[jjeaff]

You can own something without pettiness and employing someone does not give you total control over that employee. In my mind, a feudal Lord is someone who wants everyone to know and acknowledge they are in charge and demands exacting obedience.

[metaphor]

Still not quite making the link between "feudal lord" and "pettiness" (both seem equally subjective/vague).

By "total control", do you mean well beyond the boundaries of labor law? In my mind, I'm admittedly inclined to interpret this color as a consequence of the music stopping at an unprofitable creative house with an internal culture of unabashed freedom on someone else's dime.

Maybe I just need to read the books mentioned by the parent sometime.

[a9h74j]

Perhaps "petty dictator" for connotations (a would-be not an absolute dictator). We might or might not have many too-distant impressions of what ancient feudalism involved. For example, I have heard suggested that it was a system fundamentally characterized by reciprocal obligations upward and downward (including a kind of labor law?). Abused no doubt, but not lawless.

[dekhn]

Here let me explain it with concrete examples. Let's say you're a smart engineer, you know how to write code and make things happen and you have pretty good idea of what users seem to want or need.

You have a boss and you have a meeting with your boss to make a decision about including a new feature you've coded up a prototype for, into a product that is going to be released in a year. You demo it, and it goes mostly OK but there are some hitches.

You boss has several ways of responding. One way could be to call you an idiot, a stupid idiot who's wasting everybody's time. The other way would be to provide a more polite way of saying that the feature might not be ready yet and could use some refinement.

Multiple employees of Jobs reported this sort of behavior (screaming, belitting, etc):

"""Jobs stormed into a meeting and started shouting that they were “fucking dickless assholes."""

""" He shouted, "You guys don't know what you're doing. I'm going to get someone else to do the ads because this is fucked up."""

"""A few weeks later he called Bob Belleville, one of the hardware designers on the Xerox Star team. "Everything you've ever done in your life is shit," Jobs said, "so why don't you come work for me?"""

"""When Steve had to make cutbacks at Pixar, he fired people and didn't give any severance pay."""

"""“How old were you when you lost your virginity?" he asked. The candidate looked baffled. “What did you say?” “Are you a virgin?” Jobs asked. The candidate sat there flustered, so Jobs changed the subject. “How many times have you taken LSD?” Hertzfeld recalled, “The poor guy was turning varying shades of red, so I tried to change the subject and asked a straightforward technical question.”""

"""To address the problem, Jobs gathered the MobileMe team in Apple's auditorium and asked: "Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?" When the team gave their answers, Jobs replied, "Then why the fuck doesn't it do that?"

Jobs then fired the MobileMe boss on the spot and replaced him with Eddie Cue."""

I think Jony Ive pinpointed it: """I once asked him why he gets so mad about stuff. He said, "But I don't stay mad." He has this very childish ability to get really worked up about something, and it doesn't stay with him at all. But, there are other times, I think honestly, when he's very frustrated, and his way to achieve catharsis is to hurt somebody. And I think he feels he has a liberty and license to do that. The normal rules of social engagement, he feels, don't apply to him. Because of how very sensitive he is, he knows exactly how to efficiently and effectively hurt someone. And he does do that."""

The only question is: if Jobs hadn't been an asshole, would the computing world have come so far so fast, and does that justify his behavior?

[metaphor]

Thanks for all that.