[InclinedPlane]

Jerk? No, Steve Jobs was an asshole, across the board. He was also a visionary and he was able to achieve great things. Guess what, being a highly achieving visionary is orthogonal to being a good person. People need to stop conflating the two and stop idolizing people just because of their achievements.

[Nomentatus]

True. There's probably a slight inverse correlation, since achievers don't usually have as much time to learn politesse or even play team sports when young. Gotta admit, that even though I've never been a Steve fan at all, reading the book reviews made me realise I've probably given him a few too many benefits of the doubt, too.

[loco5niner]

edit - nevermind... forgot what orthogonal means.

[dsajames]

That's not what orthogonal means. It doesn't mean "opposite".

Being a good person and being a high achieving person is very possible. Not necessary, not guaranteed. They just have nothing to do with each other.

[loco5niner]

Oh yeah... Whoops!

You're right.

[CharlesW]

I agree with all of this but would just note that Jobs wasn't an asshole every minute of the day, or even most of every day. He was often nice, charismatic, and inspirational.

[not_that_noob]

Jobs was IMO a High-Functioning Sociopath - http://www.md-health.com/Sociopath-Traits.html

He turned his charm on when he need to accomplish something, but there is no real empathy for anyone who was not useful to him in some way. The sad reality of Lisa's situation was that he didn't need her. So he treated her very badly, and then as is typical with sociopaths, turn around and blame her for his behavior. I truly sympathize with her.

[Nomentatus]

What's so fascinating to me is that his narcissism/sociopathy ending up being focused on creating ever-better products, and therefore useful; that strikes me as rare, although it may not be. Wanting to be admired for doing (pushing others to do) actual good work isn't the usual sociopath thing. Maybe the highly unusual example Wozniak showed him, of the excellence humans could achieve (beyond what cut-and-paste engineers could achieve) was the real seed of that trait. Plus enjoying scalding others.

[InclinedPlane]

Doesn't matter. An asshole is always an asshole even if they aren't an asshole 24/7. This is an equally important thing to understand. Being an asshole is a defining characteristic. Like being a murderer or a slave holder or a thief. Most murderers spend only a minute or so out of their entire lives committing a murder, that doesn't change who they are.

[Nomentatus]

Right. Hitler was great to his immediate clerical staff (according to their much later reports) and liked to pet dogs. So what?