Why qualify it with "sometimes"? I think it's safe to assume that the way a person behaves in private, among their peers, shows more about their essential character than how they behave when doing public relations.
The Schmidt and Jobs on display in the email are the essential Schmidt and Jobs. The admirable qualities are the stage show.
That's an interesting question. The cynic argues that everyone is on a PR mission and that our true self is when we are in a moment of weakness. The idealist argues that those moments are rare and far in between, and shouldn't define us. But at the heart of the debate is the question of whether there is a "true self" at all. Maybe people do just what people do.
I suspect we try to characterize people because we're attempting to build a Bayesian Model that can help us predict someone's next move. And all that is going to depend on our 'prior' and 'base rate'. In this perspective, there is no "true self" that will be observed by everyone on the planet.
It's important to consider the context here. What seems significant, in lieu of the eventual exposure of their wage fixing scheme, was what Steve Jobs didn't say in his response. Read the emoji as "that works" rather than just "I'm pleased".
Sure, but at the very best it means he did not object to somebody getting fired over it.
Legality of wage fixing aside for the moment, I don't think this should have been a fireable offense at all (reprimanding the recruiter to ensure it does not happen again would have been all that's needed to satisfy their little gentlemen's agreement).
Object to what end? That was Google’s call to terminate the recruiter. What should he have said: oh, that sucks, I didn’t want you to fire one of your people over it? The only outcome there is disagreement and why waste the energy, even if he believed that? That’s also a mixed signal contextually.
Even setting aside how Steve fired more than one person on the spot — I’m personally aware of him firing half a room in MobileMe, for example — and everything we know about him, and how the firing of that recruiter was probably the outcome he was telegraphing via the email, there’s absolutely nothing to gain in this situation challenging or objecting to Google’s move as an executive at another company, particularly on moral grounds. He’d have looked like an (exploitable) idiot, to be quite frank, given how business works at this level.
How do you think that conversation would have gone? “Oh, you’re right, we shouldn’t have done that, our bad?”
Did I say he should have objected, or to get the recruiter reinstated? I find it inappropriate to respond with a smilie when you hear somebody was just fired. Something more neutral like "I appreciate the issue has been handled" would have sat better with me (disregarding the larger context of how f*cked up the entire agreement was, of course).
Admirable qualities? I'm pretty certain that I would have told Steve to fuck off within five minutes of meeting him. Just another rich prick consumed by his ever inflating ego.
But I also wouldn't also have left the building without that NeXT station under my arm.
Why qualify it with "sometimes"? I think it's safe to assume that the way a person behaves in private, among their peers, shows more about their essential character than how they behave when doing public relations.
The Schmidt and Jobs on display in the email are the essential Schmidt and Jobs. The admirable qualities are the stage show.