Everyone knows there were two Steve Jobses: the entrepreneur, a true genius and visionary, and then the bad Steve Jobs, who was a real jerk, with an uncontrollable temper and no manners.
It shouldn’t be held against him too much, because in reality all geniuses have their quirks. Some time ago we wrote about Steve Jobs’s dark side and the devil that lived inside this genius. Today it’s Dylan Love who publishes in Business Insider seven curious stories taken from Jobs’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, in which Steve Jobs let that very particular “inner self” come out, leaving everyone wondering whether he did it to destroy your self-esteem or for some other reason.
1. “You have no f***ing idea what you’re doing”
When Apple was about to unveil the “Bondi Blue” iMac, Jobs went after his good friend and advertising partner Lee Clow, believing Clow was using the wrong colour in the print ads. Jobs stormed in shouting, roughly: “You have no f***ing idea what you’re doing. I’m going to find another agency for the advertising, because this is a piece of s***.”
Clow brought out the original photos and compared them with the printed ads, and found that the mistake was the printer’s, not the agency’s, so Jobs apologised.
2. Steve Jobs walked out of a five-star hotel that didn’t live up to his expectations
Jony Ive took the trouble to choose a hotel for Jobs in London. As soon as Jobs walked into the hotel and his room, he called Ive and told him something like: “I don’t like the room. It’s a piece of s***, let’s go.” Jobs grabbed his bags and left the hotel, though not before stopping at reception to tell the clerk what he thought of the place (sparing no details and without much subtlety).
3. Jobs went too far with an older woman at a café
Jony Ive tells the story: “Once we went to Whole Foods for a smoothie… and there was an older woman making it, and Steve criticised how half-heartedly she was making the smoothies.”
Ive says that afterwards Jobs felt bad when he realised she was an older woman doing a job she wasn’t happy with, probably because she had to. Perhaps that’s the origin of the famous line attributed to Steve Jobs:
If you like what you do, it shows. If you don’t, it shows even more.
4. “Everything you’ve ever done in your life is s***”
Jobs and his team went to visit Xerox. A week later, the star hardware designer on the Xerox team got a visit from Steve Jobs, who told him: “Everything you’ve ever done in your life is s***, so come and work for me.”
Great words, since this person was Bob Belleville, who ended up working for Apple as a result of that inspiring pitch. 🙂
5. He fired employees in the worst possible way
When Steve Jobs had to make cuts at Pixar, he fired many employees without any explanation or severance pay. Pamela Kerwin, a former Pixar employee, told him he should give them at least two weeks’ notice. Jobs replied:
“OK, but the notice is retroactive, starting two weeks ago.”
6. Harassing people in job interviews
Nobody ever knew why he did this, and the most likely explanation is simply that he lost his head. Steve Jobs would burst into job interviews to ask candidates whether they masturbated, how old they were when they lost their virginity, and whether they didn’t think they were too fat to work at Apple.
7. How he treated one of his first employees and friends
Daniel Kottke was one of Apple’s first employees and even a good friend who went with Jobs on his trip to India in 1974. He stood by Jobs through thick and thin and defended him at every turn. Nobody knows why Steve Jobs never gave him the same stock options as the rest of the employees. In fact, even though many people stepped in to try to change his mind, Jobs said, more or less: “Fine, I’ll give him zero stock options.” Nobody ever found out why, and everyone believes there was no reason at all.
Finally, on a personal level, Steve Jobs denied being the father of his daughter Lisa for a long time, even though he knew for certain she was his daughter. Over time, though, after his world fell apart when he was ousted from Apple, he changed a great deal in this respect.
Further reading
- What Bill Gates and Steve Jobs really thought of each other
- 11 Steve Jobs quotes that will go down in business history
Featured image: Alterations by David Fuchs ; original by Rama , licensed CC-by-SA, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
