Perhaps his abuse of engineers was valueless, and that the win for Apple was in him abusing management rivals so they were all afraid of playing the normal turf

Perhaps his abuse of engineers was valueless, and that the win for Apple was in him abusing management rivals so they were all afraid of playing the normal turf games. Or maybe his prickishness was only needed to get him back in charge of Apple as chief tastemaker, a CEO who was willing to spend on design until a product was fucking right. I think you nailed it. Most executives in most companies get to bike-shed and do little else. Jobs actually made bike-shedding the worst job in the company. Steve Jobs lived in the spotlight more than almost anyone else in this business, so every assholish thing he did got magnified. What I've heard is that he was very polarized: sometimes very nice, sometimes very mean. (I'm that way, so I can relate.) Apparently he was nice to engineers for the most part; it was the VPs and Directors that he tore to shreds. Jobs had this whole theory about the VP level being the threshold of responsibility that is a direct affront on the Effort Thermocline (in that VPs get more direct scrutiny, rather than, as is more typical, more power that gives them the ability to hide losses and make themselves invincible).