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The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

102 points by vvnraman 14y ago

michaelpinto 14y ago
If we're still talking about him half a year after he's gone he must have gotten something right. I think something that techies don't see is that Jobs real gem is Pixar, a company that Lucas couldn't make work and a company that became Disney's animation studio. My bet is that as these devices go from being cool gadgets to the mundane that Jobs will be remembered for those Pixar films which will seem charming even if their technique is crude next to animation in the year 2032.
- phaus 14y ago
  No one doubts that he did some things right, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he mistreated nearly everyone who helped him make Apple the company it is today. He should have been fired when he couldn't get along with anyone at Atari and he should have been fired the first time he ever called anyone a "shithead" at Apple. I've worked for an abusive boss before, and no amount of success can excuse the fact that as a supervisor and as a human being he was a complete failure. If someone thinks that I am being unreasonable, consider the fact that I have a disorder that basically acts as a get out of jail free card for me to be a total dick to everyone, yet I still find the time and energy to be respectful to everyone whom I work with, peers, subordinates, and even my abusive former boss.
  - sneak 14y ago
    > consider the fact that I have a disorder that basically acts as a get out of jail free card for me to be a total dick to everyone So did Steve - it's called "the ability to see a short distance into the future".
  - Someone 14y ago
    Complete failure? Are you arguing that the products that came out during his reign are below par? Above par despite his supervision? Not worth the psychological damage he did? I doubt Apple would be where it is today if he had played mr. Nice. Also, is there data that supports a claim that, e.g. churn was higher under his leadership than under other managers in similar situations? I am not aware of any, and it would not surprise me if there is data supporting the claim that churn was lower (in some sense just as Napoleon was able to breed loyalty, even though he led his soldiers to war again and again). For example, from what I have read about Steve, when working for him, he could be very harsh, but you would not have to worry about being shot in the back. That is worth something.
- jackbravo 14y ago
  And yet, I remember seeing an article here on Hacker News where one of pixar's first employees said Pixar was not great because of Jobs, but in spite of him
  - k-mcgrady 14y ago
    I remember reading that but if Jobs hadn't have taken a risk and continued ploughing nearly all of his money into Pixar it wouldn't be around today. I think I read that he put nearly all of his money into it, to the stage he didn't have much left, and at that point Toy Story came along. I think the article you are referring to was about the actual movie making process. If Jobs had access to that side of things he would have exercised control over it and people like Lasseter wouldn't have been able to create the work they did.
    - Ralith 14y ago
      So his only valuable contribution was as an investor? That doesn't speak very well of him.
      - imgabe 14y ago
        Not just the investment, but he also negotiated the partnership with Disney in such a way that Pixar was able to retain creative control of the movies and their identity as a studio. If not for him, they would have been subsumed into Disney and the movies would have been focus-grouped into bland drivel.
        soperj 14y ago
        I get that you're a jobs fan, but suggesting that Disney movies are bland drivel, especially their cartoons is being disingenuous.
        imgabe 14y ago
        Well, I was thinking of a specific anecdote about how one of the Disney execs kept insisting that Woody in Toy Story had to be "meaner" and "more edgy" to the point that the project was almost scrapped because it wasn't working. But in general, the recent Disney animated movies haven't been all that great, and a lot of what they do is just straight-to-dvd stuff to make some quick money on their existing properties.
- majormajor 14y ago
  He certainly built multiple successful companies, but he's not the only one who's done that. Few people have done what he did with Apple the second time—that's what he got really right, in terms of why people are still talking about him so much—turning the company around not just into success but into a behemoth, but if you want to know how he did that, I'd look at what changed. He was always an abusive manager/colleague, yet that didn't make Apple in the early 80s or NeXT in the 90s dominate their markets in the same way Apple of the last decade did with the iPhone/iPad. The vision, the timing, the perfectionism... none of that depends on also being a colossal jerk.
- biot 14y ago
  > If we're still talking about him half a year after he's > gone he must have gotten something right. Godwin might disagree with this logic. :)
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  He almost did nothing for Pixar, except pouring money into it quarter after quarter and using Toy Story's success to rise again. He was a very big visionary, a great manager and he deserves every bit of praise he gets for what he did at Apple in his second coming, but his role at Pixar was only to negotiate and give them money; not that it's an unimportant thing. Pixar would most certainly not exist today if it wasn't for Jobs, but the creative mind at Pixar was John Lasseter. Source: I've read two books about Pixar, more than 10 about Jobs/Apple and watched well over 20 documentaries about these subjects.
  - michaelpinto 14y ago
    Actually what he did right with Pixar was to let the creative people be creative. I realize that sounds like nothing, and yes it is nothing -- but it's everything and here's why: A bad producer or studio head who isn't a creative will always get his or her paws all over the film projects and tend to ruin them. Or worse yet select projects not on the creative merits but on a perceived notion of how they'll do in the box office -- the result is all of the bad special effects and franchise movies we see today. Instead Steve had the rare courage to do NOTHING except let the creative people "make a great film". That's something that's very rare in Hollywood and deserves a ton of credit...
    - pooriaazimi 14y ago
      Exactly. And that's what I was trying to say. He created (or recreated) bot Apple and Pixar, but his role at two companies was completely different.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    Standing up to the stuffed suits at Disney would have been no job for the fainthearted. Jobs may not have done anything at Pixar, but he certainly did a lot for them.
  - VinzO 14y ago
    Could you recommend a good book about pixar?
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  We're still talking about him, and so are his co-workers. Jonny Ive, for instance, obviously adored him, as did Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, etc. These were the folks who worked most closely with Jobs and according to the book were subject to his scorn and mind games. Yet they speak of him in glowing tones. So I think the story is much more complicated than "be mean to people if you are driven." Jobs could apparently also be very supportive and endearing to those for whom he developed respect.
victork2 14y ago
I have read Steve Jobs biography and this is definitively a cautionary tale and a great warning for anybody, but for other reasons that stated in this article. I am no Apple fan, as a matter of fact I don't like the look and feel of their product but I gained a great admiration for Steve Jobs because he seemed like a man in immense suffering. I'm not talking about the obvious physical pain of cancer and all his crazy diets ( we share something in common ) but mentally he seemed like a sad sad person. I don't want to do bar stool psychology but it seemed pretty obvious that he was missing something in his life and he probably never found it. But he's the paragon of the self made man, in the Ayn Rand sense and people ( especially here, where there's something approaching a cult ) look up to that and as soon as they encounter problems they imagine themselves in the shoes of this man and try to act tough... or act Steve Jobs. If there's one paradoxical lesson that should be taken from his biography it is that you should never to listen to anybody that tells you how to act, don't try to fit in a mold, even in the mold of a great man, because you fundamentally don't have the same substance and thus you won't come out the same way: ie successful nor happy. Be your own man, forge your own mold and challenge the statu quo.
- quadratic_r 14y ago
  > you should never to listen to anybody Hey! Don't tell me what to do! Oh wait...
- adavies42 14y ago
  > But he's the paragon of the self made man, in the Ayn Rand sense [...] I was just thinking this. I'm sure Jobs hated Rand, given his politics, but he sounds an awful lot like Hank Rearden in TFA.
  - s_baby 14y ago
    As a Buddhist maybe not. Buddhism and Enlightenment Era ideology are both anchored in the idea of the "self". There's a great synergy between the two. To get what I mean look at the former CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. The staunchest of Libertarians, a legitimate Buddhist, and a pioneer of "Core Values" Branding( e.g Apple ).
DirtyCalvinist 14y ago
It seems to me that being dictatorial and downright mean only works if you are right about whatever you've decided to be dictatorial about. So when Jobs dropped that iPod prototype in water to prove that it could be smaller still, this helped the iPod's success largely because Jobs was right about the smallness, not because he berated his engineers. That ability to be right about what people wanted, not his apparently capricious and unpleasant demeanor, is why we still talk about him a year after his death. Incidentally, it is also the difficult to reproduce part of his success.
- mrich 14y ago
  Well said. Let's not produce more abusive bosses who, when their "brilliant strategy" doesn't work, just think they have to berate their employees harder.
mirsadm 14y ago
In my opinion the success of Apple with the more recent products is the only reason most people tolerated his shitty behaviour. It is easy to stay positive when everything is going so well.
imgabe 14y ago
One of the things that struck me while reading Jobs' biography was how frequently he cried. Numerous times throughout he's described as weeping, sometimes at momentous occasions, like getting fired from Apple, and sometimes over relatively trivial matters. Think about it. When was the last time you saw a grown person cry about something at work? Ever? I think one of the things that made Steve Steve, and made him capable of doing the things he did, was how deeply he felt things. When a design wasn't right it actually seemed to cause him great emotional pain. People in emotional pain tend to lash out angrily. Just like you might forgive your spouse for saying something awful in the heat of an argument (I honestly believe it affected him on that deep of an emotional level), I think people forgave Steve because they knew that even when he was being vicious, it wasn't because he literally hated them. He was just deeply, personally wounded that his expectations weren't being met. Now, it's not normal for anyone to care that deeply about what most people consider minor details, like the angle a corner is beveled at or something like that, but he did. And that level of caring about the details is what made Apple's products great. Think about the last time anyone has done any work for you. Was there anything that was off? Probably there was. Most people weigh the benefit of fixing whatever minor problem there might be against the hassle of explaining what's wrong and waiting for it to be redone and the possibility of insulting the person who did the work and decide it's not worth it. You probably do this without even thinking about it. Obviously, for Steve it was always worth it, and that probably had a lot do with how emotionally sensitive he was. It's easy to look back and say that you could have achieved the same results while being a nicer person, but I think it's easier said than done. I'm not saying it's impossible in general, but I think the deeply emotional place that Steve's sense of design came from made it nearly impossible for him. The important thing to take away was how much he was able to achieve because he cared so deeply, not the tyrannical aspect. That was a side effect. If you seek to emulate his tyranny (because you like being a tyrant, maybe) assuming that you'll get the same results, you're bound to be disappointed.
- hosh 14y ago
  Thanks for writing this. It expresses how I see this. Steve Jobs went to the East looking for something, and it does not surprise me that he can go deep into these emotions and be OK with it.
- 14y ago
koglerjs 14y ago
In my experience "the rules of social engagement" are as often used to entangle and obstruct as they are to create civility. Think of "foot-in-the-door" phenomenon. Sometimes rudeness is respect, especially if it's an honest communication. Jobs needed an on-time supplier, and it was arguably worth the cost of a legal battle in order to get one. As others have said, though, it spawns imitators that think "Steve berated his employees, so I can too."
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  > Sometimes rudeness is respect, especially if it's an honest communication. I disagree, you fucking piece of shit.
  - koglerjs 14y ago
    See, I'd still buy this scummy dirtbag of an excuse for a human being a beer. ;)
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      Well said. :)
nollidge 14y ago
I just wonder if he was happy.
ScottBurson 14y ago
This seems like one occasion when a headline question is correctly answered "yes" :-)
debacle 14y ago
How long are blogs going to milk the Steve Jobs thing?
- chestercheetaz 14y ago
  as long as the milk keeps on a-flowin'...
mitchty 14y ago
Why can't it be both? The one thing I gathered was to be passionate, but it really seemed like he wished he had more involvement with his children in the end. He was a person, complex in many ways. I choose to follow Bruce Lee's advice, take whatever good you can learn from his life and apply it. Be that the manager style if it works, or the tale of being a better parent. I reject this dichotomy.
snowwrestler 14y ago
Just reacting to the first anecdote: Breaking a contract that is not optimal for your business is not the same thing as breaking a social norm like parking in a handicap space or berating people regularly. Contracts exist to serve the business. If you are smart you will employ great lawyers to make sure your contracts are at least equitable, if not advantageous to your company. To do this effectively, the lawyers will provide advice and create internal rules. However if you are not careful the lawyers can backdoor themselves into making business decisions. The optimal rate at which parts are shipped is a business decision. If you need to break a contract to improve the business, then break it. Calculate the risks and costs, then break it if it makes business sense. That's what Apple did and the results obviously speak for themselves. Their supply chain is the envy of the entire world.
padmanabhan01 14y ago
This article is Bullshit. It is heights of insanity that a no name wired writer can just assume himself to be qualified to make judgements on someone who has had a huge impact (positive) on the world. I use an iPhone, iPad and a mac and I can vouch that my life is better with them than what I would imagine it to be without them. And what is the accusation? that he bullied a few? for making hundreds of millions of lives better? bullied as in asking people who are free to quit whenever to work more? The writer of this article is nuts
- rotw 14y ago
  From the article: > Jobs has become a Rorschach test, a screen onto which entrepreneurs and executives can project a justification of their own lives: choices they would have made anyway, difficult traits they already possess. “Everyone has their own private Steve Jobs,” Sutton says. “It usually tells you a lot about them—and little about Jobs.” This isn't about Jobs being good or bad for the world. It's about his managerial legacy. Essentially, nearly every account of Jobs' life devolves into a hagiography, espousing subjectively his deeds, trying to fit them into a theology of sorts, which distorts generations of entrepreneurs' views of Jobs. Many misread him being great because he was an asshole, but overlook the fact that if he was right, it's because he was right that the product succeeded. Not because he was an asshole.
- hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
  You sound mad.
crag 14y ago
Wasn't he a buddhist? Not that that means anything. Buddhist's are more then capable of being shit-heads. But if he was a practicing buddhist.. wouldn't he had recognized what leads to suffering? Desire of course. Desire to be be perfect. Or maybe his desire to prove he was right? There are other words I'd use to describe him (and several other corporate giants); arrogance comes to mind. Sometimes these men think there really did do it all on their own. Why I love hearing a billionaire say, "I'm a self made man". Oh really? So all the people who worked for you, cooked for you, kept your schedule, managed your companies, investments and life didn't do a damn thing? Really? And that's what I think of Steve Jobs. No doubting he was brilliant and had amazing taste. But he wasn't the most important person in the room. At it's start Woz built Apple. Steve just sold it. And today, he didn't design the products, but he had vision of what he wanted. And many of us wanted the same thing. He was a damn good salesman. And he had a great ability of keeping everyone on focus. But he wasn't the most important person in the room. Apple could (and it does) go on without him. And I think he knew it. And it dogged him all his life. I'm also believe in karma. And the way he died,, his long battle/suffering - leads me to believe he had debts to pay. I only hope, in the end he died clean.
- mcantelon 14y ago
  >Why I love hearing a billionaire say, "I'm a self made man". Oh really? So all the people who worked for you, cooked for you, kept your schedule, managed your companies, investments and life didn't do a damn thing? Really? The individualist "self made man" notion seems a conceit designed to introduce the concept of aristocracy, which humans seem drawn to, to modern capitalism.
  - pyre 14y ago
    aristocracy? The aristocracy were hardly 'self-made.' It was inherited. While a 'self-made' billionaire can't claim to have no employees, he probably did work for his money.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    The idea of "self made man" is directly opposed to the concept of aristocracy - which derives its uniqueness and elevation from belonging to a long row of elevated ancestors and to a long-living tradition. No aristocrate would ever call oneself "self-made" - that's the same as calling oneself an impostor or a fraud. One can be made an aristocrat - e.g. by a royalty - and fresh-minted aristocrats always were considered the lowest form of aristocracy by the "old" and "true" ones, the length of the family tree always was the main source of aristocratic pride. But one can never be a "self-made" aristocrat, it's a direct contradiction in terms and concepts. I'm sorry, but your theory makes no sense at all.
alaskamiller 14y ago
If you believe in MBTI, Steve Jobs is pegged as an ENTJ. This is the brief definition of an ENTJ: "They tend to be self-driven, motivating, energetic, assertive, confident, and competitive. They generally take a big-picture view and build a long-term strategy. They typically know what they want and may mobilize others to help them attain their goals. ENTJs are often sought out as leaders due to an innate ability to direct groups of people. Unusually influential and organized, they may sometimes judge others by their own tough standards, failing to take personal needs into account." Here's the kicker: ENTJs are among the rarest of types, accounting for about 2–5% of those who are formally tested. A generation of people are going to try really hard to emulate a cult status figure's personality but at the end of the day that's all it really is: a bad fidelity copy. Don't live to be Steve Jobs, be you. And if it so happens that you turn out awesome then great. If not, then work on acceptance.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > A generation of people are going to try really hard to emulate a cult status figure's personality but at the end of the day that's all it really is: a bad fidelity copy. Reminds me of what happens when I use Pandora. Instead of revealing a bunch of bands I like, Pandora gives me a bunch of bands that sound like bands that I like. Don't imitate. Attune yourself to value.
  - alaskamiller 14y ago
    I never made that connection but that indeed is why I don't use Pandora anymore.
  - vectorpush 14y ago
    >Pandora gives me a bunch of bands that sound like bands that I like. That's a feature, not a bug.
    - eropple 14y ago
      Only if you don't differentiate "sounds like" and "are appealing in the same way." If you don't, having a conversation about this will be fruitless.
Aloha 14y ago
I think there are good examples to take from Jobs. It's all about a time and a place, sometimes you want to drive to resolution, and be a dick, because that is what will produce the most efficient best result, and for other things, good enough _is_ good enough, and additional pushing will not result in substantive improvement. Wisdom is the ability to pick those two situation apart.
stcredzero 14y ago
> Soon after Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1997, he decided that a shipping company wasn’t delivering spare parts fast enough. The shipper said it couldn’t do better, and it didn’t have to: Apple had signed a contract...But the lesson here might make us uncomfortable: Violate any norm of social or business interaction that stands between you and what you want. I've heard that many Chinese regard contracts more as guidelines than as iron-clad rule sets to be interpreted like bytecode. The relationship between the parties and their needs are more important than the letter of the law. (Or the letters on the contract.) By this set of norms, the shipper was the transgressor in this case, and Steve did the right thing. Take care of the customer, or someone else will.
deleted 14y ago
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sopooneo 14y ago
Did no one ever pull back and just punch him in the face? If not, why? Even the worst possible repercussions don't stop some people. And if so, did it have any effect?
state 14y ago
There are a number of things that I find annoying about stories like this about Jobs — but the most pronounced is that I doubt he would have condoned his own behavior as seen from the outside. Jobs' attitude is a side-effect of his convictions. I think people seem to overlook how a personality like that actually works. Oftentimes this happens while overtly being assholes in an attempt to imitate someone they admire but could probably never become.
stretchwithme 14y ago
The market is absolutely ruthless. It doesn't sugarcoat things for you or hold your hand. Startups know this and act accordingly. Large organizations do not necessarily know this or act accordingly. There are too many layers insulating people from reality. But they ability to scale processes and that's why they survive. Steve pushed reality hard and got through more of those layers. And that organization can really execute as a result. That was just one of his abilities.
cageface 14y ago
In the ten years I worked at Pixar I had the pleasure of seeing or hearing a couple of Jobs famous tantrums first hand. At least in Pixar's case, they always seemed childish and destructive to me. Meanwhile, Ed Catmull, the CEO, commanded the instant respect of absolutely everybody in the company despite being unfailingly polite and soft spoken because we all had such enormous regard for his intellect and maturity.
- codinghorror 14y ago
  Well, this proves that you can be childish and destructive and still accomplish amazing things, right? So.. er.. yay? (And yes, Ed Catmull is awesome.)
  - cageface 14y ago
    What I saw from Jobs at Pixar seemed largely counterproductive. Maybe it worked better at Apple?
danbmil99 14y ago
The outline of his personality should be quite familiar to anyone who has worked with a famous (or even semi-famous, or just in their own mind) creative person in a field such as music, fashion, movies, TV, publishing, or high-end food. It's the classic prima donna genius-in-pain trope. I suppose it's just somewhat rare in tech, where you more often see the Brian Wilson, asperger type of personality -- the introverted genius-in-a-thick-shell.
projectileboy 14y ago
Whenever I read these articles tha have arisen lately about Steve Jobs' managerial style, I'm surprised that no one mentions the most obvious thing: the people working for Jobs were building the iPhone, and the iPad, and some of the other greatest products the world has ever seen. Why on earth would the executive of a second-rate financial services software company (or whatever) think that they could motivate people in the same way?
keeptrying 14y ago
How many of your bosses were assholes? Asshole wise I think Jobs might have been on the gentler side than some I've worked for. Ever worked in a bank for a trading desk or a trader? That trader will make Jobs look like father christmas. Bezos, the old bill gates, jobs,Steve balmier, marissa Mayer, all of my bosses except 2, Bloomberg, - all mutherfucking ahole bosses. Hell During my first stint, I sucked at it too. Don't single out jobs here. The Only one who has grown up is Gates. In my mind Gates beats all these guys fr the amazing foundation he as created and how he has reinvented himself completely and the vigorous passion with which he is helping humanity. I never thought I'd defend gates-I hae windows mre than anyone I know.
nacker 14y ago
The lasting cultural influence of Jobs seems to me to be that he made ruthless Machiavellian sociopathy acceptable to a large segment of the population. What does it really matter how shiny and "faux-zen" the design of the perishable toys he sold was? He was to business ethics what Kiefer Sutherland in the show "24" was to law enforcement.
nacker 14y ago
No one said it better than RMS: “Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died. As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, “I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone.” Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing. Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.”

102 points by vvnraman 14y ago

If we're still talking about him half a year after he's gone he must have gotten something right. I think something that techies don't see is that Jobs real gem is Pixar, a company that Lucas couldn't make work and a company that became Disney's animation studio. My bet is that as these devices go from being cool gadgets to the mundane that Jobs will be remembered for those Pixar films which will seem charming even if their technique is crude next to animation in the year 2032.

phaus 14y ago
No one doubts that he did some things right, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he mistreated nearly everyone who helped him make Apple the company it is today. He should have been fired when he couldn't get along with anyone at Atari and he should have been fired the first time he ever called anyone a "shithead" at Apple. I've worked for an abusive boss before, and no amount of success can excuse the fact that as a supervisor and as a human being he was a complete failure. If someone thinks that I am being unreasonable, consider the fact that I have a disorder that basically acts as a get out of jail free card for me to be a total dick to everyone, yet I still find the time and energy to be respectful to everyone whom I work with, peers, subordinates, and even my abusive former boss.
- sneak 14y ago
  > consider the fact that I have a disorder that basically acts as a get out of jail free card for me to be a total dick to everyone So did Steve - it's called "the ability to see a short distance into the future".
- Someone 14y ago
  Complete failure? Are you arguing that the products that came out during his reign are below par? Above par despite his supervision? Not worth the psychological damage he did? I doubt Apple would be where it is today if he had played mr. Nice. Also, is there data that supports a claim that, e.g. churn was higher under his leadership than under other managers in similar situations? I am not aware of any, and it would not surprise me if there is data supporting the claim that churn was lower (in some sense just as Napoleon was able to breed loyalty, even though he led his soldiers to war again and again). For example, from what I have read about Steve, when working for him, he could be very harsh, but you would not have to worry about being shot in the back. That is worth something.
jackbravo 14y ago
And yet, I remember seeing an article here on Hacker News where one of pixar's first employees said Pixar was not great because of Jobs, but in spite of him
- k-mcgrady 14y ago
  I remember reading that but if Jobs hadn't have taken a risk and continued ploughing nearly all of his money into Pixar it wouldn't be around today. I think I read that he put nearly all of his money into it, to the stage he didn't have much left, and at that point Toy Story came along. I think the article you are referring to was about the actual movie making process. If Jobs had access to that side of things he would have exercised control over it and people like Lasseter wouldn't have been able to create the work they did.
  - Ralith 14y ago
    So his only valuable contribution was as an investor? That doesn't speak very well of him.
    - imgabe 14y ago
      Not just the investment, but he also negotiated the partnership with Disney in such a way that Pixar was able to retain creative control of the movies and their identity as a studio. If not for him, they would have been subsumed into Disney and the movies would have been focus-grouped into bland drivel.
      - soperj 14y ago
        I get that you're a jobs fan, but suggesting that Disney movies are bland drivel, especially their cartoons is being disingenuous.
        imgabe 14y ago
        Well, I was thinking of a specific anecdote about how one of the Disney execs kept insisting that Woody in Toy Story had to be "meaner" and "more edgy" to the point that the project was almost scrapped because it wasn't working. But in general, the recent Disney animated movies haven't been all that great, and a lot of what they do is just straight-to-dvd stuff to make some quick money on their existing properties.
majormajor 14y ago
He certainly built multiple successful companies, but he's not the only one who's done that. Few people have done what he did with Apple the second time—that's what he got really right, in terms of why people are still talking about him so much—turning the company around not just into success but into a behemoth, but if you want to know how he did that, I'd look at what changed. He was always an abusive manager/colleague, yet that didn't make Apple in the early 80s or NeXT in the 90s dominate their markets in the same way Apple of the last decade did with the iPhone/iPad. The vision, the timing, the perfectionism... none of that depends on also being a colossal jerk.
biot 14y ago
> If we're still talking about him half a year after he's > gone he must have gotten something right. Godwin might disagree with this logic. :)
pooriaazimi 14y ago
He almost did nothing for Pixar, except pouring money into it quarter after quarter and using Toy Story's success to rise again. He was a very big visionary, a great manager and he deserves every bit of praise he gets for what he did at Apple in his second coming, but his role at Pixar was only to negotiate and give them money; not that it's an unimportant thing. Pixar would most certainly not exist today if it wasn't for Jobs, but the creative mind at Pixar was John Lasseter. Source: I've read two books about Pixar, more than 10 about Jobs/Apple and watched well over 20 documentaries about these subjects.
- michaelpinto 14y ago
  Actually what he did right with Pixar was to let the creative people be creative. I realize that sounds like nothing, and yes it is nothing -- but it's everything and here's why: A bad producer or studio head who isn't a creative will always get his or her paws all over the film projects and tend to ruin them. Or worse yet select projects not on the creative merits but on a perceived notion of how they'll do in the box office -- the result is all of the bad special effects and franchise movies we see today. Instead Steve had the rare courage to do NOTHING except let the creative people "make a great film". That's something that's very rare in Hollywood and deserves a ton of credit...
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    Exactly. And that's what I was trying to say. He created (or recreated) bot Apple and Pixar, but his role at two companies was completely different.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  Standing up to the stuffed suits at Disney would have been no job for the fainthearted. Jobs may not have done anything at Pixar, but he certainly did a lot for them.
- VinzO 14y ago
  Could you recommend a good book about pixar?
snowwrestler 14y ago
We're still talking about him, and so are his co-workers. Jonny Ive, for instance, obviously adored him, as did Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, etc. These were the folks who worked most closely with Jobs and according to the book were subject to his scorn and mind games. Yet they speak of him in glowing tones. So I think the story is much more complicated than "be mean to people if you are driven." Jobs could apparently also be very supportive and endearing to those for whom he developed respect.

victork2 14y ago

I have read Steve Jobs biography and this is definitively a cautionary tale and a great warning for anybody, but for other reasons that stated in this article. I am no Apple fan, as a matter of fact I don't like the look and feel of their product but I gained a great admiration for Steve Jobs because he seemed like a man in immense suffering. I'm not talking about the obvious physical pain of cancer and all his crazy diets ( we share something in common ) but mentally he seemed like a sad sad person. I don't want to do bar stool psychology but it seemed pretty obvious that he was missing something in his life and he probably never found it. But he's the paragon of the self made man, in the Ayn Rand sense and people ( especially here, where there's something approaching a cult ) look up to that and as soon as they encounter problems they imagine themselves in the shoes of this man and try to act tough... or act Steve Jobs. If there's one paradoxical lesson that should be taken from his biography it is that you should never to listen to anybody that tells you how to act, don't try to fit in a mold, even in the mold of a great man, because you fundamentally don't have the same substance and thus you won't come out the same way: ie successful nor happy. Be your own man, forge your own mold and challenge the statu quo.

quadratic_r 14y ago
> you should never to listen to anybody Hey! Don't tell me what to do! Oh wait...
adavies42 14y ago
> But he's the paragon of the self made man, in the Ayn Rand sense [...] I was just thinking this. I'm sure Jobs hated Rand, given his politics, but he sounds an awful lot like Hank Rearden in TFA.
- s_baby 14y ago
  As a Buddhist maybe not. Buddhism and Enlightenment Era ideology are both anchored in the idea of the "self". There's a great synergy between the two. To get what I mean look at the former CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. The staunchest of Libertarians, a legitimate Buddhist, and a pioneer of "Core Values" Branding( e.g Apple ).

DirtyCalvinist 14y ago

It seems to me that being dictatorial and downright mean only works if you are right about whatever you've decided to be dictatorial about. So when Jobs dropped that iPod prototype in water to prove that it could be smaller still, this helped the iPod's success largely because Jobs was right about the smallness, not because he berated his engineers. That ability to be right about what people wanted, not his apparently capricious and unpleasant demeanor, is why we still talk about him a year after his death. Incidentally, it is also the difficult to reproduce part of his success.

mrich 14y ago
Well said. Let's not produce more abusive bosses who, when their "brilliant strategy" doesn't work, just think they have to berate their employees harder.

mirsadm 14y ago

In my opinion the success of Apple with the more recent products is the only reason most people tolerated his shitty behaviour. It is easy to stay positive when everything is going so well.

imgabe 14y ago

One of the things that struck me while reading Jobs' biography was how frequently he cried. Numerous times throughout he's described as weeping, sometimes at momentous occasions, like getting fired from Apple, and sometimes over relatively trivial matters. Think about it. When was the last time you saw a grown person cry about something at work? Ever? I think one of the things that made Steve Steve, and made him capable of doing the things he did, was how deeply he felt things. When a design wasn't right it actually seemed to cause him great emotional pain. People in emotional pain tend to lash out angrily. Just like you might forgive your spouse for saying something awful in the heat of an argument (I honestly believe it affected him on that deep of an emotional level), I think people forgave Steve because they knew that even when he was being vicious, it wasn't because he literally hated them. He was just deeply, personally wounded that his expectations weren't being met. Now, it's not normal for anyone to care that deeply about what most people consider minor details, like the angle a corner is beveled at or something like that, but he did. And that level of caring about the details is what made Apple's products great. Think about the last time anyone has done any work for you. Was there anything that was off? Probably there was. Most people weigh the benefit of fixing whatever minor problem there might be against the hassle of explaining what's wrong and waiting for it to be redone and the possibility of insulting the person who did the work and decide it's not worth it. You probably do this without even thinking about it. Obviously, for Steve it was always worth it, and that probably had a lot do with how emotionally sensitive he was. It's easy to look back and say that you could have achieved the same results while being a nicer person, but I think it's easier said than done. I'm not saying it's impossible in general, but I think the deeply emotional place that Steve's sense of design came from made it nearly impossible for him. The important thing to take away was how much he was able to achieve because he cared so deeply, not the tyrannical aspect. That was a side effect. If you seek to emulate his tyranny (because you like being a tyrant, maybe) assuming that you'll get the same results, you're bound to be disappointed.

hosh 14y ago
Thanks for writing this. It expresses how I see this. Steve Jobs went to the East looking for something, and it does not surprise me that he can go deep into these emotions and be OK with it.
14y ago

koglerjs 14y ago

In my experience "the rules of social engagement" are as often used to entangle and obstruct as they are to create civility. Think of "foot-in-the-door" phenomenon. Sometimes rudeness is respect, especially if it's an honest communication. Jobs needed an on-time supplier, and it was arguably worth the cost of a legal battle in order to get one. As others have said, though, it spawns imitators that think "Steve berated his employees, so I can too."

fusiongyro 14y ago
> Sometimes rudeness is respect, especially if it's an honest communication. I disagree, you fucking piece of shit.
- koglerjs 14y ago
  See, I'd still buy this scummy dirtbag of an excuse for a human being a beer. ;)
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    Well said. :)

nollidge 14y ago

I just wonder if he was happy.

ScottBurson 14y ago

This seems like one occasion when a headline question is correctly answered "yes" :-)

debacle 14y ago

How long are blogs going to milk the Steve Jobs thing?

chestercheetaz 14y ago
as long as the milk keeps on a-flowin'...

mitchty 14y ago

Why can't it be both? The one thing I gathered was to be passionate, but it really seemed like he wished he had more involvement with his children in the end. He was a person, complex in many ways. I choose to follow Bruce Lee's advice, take whatever good you can learn from his life and apply it. Be that the manager style if it works, or the tale of being a better parent. I reject this dichotomy.

snowwrestler 14y ago

Just reacting to the first anecdote: Breaking a contract that is not optimal for your business is not the same thing as breaking a social norm like parking in a handicap space or berating people regularly. Contracts exist to serve the business. If you are smart you will employ great lawyers to make sure your contracts are at least equitable, if not advantageous to your company. To do this effectively, the lawyers will provide advice and create internal rules. However if you are not careful the lawyers can backdoor themselves into making business decisions. The optimal rate at which parts are shipped is a business decision. If you need to break a contract to improve the business, then break it. Calculate the risks and costs, then break it if it makes business sense. That's what Apple did and the results obviously speak for themselves. Their supply chain is the envy of the entire world.

padmanabhan01 14y ago

This article is Bullshit. It is heights of insanity that a no name wired writer can just assume himself to be qualified to make judgements on someone who has had a huge impact (positive) on the world. I use an iPhone, iPad and a mac and I can vouch that my life is better with them than what I would imagine it to be without them. And what is the accusation? that he bullied a few? for making hundreds of millions of lives better? bullied as in asking people who are free to quit whenever to work more? The writer of this article is nuts

rotw 14y ago
From the article: > Jobs has become a Rorschach test, a screen onto which entrepreneurs and executives can project a justification of their own lives: choices they would have made anyway, difficult traits they already possess. “Everyone has their own private Steve Jobs,” Sutton says. “It usually tells you a lot about them—and little about Jobs.” This isn't about Jobs being good or bad for the world. It's about his managerial legacy. Essentially, nearly every account of Jobs' life devolves into a hagiography, espousing subjectively his deeds, trying to fit them into a theology of sorts, which distorts generations of entrepreneurs' views of Jobs. Many misread him being great because he was an asshole, but overlook the fact that if he was right, it's because he was right that the product succeeded. Not because he was an asshole.
hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
You sound mad.

crag 14y ago

Wasn't he a buddhist? Not that that means anything. Buddhist's are more then capable of being shit-heads. But if he was a practicing buddhist.. wouldn't he had recognized what leads to suffering? Desire of course. Desire to be be perfect. Or maybe his desire to prove he was right? There are other words I'd use to describe him (and several other corporate giants); arrogance comes to mind. Sometimes these men think there really did do it all on their own. Why I love hearing a billionaire say, "I'm a self made man". Oh really? So all the people who worked for you, cooked for you, kept your schedule, managed your companies, investments and life didn't do a damn thing? Really? And that's what I think of Steve Jobs. No doubting he was brilliant and had amazing taste. But he wasn't the most important person in the room. At it's start Woz built Apple. Steve just sold it. And today, he didn't design the products, but he had vision of what he wanted. And many of us wanted the same thing. He was a damn good salesman. And he had a great ability of keeping everyone on focus. But he wasn't the most important person in the room. Apple could (and it does) go on without him. And I think he knew it. And it dogged him all his life. I'm also believe in karma. And the way he died,, his long battle/suffering - leads me to believe he had debts to pay. I only hope, in the end he died clean.

mcantelon 14y ago
>Why I love hearing a billionaire say, "I'm a self made man". Oh really? So all the people who worked for you, cooked for you, kept your schedule, managed your companies, investments and life didn't do a damn thing? Really? The individualist "self made man" notion seems a conceit designed to introduce the concept of aristocracy, which humans seem drawn to, to modern capitalism.
- pyre 14y ago
  aristocracy? The aristocracy were hardly 'self-made.' It was inherited. While a 'self-made' billionaire can't claim to have no employees, he probably did work for his money.
- smsm42 14y ago
  The idea of "self made man" is directly opposed to the concept of aristocracy - which derives its uniqueness and elevation from belonging to a long row of elevated ancestors and to a long-living tradition. No aristocrate would ever call oneself "self-made" - that's the same as calling oneself an impostor or a fraud. One can be made an aristocrat - e.g. by a royalty - and fresh-minted aristocrats always were considered the lowest form of aristocracy by the "old" and "true" ones, the length of the family tree always was the main source of aristocratic pride. But one can never be a "self-made" aristocrat, it's a direct contradiction in terms and concepts. I'm sorry, but your theory makes no sense at all.

alaskamiller 14y ago

If you believe in MBTI, Steve Jobs is pegged as an ENTJ. This is the brief definition of an ENTJ: "They tend to be self-driven, motivating, energetic, assertive, confident, and competitive. They generally take a big-picture view and build a long-term strategy. They typically know what they want and may mobilize others to help them attain their goals. ENTJs are often sought out as leaders due to an innate ability to direct groups of people. Unusually influential and organized, they may sometimes judge others by their own tough standards, failing to take personal needs into account." Here's the kicker: ENTJs are among the rarest of types, accounting for about 2–5% of those who are formally tested. A generation of people are going to try really hard to emulate a cult status figure's personality but at the end of the day that's all it really is: a bad fidelity copy. Don't live to be Steve Jobs, be you. And if it so happens that you turn out awesome then great. If not, then work on acceptance.

stcredzero 14y ago
> A generation of people are going to try really hard to emulate a cult status figure's personality but at the end of the day that's all it really is: a bad fidelity copy. Reminds me of what happens when I use Pandora. Instead of revealing a bunch of bands I like, Pandora gives me a bunch of bands that sound like bands that I like. Don't imitate. Attune yourself to value.
- alaskamiller 14y ago
  I never made that connection but that indeed is why I don't use Pandora anymore.
- vectorpush 14y ago
  >Pandora gives me a bunch of bands that sound like bands that I like. That's a feature, not a bug.
  - eropple 14y ago
    Only if you don't differentiate "sounds like" and "are appealing in the same way." If you don't, having a conversation about this will be fruitless.

Aloha 14y ago

I think there are good examples to take from Jobs. It's all about a time and a place, sometimes you want to drive to resolution, and be a dick, because that is what will produce the most efficient best result, and for other things, good enough _is_ good enough, and additional pushing will not result in substantive improvement. Wisdom is the ability to pick those two situation apart.

stcredzero 14y ago

> Soon after Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1997, he decided that a shipping company wasn’t delivering spare parts fast enough. The shipper said it couldn’t do better, and it didn’t have to: Apple had signed a contract...But the lesson here might make us uncomfortable: Violate any norm of social or business interaction that stands between you and what you want. I've heard that many Chinese regard contracts more as guidelines than as iron-clad rule sets to be interpreted like bytecode. The relationship between the parties and their needs are more important than the letter of the law. (Or the letters on the contract.) By this set of norms, the shipper was the transgressor in this case, and Steve did the right thing. Take care of the customer, or someone else will.

deleted 14y ago

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sopooneo 14y ago

Did no one ever pull back and just punch him in the face? If not, why? Even the worst possible repercussions don't stop some people. And if so, did it have any effect?

state 14y ago

There are a number of things that I find annoying about stories like this about Jobs — but the most pronounced is that I doubt he would have condoned his own behavior as seen from the outside. Jobs' attitude is a side-effect of his convictions. I think people seem to overlook how a personality like that actually works. Oftentimes this happens while overtly being assholes in an attempt to imitate someone they admire but could probably never become.

stretchwithme 14y ago

The market is absolutely ruthless. It doesn't sugarcoat things for you or hold your hand. Startups know this and act accordingly. Large organizations do not necessarily know this or act accordingly. There are too many layers insulating people from reality. But they ability to scale processes and that's why they survive. Steve pushed reality hard and got through more of those layers. And that organization can really execute as a result. That was just one of his abilities.

cageface 14y ago

In the ten years I worked at Pixar I had the pleasure of seeing or hearing a couple of Jobs famous tantrums first hand. At least in Pixar's case, they always seemed childish and destructive to me. Meanwhile, Ed Catmull, the CEO, commanded the instant respect of absolutely everybody in the company despite being unfailingly polite and soft spoken because we all had such enormous regard for his intellect and maturity.

codinghorror 14y ago
Well, this proves that you can be childish and destructive and still accomplish amazing things, right? So.. er.. yay? (And yes, Ed Catmull is awesome.)
- cageface 14y ago
  What I saw from Jobs at Pixar seemed largely counterproductive. Maybe it worked better at Apple?

danbmil99 14y ago

The outline of his personality should be quite familiar to anyone who has worked with a famous (or even semi-famous, or just in their own mind) creative person in a field such as music, fashion, movies, TV, publishing, or high-end food. It's the classic prima donna genius-in-pain trope. I suppose it's just somewhat rare in tech, where you more often see the Brian Wilson, asperger type of personality -- the introverted genius-in-a-thick-shell.

projectileboy 14y ago

Whenever I read these articles tha have arisen lately about Steve Jobs' managerial style, I'm surprised that no one mentions the most obvious thing: the people working for Jobs were building the iPhone, and the iPad, and some of the other greatest products the world has ever seen. Why on earth would the executive of a second-rate financial services software company (or whatever) think that they could motivate people in the same way?

keeptrying 14y ago

How many of your bosses were assholes? Asshole wise I think Jobs might have been on the gentler side than some I've worked for. Ever worked in a bank for a trading desk or a trader? That trader will make Jobs look like father christmas. Bezos, the old bill gates, jobs,Steve balmier, marissa Mayer, all of my bosses except 2, Bloomberg, - all mutherfucking ahole bosses. Hell During my first stint, I sucked at it too. Don't single out jobs here. The Only one who has grown up is Gates. In my mind Gates beats all these guys fr the amazing foundation he as created and how he has reinvented himself completely and the vigorous passion with which he is helping humanity. I never thought I'd defend gates-I hae windows mre than anyone I know.

nacker 14y ago

The lasting cultural influence of Jobs seems to me to be that he made ruthless Machiavellian sociopathy acceptable to a large segment of the population. What does it really matter how shiny and "faux-zen" the design of the perishable toys he sold was? He was to business ethics what Kiefer Sutherland in the show "24" was to law enforcement.

nacker 14y ago

No one said it better than RMS: “Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died. As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, “I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone.” Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing. Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.”