[jballanc]

To continue on this thread, I once heard Steve describe it this way:

"When I returned to Apple, I went to every engineering team and fired all the managers. Then, I went to the smartest engineer on each team and told them they were going to be the new manager. Of course, being the smartest engineers, they all immediately said, 'No'! So I told them, 'Look, either you're going to be the new manager, or I'll go hire someone like your old manager.' After that, every one of them agreed to take the position."

[ajays]

Do you have a reference for this? I'd like to send it out to a few people, but "I read it on HN" doesn't seem to have the same cache' (yet.. ;) ).

[jballanc]

Unfortunately, this was from a talk Steve gave when I was working at Apple, so I'm quoting from memory...