The business world is famous for its difficult bosses, to put it as mildly as possible. There are screamers and throwers and silent-treatment types — all kinds and shapes of cruelty. If you go to the right bars around the downtown area of any major city and get a stool close to a group of young-looking people in suits, you can hear some pretty alarming stories about their bosses. The American economy, it sometimes seems, is run by demanding and irrational psychopaths assisted by terrified fauns.
It’s hard, though, when you reach a certain age, not to instinctively side with the psychopaths.
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Steve Jobs, the two-time impresario behind the astonishing success of Apple Computer, has a reputation for being — well, I won’t use the “P” word, so we’ll have to settle for “demanding.” He’s a demanding boss, from all accounts.
A friend of mine who spent some time in Cupertino — and that’s how the cool kids refer to Apple HQ: “Cupertino,” which is where it’s based, deep in Silicon Valley — has shared lots of stories about Jobs’s famous temper, his obsessive perfectionism, his willingness to shelve any project or product (or employee) that doesn’t meet his high standards.
“In a meeting with Steve, you have to be prepared for his questions,” my friend told me, adding darkly, “all of his possible questions, from how long a product will take to build to how it might be shipped to whether it should come in blue. When he asks a question, you have to be prepared.”
Or?
My friend shook his head, deep into an Angry-Steve Flashback. “It’s not good.”
The stories of Steve’s temper are passed around Silicon Valley like business cards. Steve tossing a chair when a prototype wasn’t thin enough. Steve firing an engineer in an elevator when the engineer told him about the battery life of a new iPhone. Steve scrapping an entire product line because it wasn’t perfect, and had no hope of becoming perfect. Steve demanding more features. Steve insisting on better syncing. Steve shouting for thinner. Steve screaming for lighter. Steve terrifying his employees, his vendors, his business partners. Steve, engaged in furious e-mail exchanges with journalists, bloggers, and random customers who happened to e-mail him at the right moment, when he was taking a break from making his employees sweat and from engineering even higher standards.
And somehow, in the midst of all of this shouting and demanding and firing and insisting, Steve starts a movie studio, Pixar, and produces some of the most lasting and powerful animated movies ever made, like the Toy Story trilogy and the magnificent Up.
He didn’t accomplish any of this by being an understanding boss.
When a young engineer absentmindedly left a working prototype of the unreleased newest iPhone at a Silicon Valley bar, it was big news in the tech world. One industry blog managed to get its hands on the unit, prompting Steve to call in the cops. Friends of the engineer said they expected him to be plucked off the street one day and disappear into an unmarked van. They were only half-joking.
It’s hard to keep that in mind, when you pass through the gleaming high style of your local Apple store, with the beehive of purposeful, slightly scruffy young people milling around in T-shirts. The Apple Store is such a friendly place. That’s a big part of the Apple brand — ease of use, sleek design, shiny screens. When the company introduced its revolutionary Macintosh computer in the early 1980s, the product photo showed the squat, mini-looking unit with a smiley face on its screen. “Hi,” the computer was saying, thus giving birth to one of the most successful consumer brands ever.
I'm a former PC owner, who still uses it at work. There, I am often frustrated by unhelpful error messages, difficulty with the local and network printers, and many, many, many interruptions to my work with reminders to upgrade or refusal to load a page.
I got the MacBook after seeing what a friend could do with the Movie editing. I've not done that much movie editing since buying, but I have enjoyed:
- quick start
- few interruptions to my work
- all printers and peripherals - ALL - work seamlessly, without delay
- Lack of virus attacks - yes, I know this is largely due to the smaller user base, but it's nice
- NO problems connecting with any network around
In short, Apple products have made using my computer easier. I don't care about the "look" of the product, I care about how I can reduce my stress level when working.
Plus, I enjoy certain applications - Garage Band, IPhoto, Photo Booth - and the built-in camera. All in all, a good deal for the money.
RIP.
Saw the Macintosh when first introduced and now use both Mac and IBM systems for different tasks.
However, if any Apple CEOs are reading this--lousy service and junk batteries. Give the Jobs legacy a proper nod and make some improvements!
Steve Jobs was almost surely one of the most difficult bosses one could imagine. I benefited greatly from the string of difficult bosses I've had over the years.
The folks who have the privilege of working with these rare people are the most direct beneficiaries.
Steve Jobs is among those few people who leave a legacy that directly benefits hundreds of millions of people. When those rare individuals use their freedom to its fullest extent, all of us are the beneficiaries. Preserving an environment where such people can flourish is crucial to our future.The question on the table now is .. could the Apple miracle be replicated in today's business environment?
Said far better than I can muster ....
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
You don't have to be an a-hole to succeed in business, but it helps. Most of what you have to overcome is others' laziness, or their unwillingness to be told what to do, or their bad attitudes.
Few who haven't owned a business can appreciate just how demanding it is. We have a great deal to relearn in America, and the sooner we get to that task, the sooner we shake the likes of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al.
Stonewall Jackson had very much the same reputation as Jobs. It was said of him that "he would hang a man at the drop of a hat - and he would drop the hat." He was harsh, drove his troops mercilessly, and was known for making completely unreasonable demands of them - demands that they achieved. Jackson's men did not love him, as they did Robert E. Lee. But they did everything he demanded, because he brought them victory.
How sad it is to see that a nation worships a businessman but does not recognize the talented writers or philosophers or scientists in its midst. Jobs made his money by marketing "toys" that we can live without but have been deftly conditioned to crave for. These are the same toys that today's "conquerors" of Wall Street are using to spread their infantile messages. Such objects of "desire" are now given to young children, thus enabling the raising of future illiterate generations. Look around you and observe how many individuals still communicate the old-fashioned way, via civil discourse, rather than by robotized "texting."
I am a scientist and greatly appreciate the advent of the computer age and the Internet. However, I still regard my laptop as a tool and an enabler only.
I bought a Mac when they first came out. $2400. The worthless thing literally could not add two numbers. Nice looking design, though, if you don't have any work to do.
I’ve been using Macs since day one. But there are those Day Zero people out there who no doubt bought the Apple or Apple II.
Steve Jobs was personally a brilliant a-hole. There’s no getting around that. He was a tyrant. He was also a liberal. But as Rush Limbaugh said this morning (somewhat paraphrased….he was speaking faster than I could type), “He obviously did not let his liberalism get in the way of his work. He was a classic capitalist.”
Steve Jobs did not abhor profit or hard work. Ironically enough, those “activists” who are now trying to spark a Marxist revolution from the sidewalk on Wall Street are often texting each other on iPhones or iPads. These same need-to-take-a-shower yutes who hate capitalism surely love Steve Jobs, one of the greatest capitalists of the last forty years. Jobs showed the power — and the goodness — of hard work, innovation, excellence, and risk-taking, all attributes that are at the heart of the real, non “hope and changey,” America.
For anyone using a Mac as their primary source of income (including me), Jobs has long been a central point of discussion. One day you hate him for the stupid (really stupid) round mouse. The next you love him for something else. Apple enthusiasts themselves tend to be as zealous and annoying as Ron Paul clones, often to a very unhealthy degree. But there is no denying that this Apple/Mac universe was rarely boring.
All of that non-boredom, the controversy, the successes, and failures are a part of that Apple/Mac universe, a universe driven by style (sometimes insanely so), hype, and excellence. And it was ultimately the excellence that provided a strong enough scaffolding for everything else….or was. However one felt about Jobs, he was a flash of vibrancy that has now gone out of the universe. Many of us got up this morning feeling a sense of loss because of the death of a man that few of us had ever met.
Working for a demanding boss *that knows what he's doing* would be great. But most of us work for pointy-haired bosses with no identifiable claim to fame.
I seem to remember reading that Kelly Johnson (Lockheed Skunk Works) was also demanding. But in a way that inspired. His people were intensely loyal and motivated.
You have missed the point. Of course merely "being difficult" did not make Steve Jobs great.
What made him great was, yes his VISION, but also his drive, perfectionism, and unrelenting hard work. And when he hired people to help turn his vision into reality, he expected and demanded the same of them (actually, I would bet, probably a lot less) as he did of himself.
If you think that vision was all it took, then go ahead and sit on your couch and try to become a multi-billionaire, industry and culture changing, icon by forming a great vision, without demanding anything of yourself, or others.
Two things: 1) Macs ARE Unix based. 2) George Lucas founded Pixar. Jobs bought it to help Lucas with his divorce so he wouldn't have to sell anything Star Wars.
Lost in all this is the corporate culture comment. One of the many things (other than the PC) that Mr. Jobs could avoid was being forced to be PC. Now? An on-again-off-again Apple Person informed an interviewer the morning after the Passing was announced that the Apple Way (or whatever it's called) had already shifted from a focus on the individual to a focus on the Group. If I owned any Apple stock, I'd be selling.
The biggest difference between Apple and Microsoft has ALWAYS been that--with a Windows machine--you actually have to understand at least a little about how the thing works. It's not surprising, then, that with a more open architecture and so many more frustrated (and ultimately more knowledgeable) users, Microsoft came to dominate the market.
