Steve Jobs Was a Frighteningly Cold Maniacal Tyrant

“Steve Jobs was a major, world-class jerk. A friend who knows about these things — but not Steve — wonders if he wasn’t at least a borderline sociopath. If you define that as someone who does evil things and doesn’t feel remorse, the picture of a smirking Steve Jobs does begin to emerge.”

These are the first few lines of David Coursey’s Forbes article “Steve Jobs Was A Jerk, You Shouldn’t Be” published on October 12, 2011.

Now, it’s 2023 — and after consuming a few books and tons of articles on Steve Jobs, I would say the same thing; Steve Jobs was a huge jerk. The good thing is — it worked out for him.

Before you start throwing stones at me, let me be very clear. Steve Jobs was indeed a visionary innovator who revolutionized the tech industry and managed to make people crazy for a bitten apple. It’s incredibly insane.
Nobody would deny that.

Yet, as the moon has its spots, Jobs had his dark side too. And to my opinion, it’s worth discussing his flaws and shortcomings to know this genius as a whole.
So, let’s grab the magnifying glass and see what we find.

Steve Jobs was a control freak

Jobs loved to control everything, and I mean everything.

Isaacson writes in Jobs’ biography that he was a control freak who insisted on having ultimate control over every aspect of Apple’s products. From design to marketing, Jobs was the ‘supreme leader’ who had the final say.

Ken Segall in his book Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success, also describes Jobs as a ‘maniacal tyrant’ obsessed with his uncompromising standards.

Segal writes:

“No one denies that Steve was incredibly demanding, relentlessly tough, and, in certain moments of passion, outright scary. His bottom line was that the ship had to be moving forward every day. If you weren’t helping, that’s when you got in trouble.”

As you can imagine, Jobs’ controlling nature and high standards were often criticized by those who worked with him.

Tony Fadell, former senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple, also depicted Jobs as a ‘very very demanding boss.’ He told The New York Times in an interview that Jobs would often call him late at night to discuss new ideas or problems with the iPod. And he expected his employees to be available at all times.

Shouting and cursing at employees were very common for Jobs. Many employees resigned from Apple just failing to tolerate him as a boss. However, his behavior was so terrible that he was forced out of Apple in 1985 after a power struggle with then-CEO John Sculley.

Reality distortion field

This one is really interesting.

Jobs had a tendency to manipulate and deceive others using the ‘reality distortion field,’ — it’s a term that employees at Apple used to describe Jobs’ ability to convince people to believe in his vision, even when it seemed impossible.

A whole chapter (Chapter Eleven) in Walter Isaacson’s book is dedicated to describing this Reality Distortion Field that starts with this:

“When Andy Hertzfeld joined the Macintosh team, he got a briefing from Bud Tribble, the other software designer, about the huge amount of work that still needed to be done. Jobs wanted it finished by January 1982, less than a year away. ‘That’s crazy,’ Hertzfeld said. ‘There’s no way.’ Tribble said that Jobs would not accept any contrary facts. ‘The best way to describe the situation is a term from Star Trek,’ Tribble explained. ‘Steve has a reality distortion field.’ When Hertzfeld looked puzzled, Tribble elaborated. ‘In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he’s not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules.’”

However, in his book, Segall echoes the same:

“Though his outbursts were legendary, Steve could also be incredibly supportive. In fact, some of his praise seemed to be piped in directly from his reality distortion field: ‘This is the greatest launch in the history of computers.’ Maybe you knew that it wasn’t really true, but the fact that he was distorting reality just for you created a warm and fuzzy feeling.”

It may sound interesting to your ears but not so interesting for Jobs’ victims I guess. Because this reality distortion included lying and making false promises to both employees and customers.

What’s more?

Jobs would often make exaggerated claims about the capabilities of Apple’s products only to backpedal later admitting they were not possible. This terrible tendency to manipulate and deceive others destroyed his relationships with some of Apple’s key partners and suppliers.

“This is shit!” he(Jobs) yelled.
Jobs was merciless and mean to the people who worked for him. Here is another incident worth mentioning.

In early July of 1997, Steve Jobs begged Lee Clow (the creative director at Chiat/Day who had done the great “1984” ad for the launch of the Macintosh) to pitch for Apple’s marketing campaign. He was desperate to show that Apple is different and for that he needed Clow.

According to the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Clow agreed and with his team tried different approaches that praised the ‘crazy ones’ who ‘think different.’ But nothing seemed right to Jobs. Eventually, they wrote their own draft that began with: “Here’s to the crazy ones.”

When Jobs read that draft, he became angry and yelled at the copywriter. Isaacson writes:

“Jobs was as demanding as ever. When Clow’s team flew up with a version of the text, he exploded at the young copywriter. ‘This is shit!’ he yelled. ‘It’s advertising agency shit and I hate it.’ It was the first time the young copywriter had met Jobs, and he stood there mute. He never went back.”

Working for or under Jobs was a nightmare. If you fail to satisfy his enormous ego, you will surely face the consequences.

“Most people have a regulator between their mind and mouth that modulates their brutish sentiments and spikiest impulses. Not Jobs,” Walter Isaacson describes. “Jobs’ Zen training never quite produced in him a Zen-like calm or inner serenity.”

Jobs denied the paternity of his first child, Lisa Brennan, for years Steve Jobs famously denied paternity of his first child, Lisa Brennan, for many years, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

In her memoir, The Bite in the Apple, Chrisann Brennan (mother of Lisa Brennan) writes that Jobs was ‘cruel’ to her during their relationship — and he denied paternity in part because he ‘wanted to hurt’ her.

In her words —

“It took me a few days before I told Steve. We were standing in the dining room, talking about something else entirely, and I told him: ‘I’m pregnant.’ Steve’s face turned ugly. He gave me a fiery look. Then he rushed out of the house without a word.”

“Steve was just not dealing with Chrisann or the pregnancy,” Greg Calhoun recalls in the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. “He could be very engaged with you in one moment, but then very disengaged. There was a side to him that was frighteningly cold.”

Isaacson mentions that Jobs was ‘increasingly private’ about his personal life and that he “did not want to reveal that he had a daughter out of wedlock.”

However, according to a New York Times article, Jobs initially denied paternity in part because he didn’t want to pay child support.

I mean, seriously, how could a genius make love to a woman, get her pregnant, and then deny paternity?

I don’t get it. Do you?

Empathy hardly existed in Jobs’ authoritarian character

Jobs’ leadership style was often described as authoritarian.

Walter Isaacson writes that velvety diplomacy was nowhere in Jobs’ character. Instead, he was often known for his lack of empathy or compassion.

He describes:

“When he (Jobs) decided that a division of Airborne Express wasn’t delivering spare parts quickly enough, he ordered an Apple manager to break the contract. When the manager protested that doing so could lead to a lawsuit, Jobs replied, ‘Just tell them if they fuck with us, they’ll never get another fucking dime from this company, ever.’ The manager quit, there was a lawsuit, and it took a year to resolve. ‘My stock options would be worth $10 million had I stayed,’ the manager said, ‘but I knew I couldn’t have stood it — and he’d have fired me anyway.’ The new distributor was ordered to cut inventory 75%, and did. ‘Under Steve Jobs, there’s zero tolerance for not performing,’ its CEO said. At another point, when VLSI Technology was having trouble delivering enough chips on time, Jobs stormed into a meeting and started shouting that they were ‘fucking dickless assholes.’ The company ended up getting the chips to Apple on time, and its executives made jackets that boasted on the back, ‘Team FDA.’”

Steve Jobs also kept a sharp eye on the hiring process — and loved to harass people in the interview. Below is an example from Isaccson’s book that exhibits the treatment applicants used to get from Jobs:

“One day he, Hertzfeld, and Smith interviewed a candidate for software manager who, it became clear as soon as he walked in the room, was too uptight and conventional to manage the wizards in the fishbowl. Jobs began to toy with him mercilessly. ‘How old were you when you lost your virginity?’ he asked.

The candidate looked baffled. ‘What did you say?’

‘Are you a virgin?’ Jobs asked. The candidate sat there flustered, so Jobs changed the subject. ‘How many times have you taken LSD?’ Hertzfeld recalled, ‘The poor guy was turning varying shades of red, so I tried to change the subject and asked a straightforward technical question.’ But when the candidate droned on in his response, Jobs broke in. ‘Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble,’ he said, cracking up Smith and Hertzfeld.

‘I guess I’m not the right guy,’ the poor man said as he got up to leave.”

Now, tell me, dear reader, did you expect this from your favorite genius? Trust me, I didn’t.

Jobs was not into charity too despite being a tech billionaire. Believe it or not, he was notoriously stingy when it came to charitable giving.

Some say Jobs donated anonymously, while others claim he never donated a dime to charity. According to a report published in The Huffington Post, Jobs did not make any significant donations to charity during his lifetime.

How surprising!

Because almost all the tech billionaires we know (including Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg) spend a considerable amount of their wealth on charitable causes. Some even make pledges to donate the majority of their wealth to charity.

Here, Steve Jobs was painfully exceptional.

Closing thoughts

To me, Steve Jobs was both — an undoubtedly brilliant innovator and a huge jerk. His extreme perfectionism, intricate personality, tendency to manipulate others, and lack of empathy point to a darker side of his personality.

“…there were actually two Steves — the merciless, controlling, unrelenting Steve and the inspiring, charming, and deeply human Steve,” writes Segall in his book Insanely Simple. He further added, “It was this combination that made him so fascinating, and it’s what made so many people devote their energy, and much of their lives, to his vision.”

Now, if you ask me, I will request you not be a jerk in your pursuit of being a genius. Because it’s the worst lesson you can take from Steve Jobs and it truly sucks.

The writer is Founder & Editor of The Masterpiece. He can be reached at: [email protected]. 

 

The views and opinions expressed in this write-up are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Eye.