The article discusses the legacy of Steve Jobs and the influence of his leadership style on entrepreneurs. It describes an anecdote where Jobs broke a shipping contract to get better delivery times for Apple parts. Some view Jobs as an inspiration for sticking to one's vision, while others see him as a cautionary tale due to his harsh treatment of subordinates. Entrepreneurs who admire Jobs see his brashness as license to be more aggressive leaders, while others argue one does not need to mimic Jobs' personality to succeed.

1. SELECT A SECTION »
BUSINESS big tech
The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary
Tale?
BY BEN AUSTEN
07.23.12
Photo: Gregg Segal
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 granting it the business at
the current pace. As Walter Isaacson describes in his best-selling biography, Steve
Jobs, the recently recrowned chief executive had a simple response: Break the
contract. When an Apple manager warned him that this decision would probably
mean a lawsuit, Jobs responded, “Just tell them if they fuck with us, they’ll never get
another fucking dime from this company, ever.”
The shipper did sue. The manager quit Apple. (Jobs “would have fired me anyway,”
he later told Isaacson.) The legal imbroglio took a year and presumably a significant
amount of money to resolve. But meanwhile, Apple hired a new shipper that met the
expectations of the company’s uncompromising CEO.
What lesson should we draw from this anecdote? After all, we turn to the lives of
successful people for inspiration and instruction. But the lesson here might make us
uncomfortable: Violate any norm of social or business interaction that stands
between you and what you want. Jobs routinely told subordinates that they were
assholes, that they never did anything right. According to Isaacson, even Jonathan
Ive, Apple’s incomparable design chief, came in for rough treatment on occasion.

2. Once, after checking into a five-star London hotel handpicked for him by Ive, Jobs
called it “a piece of shit” and stormed out. “The normal rules of social engagement,
he feels, don’t apply to him,” Ive explained to the biographer. Jobs’ flouting of those
rules extended outside the office, to a family that rarely got to spend much time with
him as well as to strangers (police officers, retail workers), who experienced the
CEO’s verbal wrath whenever they displeased him.
Jobs has been dead for nearly a year, but the biography about him is still a best
seller. Indeed, his life story has emerged as an odd sort of holy scripture for
entrepreneurs—a gospel and an antigospel at the same time. To some, Jobs’ life has
revealed the importance of sticking firmly to one’s vision and goals, no matter the
psychic toll on employees or business associates. To others, Jobs serves as a
cautionary tale, a man who changed the world but at the price of alienating almost
everyone around him. The divergence in these reactions is a testament to the two
deep and often contradictory hungers that drive so many of us today: We want to
succeed in the world of work, but we also want satisfaction in the realm of home and
family. For those who, like Jobs, have pledged to “put a dent in the universe,” his
thorny life story has forced a reckoning. Is it really worth being like Steve?
In one camp are what you might call the acolytes. They’re businesspeople who have
taken the life of Steve Jobs as license to become more aggressive as visionaries, as
competitors, and above all as bosses. They’re giving themselves over to the thrill of
being a general—and, at times, a dictator. Work was already the center of their lives,
but Jobs’ story has made them resolve to double down on that choice.
Steve Davis, CEO of TwoFour, a software company that
caters to financial institutions, was eager to talk about
The gospel of Steve Jobs’ influence on his own life and career. But first he had
Jobs has spread far to find a free half hour. When he finally did steal a few
from Silicon Valley, moments to speak, he explained that he had consciously
inspiring people in set aside certain aspects of his family life, since he believes
every field of that startups fail when those involved aren’t committed to
business. being available 24 hours a day. Luckily, Davis told me, he
was blessed with a wife who picked up the slack.
Davis detailed these choices matter-of-factly, but his voice
rose with fervor when he described the intensity and uncertainty of
entrepreneurship. He loved every minute of it. He didn’t operate with a corporate
safety net. His lawyer was calling him at that very moment with a contract question,
and Davis needed to pick a direction and just go with it. What should he decide? He
admitted he didn’t know. The thrill came from the possibility that he might be wrong.
“Guys who start companies are different from other people,” he said. “We’re willing to
fail. Look at Jobs. He got knocked down, and he kept going. He’s totally
unconventional, driving on his particular path, and either you join him or get out of
the way.”
Join or get out of the way—it’s a phrase that sums up what Jobs’ life has taught his
admirers today. Andrew Hargadon, a professor at UC Davis and author of How
Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate, points
out that Jobs’ brashness has helped inspire a larger reaction to several decades of
conventional wisdom about the importance of worker empowerment and consensus
decision- making. “Jobs is showing us the value in the old-school, autocratic way.
We’ve gone so far toward the other extreme, toward a bovine sociology in which
happy cows are supposed to produce more milk.” That is, it took a hippie-geek like
Jobs to give other bosses permission to be aggressive and domineering again.

3. This isn’t aggression for its own sake but for the good of a company. Tristan
O’Tierney, a Mac and iPhone software developer, helped Twitter creator Jack Dorsey
found the credit-card-swiping startup Square three years ago. O’Tierney says that
he now sees the value in bluntly telling people their work is crap. “You don’t make
better products by saying everything is great,” he explains. “You make them better by
forcing people to do work they didn’t know they had in them.” Aaron Levie, a
self-described Jobs “wantrepreneur,” started Box, which allows cloud-based
file-sharing, in his USC dorm room in 2005. To new hires, he quotes Jobs—”Some
people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected”—to make clear
to them that Box is just such an environment. “My lesson from Jobs,” Levie says, “is
that I can push my employees further than they thought possible, and I won’t rush
any product out the door without it being perfect.” He adds: “That approach comes
with collateral damage on the people side.”
Pages: 1 2 3 4 View All
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TAGS: APPLE , JONATHAN IVE , STEVE JOBS , WALTER ISAACSON
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rosswilliams
2 months ago

4. "
This isn’t aggression for its own sake but for the good of a company."
He stormed out of a hotel for the good of the company? I don't think so. This is about a
person who was a jerk. But a lot of brilliant, creative people have been jerks. Picasso was
not a great human being, he was a great artist. But the idea that you can become a great
artist by mimicking Picasso's personality is a bit absurd. Likewise mimicking Job's
personality is not going to make you a great entrepreneur.
hide 6 replies
xmichaelx
2 months ago
My take: Just think what he could have accomplished if he recognized the value of
treating others with respect.
hide 3 replies
rosswilliams
2 months ago
I don't know about that. Treating others with respect almost requires that you
respect other people and it may that respect for others is an impediment to
individual creativity. Its hard to be totally arrogant about the value of your own
vision and ideas while respecting differing opinions. Of course you can at least
try to fake it ...
hide 2 replies
simonsmicrophone
1 month ago
Being *totally* arrogant about the value of your own vision and ideas is
one way to make your vision and ideas unpalatable to others.
hide 1 reply
InfernoShade
1 month ago
What a bunch of hating buttheads are on wired these days. Their hate
makes them rewrite history and can't even allow them to find one
good thing in a person. Sad world full of loser.

5. Not you simon. This was just near the top.
Patrick M McMaster
1 month ago
I think that Steve was socially handicapped in some way. What he had instead was the
drive and passion to get the best product he could out of his company. I think the best
thing that ever happened to him was the failure during his first tenure at Apple. His
greatest life achievement was his family because he fell in love in spite of his personal
flaws.
hide 1 reply
Simon Cooper
1 month ago
There was a study published late last year by New York psychologist Paul
Babiak which found that, quite possibly, one in twenty-five business leaders
could be functioning psychopaths so you may be close to the truth. Also, for a
bit of fun, the next time you watch The Devil Wears Prada just imagine that Meryl
Streep is playing Steve Jobs.
Cheezus_Crust
1 month ago
Guess I'm old fashioned, but to me 'changing the world' doesn't mean being more
successful than your competitors at selling consumer electronics.
hide 30 replies
MustBeSaid
1 month ago
Amen. People toss the word genius around these days like rice at a wedding.
The real geniuses are the actual innovators that came up with all the technologies that
Apple wouldn't exists without. Without those software and hardware innovations, they
wouldn't have anything to apply their pretty facade to and market as their own. From
Unix under OSX to every piece of hardware in their computers and devices.
They're a design and marketing company, not a technology company. They haven't

6. been that in well over a decade. Technology just happens to be what they apply
aesthetic design to and market. It's like saying you're a computer hardware engineer
because you can buy some computer parts of Newegg and toss together a desktop.
And there good at that. I'm not saying they're not. Just don't confuse being good at
selling stuff and putting a pretty face on it with the real innovators that spent their
lives making those technologies a reality. Steve spent his life trying to figure out how
to sell more stuff to more people. Not exactly splitting the atom or inventing the
integrated transistor.
hide 17 replies
Aneesh Luthra
1 month ago
First off, you are confusing the word innovation and invention. Your sentance
should have been " The real geniuses are the actual inventors that came up with
all the technologies that Apple wouldn't exist without."
Second, invention and innovation are equally important. Xerox may have
invented the GUI interface, but without Apple and Steve seeing it differently and
applying it, in which they made hundreds of innovative tweaks, we wouldn't have
a GUI interface. The chances are that it would've sat silently in Xerox labs.
Third, although they they have great design and marketing, that doesn't make
them a design and marketing company. Steve defined design as more than just
how it looks, its also how it feels and works. It seems like Apple caring about
everything, down to the design has backfired on them, people start assuming
that it's just a toy. For some reason, just because something looks good it's
useless. We know that just isn't true. Also, they aren't a technology company?
Yes, because before the iPhone there were many smartphones that had a giant
screens and no buttons and the bottom. And that isn't just design. That is
rethinking the way a smartphone can work. Instead of having buttons that are
fixed, you have a giant screen that can change to do any task you want it to.
Then everyone hoped on that bandwagon, of having a big touch screen. That's
taking the invention of the touchscreen and smartphone, and rethinking them.
<-- That is innovation, FYI. Reseeing and reinventing something that already
exists. Same with the iPad, tablets already existed, but they were kind of useless.
They were big, clunky, tried to run full Windows OS. Apple remade it by
increasing its usablitity and portability. By loading a mobile OS and having no
stylus it was made more user friendly and more usable to the common man.
It's more than just selling something by putting a pretty face on. It's taking a
good idea that is there, that has potential but isn't being applied or applied
correctly, and taking it to a new level by remaking it and reapplying it. He didn't
spend his life trying to figure out how to sell stuff, he spent it doing what he

7. loved, taking a good idea and doing it correctly.
hide 7 replies
Darius Jones
1 month ago
It is absolutely ridiculous to think that if Steve Jobs hadn't commercialized
the GUI we would never have one. They were just first to market. Apple is
not a technology company. The Retina display was invented elsewhere. It
is manufactured elsewhere. Apple just puts their logo on it. Same with
most of their products. Give them credit where credit is due. But if you've
been in IT long enough, you'll remember their attempts at an actual
multitasking modern OS, their utter failure, and subsequent strategy of
taking BSD Unix and giving it a shiny package.
hide 6 replies
TruthSha11S3tUFr33
1 month ago
And it wasn't always that Apple was first to market either, rather in
most cases they weren't but they were better at marketing and
playing the market strategies. Steve Jobs if nothing else was a
marketing guru. I am not a big fan of Apple products, to each their
own, but he did build an empire that even I can't deny. He was
definitely a leader and a forward thinker. I also believe that you can be
a perfectionist, and a go getting boss without being an A$$h*le.
hide 1 reply
rhombus
1 month ago
I bristle when people call him an engineer. He was not an
engineer, not even in the tiniest little way. And without engineers
(with thick skins), he would have been a lonely failure.
InfernoShade
1 month ago
While I'd agree that someone would have come up with the GUI too at

8. some point, but you should give credit where it's due. You could say
that about anyone or anything. Hey, if Pasteur hadn't come up with
pasteurization, someone else would have. Lame.
"Just first to market," that all? You mean like the Ford's Model T? Not
like that had any impact on our society. ;)
Manufacturing is not the same as coming up, creating, or developing
an idea. Manufacturing is mostly just the hands. Sure manufacturing
can add to the process, but that's not the seed of the idea.
So just because they made mistakes, you don't want to credit them
with any innovation. If you're so enlightened from having worked in IT,
you should know innovation is not just about being first. It's a combo
of new and the old - building on what came before. And to do that
you have to make mistakes. That goes for all industries.
RS
1 month ago
Well to your argument then why didnt Nokia, Motorola, Google
(Brought Android in 2005) didnt use the multi-touch screens before
Apple released iPhone. Why no one worked on a iPad like tablet
before iPad. Unix and Linux existed before OS X but they were not
able to appeal the common consumer but its SJ's vision that made it
possible. Who cares whether Apple is a technology company or not
they make the products usable by many non-tech people. There are
many who never used computer are now using iPad to communicate
with their kids and grand kids that was purely made possible after
iPad. Retina display might have been developed some where else but
its Apple who got it to the common man. If it was just putting a Logo
on "Retina Display" or "Tablet" or "Phone" how come others are not
doing it?
hide 2 replies
AngryRussian
1 month ago
UNIX and Linux appeal to common consumer only in some
linuxoid wet dreams, period. Jobs did nothing to popularize
those, on the contrary, he wanted enduser to never even think
about what runs his device.

9. Your bullshit about retina(which itself is a bullshit marketing
term) is outright painful. Do your fucking research and you`ll be
amazed at what IBM and Dell were putting out in 2005.
simonsmicrophone
1 month ago
It's called version 2. If you gave the suckers all they wanted now
and it didn't break, how would you sell version 2?
bewlaybrother
1 month ago
Your hate is blinding you to an incredible degree, and making your opinions
spectacularly disingenuous and pointless.
Amanda Green
1 month ago
This nonsense that Apple was good at 'selling stuff' is moronic. True, Apple was
no longer working at low levels in their garage, but saying they just put a pretty
face on it is complete nonsense, and anyone who believes that is clueless.
hide 6 replies
EricLR
1 month ago
If you think Apple are great innovators, let me ask you this:
Have you ever seen even a single story about their research and
development division?
If they're such great innovators, and not just taking other's tech, where is
all their R&D? Microsoft spends $9.4 billion a year on R&D. The great
"innovators" at Apple only spend about $2 billion.
hide 5 replies

10. moodIndigo
Still conflating invention and innovation...
1 month ago
RS
1 month ago
It doesn't matter how much you spend on R&D and how many people
work in a R&D. Sometimes 10 people can do alot more than 1000.
Look at Yahoo they have 1000+ Phds but 60% of them they come to
collect pay checks and a hefty bonus thats all.
Patrick M McMaster
1 month ago
Apple has a policy of not talking about their R and D. They do have it
and Jonny Ive is in charge of it now. One of the secrets of Apple's
success is their willingness to cut out the chain of command so that
the innovators got to do their work in secret. This cuts down on the
hugh waste of R&D that happens when politics takes priority over
product. Microsoft has wasted hugh amounts of money on
committee run R & D and the results are not pretty.
hide 1 reply
rhombus
1 month ago
Why is an industrial designer in charge of R&D? Somebody
needs to explain to Apple what R&D actually means.
Microsoft is a terrible case example. Look at IBM. THAT is R&D.
Gaute Hermansen
1 month ago
If you where to read the bio, you would see that he (jobs) understood
that a company such as apple dont need an R&D division. The way
he built the culture and structure nurishes creativity and ideas like
few other (M3 for instance) And read the whole posts not just selectiv

11. reading, some person clarified very nicely how to seperate innovation
and inventing. There is a clear destinction between the two.
Idon't Know
1 month ago
You don't know anything about Apple or their products.
Eric Tucker
1 month ago
Relative to a lot of other changes, the change I'd argue the change pretty fundamental.
Jobs and the rest of the Apple team didn't necessarily originally innovate a lot of the
technology Apple sold, but they made it accessible in ways that moved it toward
real-world, widespread use a lot faster. I think it might be a fair statement that Apple
shifted the way we use computers and related technology forward about a decade
faster than it would have moved otherwise. Look at how much computers have
revolutionized our world. In geologic scale, it might be a blip ... but I'd say anybody
who has helped that much to accelerate things that much within our lifetimes
deserves some credit.
It seems inevitable had Apple not done many of the things they've done that
somebody else would have eventually come along. Would Microsoft have been under
as much pressure to create a great UI? Would smart phones have taken off like they
have? Would the design principles of simplicity and function with a powerful yet
hidden engine underneath have been echoed the same way in many modern online
services including Google? Would people have found computers pretty? Would a
mainstream audience have enjoyed technology, paid money for it and contributed to
the growth of the industry as quickly? How far does the influence reach? How many
other companies have been pushed forward because of a phenomena Apple was a big
factor in?
hide 1 reply
InfernoShade
1 month ago
You really need to examine the definition of innovation. Apple innovated for sure.
(See my other posts).

12. InfernoShade
1 month ago
It has nothing to do with being old-fashioned, you just missed the point. And are just
having a good time mocking. :)
He did have an impact on the world, just as others have. Look at people like
Zuckerberg, do you think he changed the world? Many would say yes. Jobs, and
others could be considered a precursor to Zuckerberg (and his like).
Jobs (and his contemporaries) definitely had an impact on technology, computing,
consumer electronics, music, business studies, and society in general. He may not
have been a nice guy, but he did make a mark. It may not have been a huge mark, but
still a mark. "Change the world," yeah that's subjective, but you obviously get the idea,
even though you're mocking it now.
And when you are trying to be aspirational, as leaders should be, you want the
hyperbole like "change the world." Do you think you'll inspire people with "hey, just do
do something, ok" ? No, you want to work with someone who makes you feel like your
work matters. Thing is, most of us never get to work with people who inspire us, even
if they have jerky personalities. (Read my post below for more on this.)
(Edited by author 1 month ago)
hide 3 replies
Tony Knibb
1 month ago
There's a huge difference between "Your work is trash, do better" and "You are an
asshole".
One of those bosses gets a smack, the other motivates.
hide 1 reply
dsp4
1 month ago
Both get punched in my case...
RS
1 month ago

13. Its simple Inferno people who can't do shit mock other people period.
bewlaybrother
1 month ago
Haha, by what definition did he not change the world?
hide 5 replies
EricLR
1 month ago
The kind where in a hundred years, not a single person will remember any of his
accomplishments.
hide 4 replies
Xbrotha
1 month ago
Not many, but the accomplished of Bill Gates and his wife will be
remembered for a long, long time.
bewlaybrother
1 month ago
Ah, so an idiotic, fanciful and utterly unprovable definition. How pointless.
hide 2 replies
Alex Bedwell
1 month ago
If you look out the window, the world hasn't changed one bit. It's
technology to keep us amused, it's in no way "world-changing". I love
my MacBook and I use it daily, but when I die I have the sneaking
suspicion that the only true change that will have come from it is that
I looked out the window at the real, unchanging world less often.

14. hide 1 reply
bewlaybrother
1 month ago
"World" has more than one meaning. Sorry that confuses you
so.
barkomatic
1 month ago
I can think of no greater hell than having a 25 year old boss that thinks he is Steve Jobs and
goes around telling workers "this is shit".
hide 3 replies
Tariq Kamal
1 month ago
And thanks to the Jobs, we’ll have 15 years of that shit, thanks to wave and wave of
assholes who take Jobs’ life as an excuse to be jerks without the brilliance to push it
through.
THANKS STEVE!
hide 2 replies
Mike Roberts
1 month ago
Yes, because Jobs invented the Boss as Asshole...Face it, there were untalented
jerks in the big Boy's Chair long before Jobs came along.
hide 1 reply
RobertSF
1 month ago
He didn't invent it but he took the stigma out of it.

15. Fleurdamour
2 months ago
But if he constantly took credit for other people's work, how many of his supposed
accomplishments are really his?
hide 4 replies
Tony Knibb
1 month ago
None.
InfernoShade
1 month ago
Have you ever worked in corporate america (or any corporation)?! People do this every
day to each other. It's terrible and don't be silly enough to think it's just Jobs. People
have been doing it way before he came along and they'll be doing it until the end of
time.
As for taking credit of other accomplishments, you're over simplifying. One of the
responsibilities of a leader is to pushing his people to be their best, helping them
achieve - sort be more than they can be (yes a bit cheesy). When a leader does that,
the line between who owns that accomplishment gets blurry.
Most workplaces are pedestrian, so it's rare for people to experience this type of push.
Sometimes people don't realize they are being pushed to reach levels of success they
would not have reached themselves. Then factor in some ego, and you have people
taking credit - or seemingly taking credit - for other people's work. And hey, credit
stealing even happens in the lamest of companies without real leaders.
If you haven't worked for a number of years, in various work environments, it's unlikely
you'd understand this.
(Edited by author 1 month ago)
hide 2 replies
justanotherengineer
1 month ago
It is my accomplishment, because I BEAT IT OUT of my team, insult after insult,
threat after threat, until they performed.
.

16. And then I fired half of them based on my judgement of who did not neglect their
family enough to serve me and my vision.
.
wulfcry
1 month ago
A system like that we don't want in Europe and sadly some politicians at least in
the Netherlands want to forward something like that as if were not pushed
enough already.
Phil Simon
2 months ago
I also have mixed feelings about this. I frequently write about Jobs, Zuckerberg, Larry &
Sergey, and Bezos, among others. From everything I've read and heard, they aren't
necessarily nice guys. They are visionaries and for that I have to give them credit.
Visionaries are often difficult to work with.
Ultimately, to me, the question is whether one has to be a prick to be an effective leader. I'd
like to think that that answer is no.
hide 7 replies
Joe_HTH
1 month ago
Bill Gates is a visionary, and he isn't an asshole.
(Edited by author 1 month ago)
hide 2 replies
symbolset
1 month ago
Bill Gates is a visionary, and he is an asshole.
He might redeem himself soon, but heretofore he was always a jerk. A visionary
jerk.

17. hide 1 reply
Xbrotha
1 month ago
maybe a jerk in personality, but not in actions.
Jobs was a jerk in personality and his actions.
Peter Simpson
1 month ago
Even if you are a "visionary" (or maybe just a business success), why does that mean
the rest of the world should give you a pass on having good manners?
I also have a problem seeing Apple, Facebook and Amazon as "visionary" -- they are
successful vendors of consumer products, personal web pages and consumer
products, and that's about it. Successful, innovative, but not visionary. Google is
different. Larry and Sergey really stepped apart from the status quo and built
something completely new. I give them credit for that. But that still doesn't mean I
would think it's OK if they didn't tip their waitress.
Being "special" doesn't absolve you of the responsibility of acting like a mature adult.
hide 3 replies
Phil Simon
1 month ago
I'd argue that Amazon, Apple, and Facebook have all embraced platform thinking
years ahead of other companies. Hence the 'visionary' label. They were all ahead
of the game in different ways, led in large part by their iconic leaders.
InfernoShade
1 month ago
OMG, he didn't tip a waitress, hang him! ;)
Newsflash: the CEO(s) of any company you name has done a lot worse than that.
If you think that Larry and Sergey haven't done some jerky things in their lives,
you're living in a dream land.
(Edited by author 1 month ago)

18. hide 1 reply
haloguy628
1 month ago
We all have done "something stupid". The difference is that decent people
do not do "something stupid" 24/7/365.
xmichaelx
2 months ago
'An early manager on the Mac team told Isaacson about the abuses Jobs
heaped on employees. But she said, “I consider myself the absolute
luckiest person in the world to have worked with him.”'
Somebody's daddy didn't pay enough attention to her. People who happily take abuse from
others should seek counseling.
hide 7 replies
plazman
1 month ago
Like Jobs there were some people who felt honored to have worked with
Walt Disney and he wasn't someone who treated people well.
It is a mixed bag to work with others and I don't see the word happily
in her quote.
Hopefully you have done your counseling and are perfect.
hide 3 replies
Tudor Rosca
1 month ago
You can't really compare the two. One was a cold bastard that understood very
well what the paying customer wants, the other was a great artist.
hide 2 replies
plazman
1 month ago

19. Dig deeper. You will find out that Walt Disney isn't the person who has been
portrayed in popular culture. When the studio artists struck against him in
the late 1940s Disney labeled them all Communists and testified before the
HUAC. Yes, he was a control freak, micro-manager and hardly ever gave
credit to others. He was also a great businessman.
RS
1 month ago
A book is only an abstract of what a person is but it doesn't carve out every
aspect of his/her life but i can say that you are nothing but a douche bag
who can't take the good and bad from one's life to make things better for
others.
InfernoShade
1 month ago
Sadly, you don't get it.
Even if you're not treated well, it's still better to work with someone of vision -
someone who you can learn something from - than to work with small-minded,
pedestrian, average joe that is the common working man.
Corporate america (in my experience) is full of people - a large part of them "leaders" -
that treat others like crap. Most of them are just average in intelligence and skillset.
(Don't get me started on how the became upper management.) These people suck the
soul out of work and will be the downfall of corporate america in general. (Obviously,
I've only worked in America.) It's horrible working for/with them.
So people who are strong and thick-skinned would prefer to work with someone
smarter, sharper, passionate, an A-player and take some insults than to be treaty
nicely and live in mediocrity. It would be great to get both, but it's beyond rare.
Again, not everyone gets it. But that's ok.
(Edited by author 1 month ago)
hide 2 replies
InfernoShade
1 month ago

20. Yeah, just downvote me. :)
Xmichaelx, makes a silly a joke about daddy issues, He gets tons of up votes.
Sure it was funny, but misses the point.
I explain the psychology behind the guys statement. I get downvoted. Without
even thought or comment.
Just shows people refuse to be open to other points of view.
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Tony Knibb
1 month ago
Do you need someone to help get that sand out of your vagina?
Pat Goudey O'Brien
2 months ago
This deserves a highly measured response, but my first impression is to reject Jobs attitude
toward dealing with business and dealing with people. I rather like people, and it seems like
he rather didn't. I can't document that -- never met him or talked to others who knew him,
but his REPORTED attitudes indicate that he was impatient with human nature and didn't
particularly like most people at all, or people in general, though I don't doubt that he loved
many that he knew. BUT, that's not my point. My point is, not much of what Steve Jobs did
for the world was actually required. It was nice stuff that moved our technology forward, but
we didn't have to move our technology forward to continue to live and thrive on our planet.
What Jobs did was change the culture, but did he change it for the better? (He sped it up!
Did we need that?) Or just change it so we noticed (fed his ego and a lot of other people's
envy, but didn't do anything the world couldn't have gotten along fine without)? So, my
question is, why should anyone pay attention to Steve Jobs's philosophy of business? Well,
answer one: if you have a great big ego and want to make a huge splash and be famous and
rich, you might fashion yourself after Jerk #1 (yes, that's a value judgement -- I think the
way he acted toward employees, handicap parking, and random service people was
abhorrent). If you think the mission of business is to serve business itself (e.g., that it's not
a function of society and embedded in a culture as a means to create and foster an
economy that allows humanity to co-exist on a vastly over-populated planet -- are my
biases showing yet?), then sure, follow Jobs's model that makes business a means AND an
end unto itself. I don't subscribe to that attitude. If the guy were creating something truly
needed on this planet -- a way, for instance, to get clean water to people who are having to
PAY some entrepreneur to bring it to them, after some OTHER powerful people put a dam on
a river and diverted water to some city somewhere -- well, then, maybe I'd say a little

21. hard-nosed behavior could be overlooked. And, yes, blah, blah, blah ... I know Jobs's
products are used to promote the welfare of people all over the planet, but so are the
technology products of tons of other people who don't go around abusing the help the way
he did, and who would have done it all anyway, if Steve Jobs never existed. So, I guess my
point is, Jobs acted like what he was doing was the be-all and end-all of existence and he
acted like it excused his obnoxious behavior, and to my mind, it was not and it did not. We
could have done just fine on Earth if Steve were never born or he never succeeded in
bringing Apple and Mac to the people (and I'm typing on a Mac, so I'm not disparaging the
product, just the guy). I think the planet would be a much nicer place if we all realized we're
all PEOPLE, people, and if we had some empathy and compassion for each other (not a bad
thing for us to develop, if we're to stop these crazies from donning riot gear and shooting up
movie theaters). More justification for treating people like unimportant cogs in a wheel does
nothing for the quality of life on this planet, no matter how many iPods you invent.
(Edited by author 2 months ago)
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bikesh sapkota
1 month ago
I think he felt betrayed by John Scully( the CEO he hired) and apple board of directors
and he was showing lots of misplaced anger towards his employees when in fact he
was very bitter about what happen in the boardroom when he was fired. He harbored
that anger and it pretty much shaped his life from that point forward. And after
winning his way-back to save the fallen company, he had justification to act out on his
anger. But we human and human-systems are not designed to harbor negative
feelings so his human-system or body started to develop cancer. It is body's way of
coping. But the fact is he is truly a visionary and made a dint in the universe. He was
very successful but in the end we are only humans.
davossherman
2 months ago
You're trying to make a point, not a blob.
Pick your best 2 to 3 sentences, delete the rest.
Mike | Homeless On Wheels
2 months ago

22. So is the moral of the story "One must be an asshole to be successful in business?"
In my book the end doesn't justify the means. And frankly, I don't think it was a strategy -
Jobs was just naturally an asshole. Sadly, the fact that it seemed to work for him just
reinforced his atrocious behaviour and, sadly, probably inspired some otherwise nice people
into acting similarly.
graham krenz
1 month ago
This isn't new, this is just the next generation of stupid Gordon Gecko knockoffs. They'll die
alone and sad and not realize it until 10 minutes before the buzzer. Good luck to them, I
hope they enjoy their misery. They'll deny it, but I know an empty skull when I meet one.
Idolize steve jobs at the cost of your soul. Do your best work because you want to, not
because you have to.
MarkSaysThings
1 month ago
A visionary jerk who doesn't listen to people is one thing. Most CEO's aren't so lucky. And if
you're a just an ordinary jerk who doesn't listen to people that's worse than anything for
your company.
FrankSeaweed
1 month ago
I worked for a person similar to Jobs. At least in the area of treatment of employees. I think
she thought of herself as an assertive go-getter. The fact is she was a flaming a-hole. One
of the amusing moments was when a new hire was asked to attend two training sessions
with her before his actual start date. That's all it took. He never showed up after that.
I used to say that he was one of the smartest people she ever hired.
John LeBourgeois
2 months ago
People do not even begin to understand the psychodynamics underlying steve jobs, so they

23. fixate on what attracts them.. bully, power, your shit etc..
Jobs is what the asian's call "half-cooked rice" in terms of his spiritual evolution. Too wet to
put back in the bag.. too hard to eat. He took from his mystical journeys that which would
work with his ego structures.. He got pristine perfection and an archtypical connection to
the world of forms from his lsd/zen experiences. However he never developed the other half
of the Zen experience, compassion.. because it didn't fit with his personality structure. Nor
did he apply the principals of self-observation of his ego process and concomitant
reduction as a means of development.. so he supercharged his belief structures and had no
counterpoint to reduce his excesses.
He would have been much better served to have taken a few tabs of ecstasy along with his
LSD.. he would have been a changed man.
His frustration/aggression with a world that did not meet his aesthetic or artistic standards
spills over in his relations with human beings. Yet he would be moved to tears by a
particularly "pure" or essential piece of music or art. Yes he exemplified the fact that to get
true excellence or perfection, you have to push people beyond their comfort zone.. The
japanese culture has that value implicit in their norms.. That's why their cars eat american
manufacturer's lunch.. He had to brute-force it into american norms.. So if you haven't done
zen, and you don't know where your aiming the arrow.. best not to push people in emulation
of his tactics.
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jujutsuka
1 month ago
Couldn't have said it better myself. I think a lot of his personality was shaped by his
time spent in India and his interest in Hinduism and Zen, but he seems to have picked
and chosen what he liked, to others' detriment.
Shooting from the hip, he seemed very impatient with (and abusive of?) those who
didn't function on his wavelength.
Hal O'Brien
2 months ago
The whole topic of Steve Jobs and his sociopathy towards others reeks of survivorship bias
when it comes to other companies. That is, how many CEOs have treated their employees
like crap to emulate Steve, and then (unlike Steve in the long run) run their companies into
the ground anyway?
Nassim Taleb asks of Wall Street traders, "Are you good, or are you lucky? How do you
know?" The very rarity of Jobs' results implies he had what the baseball guys call

24. non-repeatable skills, and was in fact mostly lucky. Pasteur's "Chance favors the prepared
mind," aside, the odds are blindly copying Steve's style won't actually produce the results
you want.
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InfernoShade
1 month ago
Dude, CEO's or other executives, don't treat people badly to emulate Steve Jobs. They
are jerks all by themselves. There were type A jerks before Jobs and they'll be here
way after Jobs. It's the personality type, not a Jobs-like leadership style. Why can't
people understand that. That doesn't mean I condone it, just to be clear.
Though for counter-argument's sake, one repeatable skill is embracing a vertical
business model. He had other repeatable skills but I'm not going to get into it.
Bill Maslen
2 months ago
This is a nice, measured evaluation, I must say. I am increasingly concerned by that tiny
percentage of extremely wealthy and powerful people who appear to have got there, and
most certainly remain there, because they believe they have absolute rights - they believe
they are more entitled (to everything) than anybody else. This sociopathic - even
psychopathic - trend in senior management has already been identified and questioned by
a growing series of commentators, and it does beg the question: are the qualities needed to
lead a major corporation also qualities that will eventually turn that corporation into a
frighteningly self-obsessed power hub, one that relies on legal action, political influence but
above all, sheer arrogant self-belief both to suppress the competition and to enforce
corporate priorities on customers and consumers? In short, turn the entire corporation -
with all its overt and covert power - into a mirror image of its senior manager(s)? We're
seeing similar moves from banks, publishers and energy companies - in this sense, Jobs
was not unique. Aggression and arrogance must be balanced by something, but we don't
appear to have worked out what. And while politicians play the revolving-door game with
the private sector, I wonder how long we're going to have to wait...
hide 1 reply
InfernoShade
1 month ago
Well said. And thank you for realizing this is more than just Steve Jobs. He represents

25. a personality type that is seen everywhere. What's worse is this personality type with
no skills or vision. At least the guy had vision, and appreciated creativity.
pjcamp
1 month ago
He was an obsessive compulsive narcissist. Without his fortune, he would be on the street
corner talking to air molecules.
And despite the article's implicit assumption that his designs were brilliant, there are a lot of
us who find them obtuse, unnecessarily constrained, myopic and even tyrannical, and don't
admire them in the least. His greatest ability was to generate hype, not design.
Jeff Redman
1 month ago
I read this article with interest and being a person who uses both Apple and PC computers
with, I believe, some detachment from the platform wars. That said it seems to me that the
article is founded on a false premise - Mr. Jobs was a genius who changed the world.
To crib his own metaphor, I believe that any dent he made was very very small indeed. It
seems to me that his accomplishment, notable and financially rewarding as it was, did not
noticeably change the world. He did not, for instance, invent the personal computer. Others
did that, as others invented every part of every computer made by his company. For the
most part, Jobs created a business that merely refined the inventions of others. This is the
sort of task for which Japanese industry has been renowned for more than half a century.
His accomplishment does not rise to the heights of other similar industrial innovators such
as Thomas Edison, who registered 2332 patents of which about half were things he
invented, or Jack Kilby or Robert Noyce who invented the integrated circuit. Not even his
drive for perfection was unique. Tiffany had it. Michangelo had it. Faberge had it. The stone
cutters who built Chartré had it. Charles Rolls and Sir Royce had it.
What he did do is create a couple of companies that make great products, made him and
many others very wealthy, and that captured the nation's and perhaps the world's
imagination, but then so did Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwin, and Gustave Eiffel, to name
but a few, but I don't believe that his accomplishments include even a single original
discovery or idea. If he had not made Apple computers the world would not be much, if any
different.
On that basis, I can't but conclude that he was a brilliant, misanthropic, lonely, bitter, and
probably frightened man, who channeled his need for perfection as he defined it into a
series of products and against his own personal weaknesses adopted the adage "the best

26. defense is a good offense."
Social Oracle
1 month ago
Seems the guy was basically a lucky prick who stood on the shoulders on the giants that
built Apple, the employees. The fact this asshole was celebrated by anyone doesn't say
much about the people who worship him. He didn't program, he didn't design and his pet
projects were mostly failures. His genius was getting people to believe his bullshit.
hide 1 reply
EricLR
1 month ago
Well, he was a genius at stealing credit. Got to give him that.
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