I kind of agree it's time to depedestalize "tech"founders. Every company is a tech company and their bosses can be just as scumbags. The religion that worships infotech as inherently unevil and idealistic needs to die.
The fawning over Steve Jobs (and I don't mean apple coolaid folk) is always bizarre, and I think really drove a lot of the "super star ceo" nonsense these days.
I'm not saying he didn't save apple or whatever, I'm just unconvinced that being that particular model of arrogance was necessary part of said "saving". Obviously we can't roll back time and replace him with an identical clone with the only difference being that he didn't shout at people or have personal vendettas against other people.
I don't recall similar stories about Bill Gates, and yet MS clearly did well.
Steve Jobs was, quite likely, one of the biggest jerks in Silicon Valley history. I've worked with two people, over the years, who worked closely with (or directly under) him, at one point or another, and they both loathed him. I mean serious hate. It was pretty shocking, as they were very calm, likable folks, otherwise.
He was, unquestionably, a true visionary, though, and his obsessive, brutal management style, allowed him to implement his visions, with little interference. It reminds me of the "bad guy" in Braveheart, Edward "Longshanks" the First. He was a complete bastard, but he also unified a lot of what is now Britain.
Steve Jobs was also an outstanding persuasive speaker. He could not only convince you that the world was flat, but sell you First Class tickets, on a boat to the edge. The "RDF" was real.
But so many people think that dressing, and acting, like Steve Jobs will somehow allow them to channel him (see: "Cargo Cult"). They get the "asshole" part down, but can't quite synthesize the "visionary" part.
It's a bit ironic that Tim Cook is sort of the polar opposite of Jobs. It seems to me, that he's actually a rather decent chap (as much as any CEO can be).
I don't know about yelling and vendettas, but he has a checkered relationship with the open source/hobbyist community because he imposed proprietary licensing on his BASIC implementation despite the computer hobbyists of the time working more on a FOSS model. When hobbyists copied his software despite the license, he wrote an open letter claiming they were stealing from him. However, the rampant copying also meant Microsoft Basic became the most popular variant which solidified Microsoft's market lead.
I think the point is more about people who worked with Gates not having that many bad things to say about him. I used to follow MSFT news very closely during the Gates era and invariably you'd hear stories how people at the company genuinely liked him.
Business people, startup people, VC funders, etc all idolize a specific image of Jobs, which mostly appears to focus on how he dressed, and how he was an asshole to people.
We will never know if being an asshole was needed to get Apple to where he got it, I'm inclined to think it isn't.
Wall Street thought he was a loser too after we was fired as CEO of Apple and just another dumb founder and he should sell his company to IBM. This story repeats again and again. Steve Jobs proved them all wrong and now everything Apple does is brilliant and they should buy Peloton.
I'm not saying he didn't save apple or whatever, I'm just unconvinced that being that particular model of arrogance was necessary part of said "saving". Obviously we can't roll back time and replace him with an identical clone with the only difference being that he didn't shout at people or have personal vendettas against other people.
I don't recall similar stories about Bill Gates, and yet MS clearly did well.