[smithbits]

How much of this is that the company was hugely influenced by the founder? Steve Jobs was famous for making sure all the machines at the NeXT factory were painted the same color and that no third party logs were displayed. A certain kind of OCD employee is attracted to that attention to detail and will succeed and advance within the company. Jeff Bezos is famous for the door desk at Amazon and creating a frugal company culture. Both companies are wildly successful but it seems like Bezos would make a horrible Apple CEO and I suspect that a building full of door desks would be amazingly crass to Steve Jobs. Neither is one is better, they are both successful, but I think they attract and utilize different talents. I've often wondered if Balmer's time at the top of Microsoft has been hampered by not being a coder.