are often cited is bringing iTunes to Windows. https://www.cultofmac.com/507493/apple-history-itunes-windows/ https://www.cultofmac.com/507493/apple-history-itunes-window... And Forstall convincing Jobs to add the Carbon API to OS X.
      - WalterBright 8y ago
        What I was thinking was more along the lines of "Steve, don't talk to me that way." That's different from getting him to change his mind.
        alain94040 8y ago
        Jony Ive did and the answer, while surprising, contains a grain of truth. https://www.cultofmac.com/299383/steve-jobs-called-jony-ive-vain/ https://www.cultofmac.com/299383/steve-jobs-called-jony-ive-...
        WalterBright 8y ago
        I don't see it in the text of the article. Can you quote what you specifically are talking about?
        tk75x 8y ago
        I remember having a conversation with [Steve] and I was asking why it could have been perceived that in his critique of a piece of work he was a little harsh. We’d been working on this [project] and we’d put our heart and soul into this, and I was saying, ‘Couldn’t we … moderate the things we said?’ And he said, ‘Why?’ and I said, ‘ Because I care about the team.’ And he said this brutally, brilliantly insightful thing, which was, ’No Jony, you’re just really vain.’ He said, ‘You just want people to like you, and I’m surprised at you because I thought you really held the work up as the most important, not how you believed you were perceived by other people.’ I was terribly cross, because I knew he was right.” - End of the first paragraph, Jony Ive says to be nicer. - Next paragraph Steve shuts him down. edited for formatting.
  - sumedh 8y ago
    > "Not being abused" should be higher than "being able to say you've worked with the greatest talent." There are people who say that working under Jobs was the best work they ever did.
- autotune 8y ago
  I've read glassdoor reviews for companies that could "hire and inspire world class talent" and then fail to actually retain them due to terrible culture, so I'd think twice. Stability and balance are crucial, as well as growth potential.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  I think there's something ""illogical"" or non linear in these cases (jobs, musk, whomever). Some people, and I can include myself, would happily 3x more than what the market or society estimates is normal if I'm in a context and project that I like. Even suffering nasty behavior. Now I'm sure that the minute Jobs would lose the original value people saw in him, his drive, his aesthetics, product-ethos .. they'd bail out in a second. I'm even pretty sure I despise average boring friction-full project even more. I don't have a lot of mileage, but when I see people doing fluff just to put their name in a document, on top of a stack of other similar here-to-justify-a-raise names it sucks life out of me (not for their individual behavior but the overall project). ps: similarly, some line of work, health, firefighters is full of people who can tolerate insane difficulties, because what they achieve is still more satisfying to their mind.
macintux 8y ago
> But let's all agree he accomplished them in spite of these flaws, not because of them. I don't know that you can separate the success from the flaws. It's hard to find truly impactful leaders that didn't have a large number of character flaws.
- vsdzvgfWE 8y ago
  Yeah every leader has flaws. But not every leader is an asshole on the level of Steve Jobs.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Only because people are flawed. It’s hard to find leaders who metabolize cellulose too. We can still try to figure out which parts helped and which parts hurt.
- majormajor 8y ago
  It's hard to find people without large numbers of character flaws, IME. I try not to draw any correlations from those to success - I think the flaws in successful people are there because they're people, not because they helped them succeed. Were any of those flaws required to have Jobs' vision, or required to motivate people (maybe there was another way to get this part done than by being an asshole)?
  - baxtr 8y ago
    I think that nails it. We x-rayed Steve Jobs’ character because he was so successful and at the same time controversial. Other people are probably no saints either but just fly under the radar or are much more interested in people liking them. He wasn’t. So what’s the big deal?
    - cwyers 8y ago
      The problem is that there's a cottage industry of people who think they can cargo cult their way to Steve Jobs' success by emulating his flaws.
  - 8y ago
bksenior 8y ago
lol. I'll assume that you've never run a bigger company before. It's literally everything, there is a story for everything. If you want to cut the leadership as being absentee, it's easy to track a thread back to absentee'ism leading to success, same for slave driving, got one for that. That problem once you get past a few 100 employees is that you'll find the narrative you want to craft. The interesting take away here at least in my eyes is that incredibly seemingly irrelevant plot points become climaxes. The fact that they invested a bit into the Intel chip for reasons unrelate may have been the fulcrum for the most valuable company in the history of the world.
- vsdzvgfWE 8y ago
  Yeah but it's not journalists telling these stories, looking for the right angle. It's independent accounts from people who worked with Steve. And not just the two I mentioned. Read folklore.org or read the walter issacson biography. You get to see the good and bad sides of Steve. And the same patterns emerge. So no this isn't an artificial narrative. There's probably some truth there.
- irl_zebra 8y ago
  This is really unnecessarily dismissive. I'm not a Steve Jobs expert, but have read his biographies (both the sanctioned one and the other one Becoming Steve Jobs), and the comment seemed right in line with what I had read and understood of Jobs.
mehrdada 8y ago
> ...these behaviors are actually signs of poor leadership. If you work for someone like this, don't! You're better than that. Yeah, work for that other asshole right out of McKinsey who perfectly matches the leadership templates in the management handbook written by another asshole out of HBS or McKinsey and have moved up the ladder in a hierarchical organization by perfectly playing politics and being diplomatic. That's considered good leadership, by the management books, sure.
cmacaskill 8y ago
My opinion after working for him (and writing this story) is he couldn't see obvious things everyone else could see, but he could see things no one else could. I fought with him over stores as did virtually everyone on the board of Apple, and it turned out he was right. Thank God he was stubborn enough to go forward with them. We all said it drove Gateway out of business, yada.
- sah2ed 8y ago
  Not sure why your comment is dead, but I vouched for it since it appears you are the author of the original article everyone is commenting on.
- sah2ed 8y ago
  > I fought with him over stores as did virtually everyone on the board of Apple, and it turned out he was right. He actually goes into depth about why Apple stores were necessary in a talk he did at MIT in 1992 [0][1]. Was it that he was not nearly as articulate in person with his team, as he was in this video? EDIT: Luckily, the transcript is available. The money quote is: " ... current distribution channels for the computer industry over the last several years have lost their ability to create demand. They can fulfill demand, but they can't create it. If a new product comes out, you're lucky if you can find somebody at the computer store that even knows how to demo it. So the more innovative the product is, the more revolutionary it is and not just an incremental improvement, the more you're stuck [in getting people to try learn about it enough to try it out]." Here's a fuller quote: There are some things I can't talk about here. In addition to that, if you look at how we sell our computers right now, we have a sales force in the US of about 130 professionals in the field out selling NeXT computers. They spend 90% of their time selling NeXTSTEP software, and then 10% of their time selling the hardware. In other words, if they can get the customer to buy into NeXTSTEP, then they're going to sell the hardware, because right now we have the only hardware it runs on. So they are out there selling NeXTSTEP right now. And this is what is required to launch a new innovative product. The current distribution channels for the computer industry over the last several years have lost their ability to create demand. They can fulfill demand, but they can't create it. If a new product comes out, you're lucky if you can find somebody at the computer store that even knows how to demo it. So the more innovative the product is, the more revolutionary it is and not just an incremental improvement, the more you're stuck. Because the existing channel is only fulfilling demand. Matter of fact, it's getting so bad, that it's getting wiped out, because there are more efficient channels to fulfill demand, like the telephone and Federal Express. So we're seeing the channel become condensed on its way to I think just telebusiness. So how does one bring innovation to the marketplace? We believe the only way we know how to do it right now is with the direct sales force, out there in front of customers showing them the products in the environment of their own problems, and discussing how those problems can be mated with these solutions. [0] https://infinitehistory.mit.edu/video/steve-jobs-next-computer-corp-sloan-distinguished-speaker-series https://infinitehistory.mit.edu/video/steve-jobs-next-comput... [1] https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI
nickpsecurity 8y ago
Watch Pirates of Silicon Valley. Wozniak says it's the only one that's an accurate depiction of all of their personalities and schemes. It was budget but good. Noah Wyle stood out from the rest in acting skill. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pirates+of+silicon+valley+jobs+scene https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pirates+of+sili... If you're fine with spoilers, look at Steve Jobs meets Bill Gates scene. Or a bunch of them. :)
- sumedh 8y ago
  Even Bill Gates in his AMA said its reasonably accurate.
- martin1b 8y ago
  +++ for PSV. Incredible show. Actor for Gates was really good as well. A little creepy, but very calculated.
snowwrestler 8y ago
It's unrealistic to expect any leader to know everything, understand everything, or even to consider every idea with rational equanimity. The factor that comes through all these Steve Jobs stories is his incredibly strong drive to move forward. He didn't wait or equivocate... if he thought something was wrong, or he should hear from someone on a topic, he personally and immediately went after the very best information or person he could get. In my short career, it is striking how rare that seems, even among senior managers. And if you think about it... those same traits are what you see demonstrated by the author in the linked story. He was worried that his company was headed in the wrong direction, so he personally and immediately went after the best solution he could think of: secretly calling the CEO of Intel! The secret to reading these "Steve Jobs leadership" stories is that Jobs is usually not the only leader in the story.
- wahern 8y ago
  > The secret to reading these "Steve Jobs leadership" stories is that Jobs is usually not the only leader in the story. People can debate the whys and hows, but there's no denying that key point. Maybe it was by accident; maybe Steve's careful design; or perhaps a consequence of Steve's personality and the kind of people he found himself in the company of--those attracted to him, him to attracted to them, or both. I don't think those questions are easily answered. But you can't even begin to answer those questions without realizing that he was surrounded by leaders, and it probably wasn't a random fluke--that is even if it was accidental, the accident happened once in the beginning and thereafter perpetuated itself, not accidental in the sense that at every pivotal moment he was by chance surrounded by leaders. And even if by accident there's much to be said that Steve didn't ultimately fritter away that initial good luck. Again, deliberate or not, conscious or not, most people would have frittered that good luck away. It's hard to deny that there was something peculiar about the man. But debates get caught up in our contemporary moral narrative about merit, intelligence, worth, etc. There can't be an objective assessment, if at all, unless we appreciate how that narrative colors our perspective and understanding.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  > The secret to reading these "Steve Jobs leadership" stories is that Jobs is usually not the only leader in the story. This is a good point and probably not an accident. During my time there I worked with middle managers who, at most other companies would qualify as C-level executives. Yet there they were: world class leader sitting there managing small team X on project Y, Because Apple.
scarface74 8y ago
There is a maxim that the only things that matter in business are results and relationships. If you have those two things going for you, you can get anything done. I am a developer, but it surprises me how many developers don’t get that. Geeks canonize Woz and say that he was the success behind Apple, but geeks are a dime a dozen. We can look at what Jobs accomplished without Woz and what Woz accomplished without Jobs as a case study. Jobs got results because of his relationships. He could get anyone on the phone and get things done. No one else could have picked up the phone and called Gates and made the deal he made in 1997 that saved Apple (not the money, the promise of continuing to support Office on Mac). He was able to negotiate with the music industry in 2003 and the mobile carriers before the iPhone came out and completely usurp their power. Most of the targets of Jobs wrath weren’t afraid of losing their jobs and stuck around because they didn’t have an alternative. Good developers in the right market can get a job before their last check clears. They stayed because they believed in the vision. If I had a choice between working on the original iPhone and writing yet another software as a service CRUD app, I know which one I would have chosen. But when the dust settled, I would have put that on my resume and wrote my own ticket to work almost anywhere.
- pkaye 8y ago
  > If I had a choice between working on the original iPhone and writing yet another software as a service CRUD app, I know which one I would have chosen. So those are the only choices there are? There are a lot interesting things than working on the iPhone and a CRUD app.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    It’s not about what’s “interesting”, it’s about being able to put something on your resume that lets you write your own ticket for the next few years.
  - Animats 8y ago
    I know someone who worked on the original iPhone. As soon as it shipped, he quit. He didn't like being yelled at by Jobs.
- 8y ago
wpietri 8y ago
Thanks for saying so. He certainly had talent, and some of his visions turned out to be true. But imagine what he could have done if he were just as visionary and had been a good manager! And let's also take a moment to imagine all of the people he harmed with his abusive ways. E.g. how many marriages foundered because people worked insane hours? How many kid-parent relationships were harmed? How many people burned out and left the industry, or never did as much as they could?
newnewpdro 8y ago
Everyone has their flaws, and a leader is also a member of a team. What's impressive, to me, is that this leader was able to inspire his team to take such steps while sticking around instead of jumping ship. I think that's a big part of what makes a good leader; maintaining a team which wants to see you succeed, despite whatever flaws you may have.
duxup 8y ago
At the same time he had people talented enough to make these calls too. He apparently worked with / found people who did these things without Steve knowing and it helped. If you had a bunch of yes men (or if that is what Steve had chosen) things would be different. Indirectly or directly he had people around him making these calls and it worked. Not trying to dispute your statement at all, just add to it. Perhaps it illustrates how hiring knowledgeable, talented, passionate people is more about them doing the things you don't know they're going to do than say a resume or such... (I say that of course because I'm looking for a job and in that mindset). There is a video making the rounds on LinkedIn where Steve talks about hiring talented people and getting out of their way to some extent. Even apparently when he doesn't realize it (i'm sure he eventually figured some of it out).
ryandrake 8y ago
“Managing Upward” is part of just about every job I’ve ever had or seen. Influencing what your manager (or their manager, or their manager’s manager) needs to know, needs to decide on, or needs to escalate further is a critical part of getting things done in any hierarchical organization. When you work for someone, they are relying on you to apply a sane filter/judgment over the details coming up, just as much you rely on them to filter the shit that’s coming down. They also rely on you to “own” and take bold action on those things that are in their blind spots. The other comment about Jobs “not seeing obvious things and also seeing things nobody sees” is exactly right and applies to all good leaders.
borkt 8y ago
The more I read about him the more it feels like he had some sort of extremely high functioning borderline personality disorder. I know how unacceptable it is to label people as a layperson, but all of these articles where people were great friends then suddenly dead to him, and the stories of his rage events fits with a few people I know who suffer from this. It is such a strange disorder as some people are complete failures who fall into suicide and drug addiction, yet others go on to lead extremely successful projects and develop a cult of personality around them.
- telchar 8y ago
  Was he ever known to display any great amount of empathy? I don't know as much about him as many here I'm sure, haven't read the biography. But I have known people with BPD. If the answer to that question is no then I would think sociopathy would be more likely than borderline. They're both in the same cluster of personality disorders but borderline tends to be associated with more self-loathing and self-destruction since there is still harmful and hurtful behavior like sociopathy but also a good deal of empathy related to an overactive amygdala. Those mix like fuel and air. Sociopaths have reduced empathy so they find harming others and transgressing much easier to live with and move on, so they tend to be less self-destructive as long as they're somewhat high-functioning. They can both be quite manipulative but in my experience people with BPD are less likely to capitalize on it.
gist 8y ago
> I think it's important to remind everyone that these behaviors are actually signs of poor leadership. Maybe not. Could also just be an example of manipulation on a higher level than what appears to be obvious. For example take this part from the article: > Steve spent all day in early Apple recruiting Bill Atkinson, a Phd student in neuroscience. Steve told me he didn’t know if they could have pulled off the Mac without him. Seems like he is just complementing a brilliant guy, right? Well maybe not. Maybe he is just manipulating a brilliant guy. In other words part of the plan is to appear to be boneheaded or not as smart. This is almost a cliche "I surround myself with people smarter than I am". As if 'being smart' can be definite the way winning a road race can (in absolute terms). You find this sometimes also with guys who put their wife up on a pedestal intellectually. Maybe it's true but maybe it's also a way to get them in a place where they feel smarter and you get the benefits of that at no cost whatsoever. Women do this with men as well to get things they want from them. Once again not saying Atkinson was or wasn't what Steve says but there are also methods to madness that have to be considered just the same.
m-p-3 8y ago
> A recurring theme is that Steve is such a bonehead that his underlings have to do things to "manage him." Whether that be doing things behind his back, withholding information from him, controlling who he meets and talks to. You also read about people working insane hours to complete things which probably didn't merit it, just to please steve's whims. I feel like you can replace Steve Jobs name by Donald Trump and it still sounds true.
- gowld 8y ago
  The difference is that Jobs had an ability, not perfect, but an ability, to listen to people and understand what they were saying.
deleted 8y ago
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logicallee 8y ago
According to Steve Wozniak "Steve couldn't code"[1]. Obviously being able to code is better than not being able to code! Steve succeeded despite never writing code, not because of it! Can you imagine what kind of Supersteve we would have had if he learned to code! Rather than an Apple worth $0.95 trillion in 2018, might it be worth $3 trillion? $5 trillion? $30 trillion? After all knowing how to code is obviously better than not knowing how to code! Moral of the story: if you want to succeed like Steve don't be like Steve! If you work for someone like this, don't! You're better than that. (My comment is entirely sarcastic. It's a rebutt to your >Not saying Steve Jobs didn't do great things. But let's all agree he accomplished them in spite of these flaws, not because of them. NO. I don't agree with you that Steve accomplished what he accomplished despite the qualities, practices, influences, and decisions that made him Steve, and not because of them. In fact it's kind of a laughable claim as I hope my sarcastic "critique" that he didn't code, shows.) [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-computer-code-for-apple-2013-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-compu...
coldtea 8y ago
>Since there's a cult-of-personality around the guy, I think it's important to remind everyone that these behaviors are actually signs of poor leadership. Yeah, such poor leadership that he founded 3 huge multi-100 million companies (Apple, NeXT, Pixar) and turned the third one to the largest company of earth from its near-bankruptcy at the time he returned to it. Perhaps what's "poor leadership" or not should be correlated with actual results?
- alsetmusic 8y ago
  > he founded 3 huge multi-100 million companies (Apple, NeXT, Pixar) Steve Jobs bought Pixar from George Lucas.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Nope, he got the "Graphics Group" team of Lucasfilm and turned it into Pixar. The team had not done anything previously as Pixar.
    - alsetmusic 8y ago
      > Nope, he got the "Graphics Group" team of Lucasfilm and turned it into Pixar. > The team had not done anything previously as Pixar. In which case it would be more accurate to say that he acquired and rebranded. But you said he founded Pixar, including Apple and NeXT in that statement, which sounds as though he launched Pixar from scratch.
meddlepal 8y ago
Results matter and if your boss keeps delivering you boatloads of cash in the form of share value increases maybe there is something to be said about putting up with it.
paulie_a 8y ago
I've honestly never understood the love for Steve jobs, he nearly drove apple into the ground, wasn't actually responsible for the good products apple actually made. He was a marketing guy, quite frankly a huckster and a complete asshole to boot.
derefr 8y ago
I would call Jobs a "taste leader" (contrasting "thought leader." That is, he's someone you have to fit your work to the (very particular) aesthetic sensibilities of, if you have any hope of pursuing it. And I think this isn't an uncommon job-role, actually. Jobs wasn't uniquely flawed. There are "taste leaders" in other fields—this is what a movie director is, or a chef, or a newspaper's editor-in-chief, or any master of a trade. It's a job-role that's all over the arts. It's just not seen much in science-driven, engineering-driven, or business-driven industries, because taste doesn't usually drive customer-demand in these fields. Apple's consumer-electronics niche is even an exception within their larger field. (I.e. taste certainly doesn't drive computing products in general—just look at the "gaming" PC peripherals on the top of the Amazon rankings to see what I mean.) Usually, to get a project off the ground when a "taste leader" is in play, you have to ensure that your project is already to their tastes before they see it. That is, the taste-leader will can any project that doesn't currently fit their aesthetic, even if it might later fit their aesthetic. This is what forces the underlings of these people (in all of these fields) to work long hours, and to hide their work, and to lie about their work: they can't show it to the "taste leader" until it will suit their taste. Why is this done? Why do taste leaders do this? It's a pretty universal trait of taste-leaders in successful businesses, so it's probably a good strategy somehow (if it's not just an effect of success.) My guess is that taste-leaders do this for two reasons: • They think that if they don't, a project will gain momentum while still not matching their tastes, and then they won't be able to stop it from "taking off" once it has enough smiling, happy faces invested in it. They just won't have the heart to can it at that point, even if they think it sucks. Much easier to can it early. • They know that, by forcing everyone to adhere to this stringent set of aesthetic criteria at all times, they're imparting these same aesthetics to everyone around them. In order to please a taste leader, you can't just learn their tastes; you have to grok their tastes. Their tastes have to become your tastes. If you can't just iterate a project toward being something they like, but have to get it right from the start (or from the earliest point they're allowed to see it), then you have to be able to evaluate your own concept work against the aesthetic—and in fact use the aesthetic to figure out how to move across the fitness-landscape of possible features for the thing. And, if those two things are true, then "taste leaders" are probably not as flawed as you think—rather, they're playing a role. Some might play it naturally, but I think that for a lot of them, they know that this is how to best drive their business toward optimizing for their taste (which they believe is a taste customers have demand for.) That is: there are plenty of stories about people lying to Jobs. But did anyone ever get a chance to ask Jobs whether he knew they were lying, and just pretended to be oblivious to these skunkworks projects because he had faith in these people to eventually produce something he'd like (but just didn't want them showing their not-yet-aesthetic iterations off where others in the company could get excited about them)? I've known both chefs and directors who do this sort of thing. Why would Jobs be different?

GoRudy 8y ago

I never worked for the guy but sure seems like he had a knack for hiring and inspiring world class talent. I'd work for anyone with that ability.

vsdzvgfWE 8y ago
> he had a knack for hiring and inspiring world class talent Never said the guy didn't have any good traits. Obviously, Apple and NeXT had lots of great people work there. > I'd work for anyone with that ability. Yeah you lost me. I won't work for someone who can't admit fault and treats their employees like dirt. I don't care how good they are at convincing people to work for them. You should have priorities in your life. "Not being abused" should be higher than "being able to say you've worked with the greatest talent."
- GoRudy 8y ago
  I think i'm personally willing to make some concessions on personality in exchange for doing something like building the future. Does the end justify the means, sometimes? Kind of like the instructors at my workout classes, I don't always like them, they're not always that nice but they definitely make me better.
  - vsdzvgfWE 8y ago
    The instructors may be tough, in order to motivate you. But there's a difference between being tough and being mean. I would imagine your instructors wouldn't talk down to you outside of class. Working for an abusive boss can seriously take a toll on your mental health. And then the thing you get in return - building the future. You think that will make you happy. But I know people who have a long list of accomplishments, who are deeply unhappy, because of the crushing work schedule and toxic people they work for. And in the end, the future you build may not be what you hoped. You wake up and realize you sacrificed your wellbeing all for a phone app or a new piece of adtech. It's just not worth it. There are plenty of places where you can impact your industry and not be treated like shit. Your dignity is worth more than that.
- chrisbennet 8y ago
  Totally agree. There is a reason this sort of thing happens though. Some people (like yourself) have more of a sense of agency than others. It's not my cup of tea but some people prefer to implement the goals of others ("be part of something bigger"). Sometimes they get sucked in by abusive leaders.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  Oddly, I've never heard any stories of people standing up to Jobs. They just stand there and take it. What was the worst he or any boss could do? Fire you? So what. Quitting is not your only option.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    There are plenty. Two that are often cited is bringing iTunes to Windows. https://www.cultofmac.com/507493/apple-history-itunes-windows/ https://www.cultofmac.com/507493/apple-history-itunes-window... And Forstall convincing Jobs to add the Carbon API to OS X.
    - WalterBright 8y ago
      What I was thinking was more along the lines of "Steve, don't talk to me that way." That's different from getting him to change his mind.
      - alain94040 8y ago
        Jony Ive did and the answer, while surprising, contains a grain of truth. https://www.cultofmac.com/299383/steve-jobs-called-jony-ive-vain/ https://www.cultofmac.com/299383/steve-jobs-called-jony-ive-...
        WalterBright 8y ago
        I don't see it in the text of the article. Can you quote what you specifically are talking about?
        tk75x 8y ago
        I remember having a conversation with [Steve] and I was asking why it could have been perceived that in his critique of a piece of work he was a little harsh. We’d been working on this [project] and we’d put our heart and soul into this, and I was saying, ‘Couldn’t we … moderate the things we said?’ And he said, ‘Why?’ and I said, ‘ Because I care about the team.’ And he said this brutally, brilliantly insightful thing, which was, ’No Jony, you’re just really vain.’ He said, ‘You just want people to like you, and I’m surprised at you because I thought you really held the work up as the most important, not how you believed you were perceived by other people.’ I was terribly cross, because I knew he was right.” - End of the first paragraph, Jony Ive says to be nicer. - Next paragraph Steve shuts him down. edited for formatting.
- sumedh 8y ago
  > "Not being abused" should be higher than "being able to say you've worked with the greatest talent." There are people who say that working under Jobs was the best work they ever did.
autotune 8y ago
I've read glassdoor reviews for companies that could "hire and inspire world class talent" and then fail to actually retain them due to terrible culture, so I'd think twice. Stability and balance are crucial, as well as growth potential.
agumonkey 8y ago
I think there's something ""illogical"" or non linear in these cases (jobs, musk, whomever). Some people, and I can include myself, would happily 3x more than what the market or society estimates is normal if I'm in a context and project that I like. Even suffering nasty behavior. Now I'm sure that the minute Jobs would lose the original value people saw in him, his drive, his aesthetics, product-ethos .. they'd bail out in a second. I'm even pretty sure I despise average boring friction-full project even more. I don't have a lot of mileage, but when I see people doing fluff just to put their name in a document, on top of a stack of other similar here-to-justify-a-raise names it sucks life out of me (not for their individual behavior but the overall project). ps: similarly, some line of work, health, firefighters is full of people who can tolerate insane difficulties, because what they achieve is still more satisfying to their mind.

macintux 8y ago

> But let's all agree he accomplished them in spite of these flaws, not because of them. I don't know that you can separate the success from the flaws. It's hard to find truly impactful leaders that didn't have a large number of character flaws.

vsdzvgfWE 8y ago
Yeah every leader has flaws. But not every leader is an asshole on the level of Steve Jobs.
mikeash 8y ago
Only because people are flawed. It’s hard to find leaders who metabolize cellulose too. We can still try to figure out which parts helped and which parts hurt.
majormajor 8y ago
It's hard to find people without large numbers of character flaws, IME. I try not to draw any correlations from those to success - I think the flaws in successful people are there because they're people, not because they helped them succeed. Were any of those flaws required to have Jobs' vision, or required to motivate people (maybe there was another way to get this part done than by being an asshole)?
- baxtr 8y ago
  I think that nails it. We x-rayed Steve Jobs’ character because he was so successful and at the same time controversial. Other people are probably no saints either but just fly under the radar or are much more interested in people liking them. He wasn’t. So what’s the big deal?
  - cwyers 8y ago
    The problem is that there's a cottage industry of people who think they can cargo cult their way to Steve Jobs' success by emulating his flaws.
- 8y ago

bksenior 8y ago

lol. I'll assume that you've never run a bigger company before. It's literally everything, there is a story for everything. If you want to cut the leadership as being absentee, it's easy to track a thread back to absentee'ism leading to success, same for slave driving, got one for that. That problem once you get past a few 100 employees is that you'll find the narrative you want to craft. The interesting take away here at least in my eyes is that incredibly seemingly irrelevant plot points become climaxes. The fact that they invested a bit into the Intel chip for reasons unrelate may have been the fulcrum for the most valuable company in the history of the world.

vsdzvgfWE 8y ago
Yeah but it's not journalists telling these stories, looking for the right angle. It's independent accounts from people who worked with Steve. And not just the two I mentioned. Read folklore.org or read the walter issacson biography. You get to see the good and bad sides of Steve. And the same patterns emerge. So no this isn't an artificial narrative. There's probably some truth there.
irl_zebra 8y ago
This is really unnecessarily dismissive. I'm not a Steve Jobs expert, but have read his biographies (both the sanctioned one and the other one Becoming Steve Jobs), and the comment seemed right in line with what I had read and understood of Jobs.

mehrdada 8y ago

> ...these behaviors are actually signs of poor leadership. If you work for someone like this, don't! You're better than that. Yeah, work for that other asshole right out of McKinsey who perfectly matches the leadership templates in the management handbook written by another asshole out of HBS or McKinsey and have moved up the ladder in a hierarchical organization by perfectly playing politics and being diplomatic. That's considered good leadership, by the management books, sure.

cmacaskill 8y ago

My opinion after working for him (and writing this story) is he couldn't see obvious things everyone else could see, but he could see things no one else could. I fought with him over stores as did virtually everyone on the board of Apple, and it turned out he was right. Thank God he was stubborn enough to go forward with them. We all said it drove Gateway out of business, yada.

sah2ed 8y ago
Not sure why your comment is dead, but I vouched for it since it appears you are the author of the original article everyone is commenting on.
sah2ed 8y ago
> I fought with him over stores as did virtually everyone on the board of Apple, and it turned out he was right. He actually goes into depth about why Apple stores were necessary in a talk he did at MIT in 1992 [0][1]. Was it that he was not nearly as articulate in person with his team, as he was in this video? EDIT: Luckily, the transcript is available. The money quote is: " ... current distribution channels for the computer industry over the last several years have lost their ability to create demand. They can fulfill demand, but they can't create it. If a new product comes out, you're lucky if you can find somebody at the computer store that even knows how to demo it. So the more innovative the product is, the more revolutionary it is and not just an incremental improvement, the more you're stuck [in getting people to try learn about it enough to try it out]." Here's a fuller quote: There are some things I can't talk about here. In addition to that, if you look at how we sell our computers right now, we have a sales force in the US of about 130 professionals in the field out selling NeXT computers. They spend 90% of their time selling NeXTSTEP software, and then 10% of their time selling the hardware. In other words, if they can get the customer to buy into NeXTSTEP, then they're going to sell the hardware, because right now we have the only hardware it runs on. So they are out there selling NeXTSTEP right now. And this is what is required to launch a new innovative product. The current distribution channels for the computer industry over the last several years have lost their ability to create demand. They can fulfill demand, but they can't create it. If a new product comes out, you're lucky if you can find somebody at the computer store that even knows how to demo it. So the more innovative the product is, the more revolutionary it is and not just an incremental improvement, the more you're stuck. Because the existing channel is only fulfilling demand. Matter of fact, it's getting so bad, that it's getting wiped out, because there are more efficient channels to fulfill demand, like the telephone and Federal Express. So we're seeing the channel become condensed on its way to I think just telebusiness. So how does one bring innovation to the marketplace? We believe the only way we know how to do it right now is with the direct sales force, out there in front of customers showing them the products in the environment of their own problems, and discussing how those problems can be mated with these solutions. [0] https://infinitehistory.mit.edu/video/steve-jobs-next-computer-corp-sloan-distinguished-speaker-series https://infinitehistory.mit.edu/video/steve-jobs-next-comput... [1] https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI

nickpsecurity 8y ago

Watch Pirates of Silicon Valley. Wozniak says it's the only one that's an accurate depiction of all of their personalities and schemes. It was budget but good. Noah Wyle stood out from the rest in acting skill. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pirates+of+silicon+valley+jobs+scene https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pirates+of+sili... If you're fine with spoilers, look at Steve Jobs meets Bill Gates scene. Or a bunch of them. :)

sumedh 8y ago
Even Bill Gates in his AMA said its reasonably accurate.
martin1b 8y ago
+++ for PSV. Incredible show. Actor for Gates was really good as well. A little creepy, but very calculated.

snowwrestler 8y ago

It's unrealistic to expect any leader to know everything, understand everything, or even to consider every idea with rational equanimity. The factor that comes through all these Steve Jobs stories is his incredibly strong drive to move forward. He didn't wait or equivocate... if he thought something was wrong, or he should hear from someone on a topic, he personally and immediately went after the very best information or person he could get. In my short career, it is striking how rare that seems, even among senior managers. And if you think about it... those same traits are what you see demonstrated by the author in the linked story. He was worried that his company was headed in the wrong direction, so he personally and immediately went after the best solution he could think of: secretly calling the CEO of Intel! The secret to reading these "Steve Jobs leadership" stories is that Jobs is usually not the only leader in the story.

wahern 8y ago
> The secret to reading these "Steve Jobs leadership" stories is that Jobs is usually not the only leader in the story. People can debate the whys and hows, but there's no denying that key point. Maybe it was by accident; maybe Steve's careful design; or perhaps a consequence of Steve's personality and the kind of people he found himself in the company of--those attracted to him, him to attracted to them, or both. I don't think those questions are easily answered. But you can't even begin to answer those questions without realizing that he was surrounded by leaders, and it probably wasn't a random fluke--that is even if it was accidental, the accident happened once in the beginning and thereafter perpetuated itself, not accidental in the sense that at every pivotal moment he was by chance surrounded by leaders. And even if by accident there's much to be said that Steve didn't ultimately fritter away that initial good luck. Again, deliberate or not, conscious or not, most people would have frittered that good luck away. It's hard to deny that there was something peculiar about the man. But debates get caught up in our contemporary moral narrative about merit, intelligence, worth, etc. There can't be an objective assessment, if at all, unless we appreciate how that narrative colors our perspective and understanding.
ryandrake 8y ago
> The secret to reading these "Steve Jobs leadership" stories is that Jobs is usually not the only leader in the story. This is a good point and probably not an accident. During my time there I worked with middle managers who, at most other companies would qualify as C-level executives. Yet there they were: world class leader sitting there managing small team X on project Y, Because Apple.

scarface74 8y ago

There is a maxim that the only things that matter in business are results and relationships. If you have those two things going for you, you can get anything done. I am a developer, but it surprises me how many developers don’t get that. Geeks canonize Woz and say that he was the success behind Apple, but geeks are a dime a dozen. We can look at what Jobs accomplished without Woz and what Woz accomplished without Jobs as a case study. Jobs got results because of his relationships. He could get anyone on the phone and get things done. No one else could have picked up the phone and called Gates and made the deal he made in 1997 that saved Apple (not the money, the promise of continuing to support Office on Mac). He was able to negotiate with the music industry in 2003 and the mobile carriers before the iPhone came out and completely usurp their power. Most of the targets of Jobs wrath weren’t afraid of losing their jobs and stuck around because they didn’t have an alternative. Good developers in the right market can get a job before their last check clears. They stayed because they believed in the vision. If I had a choice between working on the original iPhone and writing yet another software as a service CRUD app, I know which one I would have chosen. But when the dust settled, I would have put that on my resume and wrote my own ticket to work almost anywhere.

pkaye 8y ago
> If I had a choice between working on the original iPhone and writing yet another software as a service CRUD app, I know which one I would have chosen. So those are the only choices there are? There are a lot interesting things than working on the iPhone and a CRUD app.
- scarface74 8y ago
  It’s not about what’s “interesting”, it’s about being able to put something on your resume that lets you write your own ticket for the next few years.
- Animats 8y ago
  I know someone who worked on the original iPhone. As soon as it shipped, he quit. He didn't like being yelled at by Jobs.
8y ago

wpietri 8y ago

Thanks for saying so. He certainly had talent, and some of his visions turned out to be true. But imagine what he could have done if he were just as visionary and had been a good manager! And let's also take a moment to imagine all of the people he harmed with his abusive ways. E.g. how many marriages foundered because people worked insane hours? How many kid-parent relationships were harmed? How many people burned out and left the industry, or never did as much as they could?

newnewpdro 8y ago

Everyone has their flaws, and a leader is also a member of a team. What's impressive, to me, is that this leader was able to inspire his team to take such steps while sticking around instead of jumping ship. I think that's a big part of what makes a good leader; maintaining a team which wants to see you succeed, despite whatever flaws you may have.

duxup 8y ago

At the same time he had people talented enough to make these calls too. He apparently worked with / found people who did these things without Steve knowing and it helped. If you had a bunch of yes men (or if that is what Steve had chosen) things would be different. Indirectly or directly he had people around him making these calls and it worked. Not trying to dispute your statement at all, just add to it. Perhaps it illustrates how hiring knowledgeable, talented, passionate people is more about them doing the things you don't know they're going to do than say a resume or such... (I say that of course because I'm looking for a job and in that mindset). There is a video making the rounds on LinkedIn where Steve talks about hiring talented people and getting out of their way to some extent. Even apparently when he doesn't realize it (i'm sure he eventually figured some of it out).

ryandrake 8y ago

“Managing Upward” is part of just about every job I’ve ever had or seen. Influencing what your manager (or their manager, or their manager’s manager) needs to know, needs to decide on, or needs to escalate further is a critical part of getting things done in any hierarchical organization. When you work for someone, they are relying on you to apply a sane filter/judgment over the details coming up, just as much you rely on them to filter the shit that’s coming down. They also rely on you to “own” and take bold action on those things that are in their blind spots. The other comment about Jobs “not seeing obvious things and also seeing things nobody sees” is exactly right and applies to all good leaders.

borkt 8y ago

The more I read about him the more it feels like he had some sort of extremely high functioning borderline personality disorder. I know how unacceptable it is to label people as a layperson, but all of these articles where people were great friends then suddenly dead to him, and the stories of his rage events fits with a few people I know who suffer from this. It is such a strange disorder as some people are complete failures who fall into suicide and drug addiction, yet others go on to lead extremely successful projects and develop a cult of personality around them.

telchar 8y ago
Was he ever known to display any great amount of empathy? I don't know as much about him as many here I'm sure, haven't read the biography. But I have known people with BPD. If the answer to that question is no then I would think sociopathy would be more likely than borderline. They're both in the same cluster of personality disorders but borderline tends to be associated with more self-loathing and self-destruction since there is still harmful and hurtful behavior like sociopathy but also a good deal of empathy related to an overactive amygdala. Those mix like fuel and air. Sociopaths have reduced empathy so they find harming others and transgressing much easier to live with and move on, so they tend to be less self-destructive as long as they're somewhat high-functioning. They can both be quite manipulative but in my experience people with BPD are less likely to capitalize on it.

gist 8y ago

> I think it's important to remind everyone that these behaviors are actually signs of poor leadership. Maybe not. Could also just be an example of manipulation on a higher level than what appears to be obvious. For example take this part from the article: > Steve spent all day in early Apple recruiting Bill Atkinson, a Phd student in neuroscience. Steve told me he didn’t know if they could have pulled off the Mac without him. Seems like he is just complementing a brilliant guy, right? Well maybe not. Maybe he is just manipulating a brilliant guy. In other words part of the plan is to appear to be boneheaded or not as smart. This is almost a cliche "I surround myself with people smarter than I am". As if 'being smart' can be definite the way winning a road race can (in absolute terms). You find this sometimes also with guys who put their wife up on a pedestal intellectually. Maybe it's true but maybe it's also a way to get them in a place where they feel smarter and you get the benefits of that at no cost whatsoever. Women do this with men as well to get things they want from them. Once again not saying Atkinson was or wasn't what Steve says but there are also methods to madness that have to be considered just the same.

m-p-3 8y ago

> A recurring theme is that Steve is such a bonehead that his underlings have to do things to "manage him." Whether that be doing things behind his back, withholding information from him, controlling who he meets and talks to. You also read about people working insane hours to complete things which probably didn't merit it, just to please steve's whims. I feel like you can replace Steve Jobs name by Donald Trump and it still sounds true.

gowld 8y ago
The difference is that Jobs had an ability, not perfect, but an ability, to listen to people and understand what they were saying.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

logicallee 8y ago

According to Steve Wozniak "Steve couldn't code"[1]. Obviously being able to code is better than not being able to code! Steve succeeded despite never writing code, not because of it! Can you imagine what kind of Supersteve we would have had if he learned to code! Rather than an Apple worth $0.95 trillion in 2018, might it be worth $3 trillion? $5 trillion? $30 trillion? After all knowing how to code is obviously better than not knowing how to code! Moral of the story: if you want to succeed like Steve don't be like Steve! If you work for someone like this, don't! You're better than that. (My comment is entirely sarcastic. It's a rebutt to your >Not saying Steve Jobs didn't do great things. But let's all agree he accomplished them in spite of these flaws, not because of them. NO. I don't agree with you that Steve accomplished what he accomplished despite the qualities, practices, influences, and decisions that made him Steve, and not because of them. In fact it's kind of a laughable claim as I hope my sarcastic "critique" that he didn't code, shows.) [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-computer-code-for-apple-2013-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-compu...

coldtea 8y ago

>Since there's a cult-of-personality around the guy, I think it's important to remind everyone that these behaviors are actually signs of poor leadership. Yeah, such poor leadership that he founded 3 huge multi-100 million companies (Apple, NeXT, Pixar) and turned the third one to the largest company of earth from its near-bankruptcy at the time he returned to it. Perhaps what's "poor leadership" or not should be correlated with actual results?

alsetmusic 8y ago
> he founded 3 huge multi-100 million companies (Apple, NeXT, Pixar) Steve Jobs bought Pixar from George Lucas.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Nope, he got the "Graphics Group" team of Lucasfilm and turned it into Pixar. The team had not done anything previously as Pixar.
  - alsetmusic 8y ago
    > Nope, he got the "Graphics Group" team of Lucasfilm and turned it into Pixar. > The team had not done anything previously as Pixar. In which case it would be more accurate to say that he acquired and rebranded. But you said he founded Pixar, including Apple and NeXT in that statement, which sounds as though he launched Pixar from scratch.

meddlepal 8y ago

Results matter and if your boss keeps delivering you boatloads of cash in the form of share value increases maybe there is something to be said about putting up with it.

paulie_a 8y ago

I've honestly never understood the love for Steve jobs, he nearly drove apple into the ground, wasn't actually responsible for the good products apple actually made. He was a marketing guy, quite frankly a huckster and a complete asshole to boot.

derefr 8y ago

I would call Jobs a "taste leader" (contrasting "thought leader." That is, he's someone you have to fit your work to the (very particular) aesthetic sensibilities of, if you have any hope of pursuing it. And I think this isn't an uncommon job-role, actually. Jobs wasn't uniquely flawed. There are "taste leaders" in other fields—this is what a movie director is, or a chef, or a newspaper's editor-in-chief, or any master of a trade. It's a job-role that's all over the arts. It's just not seen much in science-driven, engineering-driven, or business-driven industries, because taste doesn't usually drive customer-demand in these fields. Apple's consumer-electronics niche is even an exception within their larger field. (I.e. taste certainly doesn't drive computing products in general—just look at the "gaming" PC peripherals on the top of the Amazon rankings to see what I mean.) Usually, to get a project off the ground when a "taste leader" is in play, you have to ensure that your project is already to their tastes before they see it. That is, the taste-leader will can any project that doesn't currently fit their aesthetic, even if it might later fit their aesthetic. This is what forces the underlings of these people (in all of these fields) to work long hours, and to hide their work, and to lie about their work: they can't show it to the "taste leader" until it will suit their taste. Why is this done? Why do taste leaders do this? It's a pretty universal trait of taste-leaders in successful businesses, so it's probably a good strategy somehow (if it's not just an effect of success.) My guess is that taste-leaders do this for two reasons: • They think that if they don't, a project will gain momentum while still not matching their tastes, and then they won't be able to stop it from "taking off" once it has enough smiling, happy faces invested in it. They just won't have the heart to can it at that point, even if they think it sucks. Much easier to can it early. • They know that, by forcing everyone to adhere to this stringent set of aesthetic criteria at all times, they're imparting these same aesthetics to everyone around them. In order to please a taste leader, you can't just learn their tastes; you have to grok their tastes. Their tastes have to become your tastes. If you can't just iterate a project toward being something they like, but have to get it right from the start (or from the earliest point they're allowed to see it), then you have to be able to evaluate your own concept work against the aesthetic—and in fact use the aesthetic to figure out how to move across the fitness-landscape of possible features for the thing. And, if those two things are true, then "taste leaders" are probably not as flawed as you think—rather, they're playing a role. Some might play it naturally, but I think that for a lot of them, they know that this is how to best drive their business toward optimizing for their taste (which they believe is a taste customers have demand for.) That is: there are plenty of stories about people lying to Jobs. But did anyone ever get a chance to ask Jobs whether he knew they were lying, and just pretended to be oblivious to these skunkworks projects because he had faith in these people to eventually produce something he'd like (but just didn't want them showing their not-yet-aesthetic iterations off where others in the company could get excited about them)? I've known both chefs and directors who do this sort of thing. Why would Jobs be different?