[jimmywetnips]

Absolutely. I remember reading some biography about him that my dad bought me when I was in high school. I was like, shit finally I'll figure out what made this guy so great.

You come out the other end only thinking, wow. What a fucking asshole. A talented asshole, but an absolute piece of work

[simonh]

Dude was 19 at the time. People change, I know I have.

[Retric]

Sure, except he got worse.

[simonh]

Ive seen and read multiple interviews with people he worked on later in his career, and that doesn't seem to be their experience.

[saghm]

Sure, but there's obviously a spectrum to how people act due to a lack of maturity and wisdom, and it's not obvious to me that Jobs fell into the normal range of immature behavior rather than being much more conceited and selfish than average. It's also not like he didn't have plenty of time to recognize his mistakes and try to make amends and act differently going forward, and it doesn't really seem like he ever grew in that regard.

[simonh]

"One of the frustrating things, and many of us probably experiences this in their lives, is that as you grow and mature you change, but people are constantly treating you as though you are still the same person you were when you were 18 or 19." - Steve Jobs.

[saghm]

I find it hard to believe that most people he interacted with in the last 2-3 decades of his life as a wealthy, famous CEO treated him the same way he was treated as an unknown young adult. Regardless, it's not clear to me that this is much of a rebuttal to what I said above; I made the assertion that he didn't stop acting selfishly later in life, and a pithy quote doesn't demonstrate any evidence of better behavior.

[simonh]

Look up the interviews with people who actually worked for him and with him on YouTube. He successfully recruited and retained top talent, and inspired fierce loyalty at Apple, NeXT and Pixar. Hard to do if you treat people unfairly.

[WalterBright]

How many of us would withstand such a relentless investigation into every aspect of our lives?

[housemusicfan]

Bill Burr has a pretty unique take on Jobs, reducing him to "he told other people what to invent":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I

[zoky]

If you’re good enough at it, “telling other people what to invent” may be the single most marketable skill in the history of humanity. I wish someone would tell me what to invent.

[housemusicfan]

There is no shortage of creative people in the world.

Giving them a voice, especially in a large company, on the other hand....

[wwtrv]

And there are some valid reasons for that, most "creative" people not very good at creating stuff that's actually useful for other people.

[refurb]

That’s actually an incredible skill few people have.

[grecy]

> wow. What a fucking asshole. A talented asshole, but an absolute piece of work

That's great!

Learn from him - emulate and improve on what made him talented and successful, and do less of what made him an asshole.

What a great person to learn from!

[neilk]

Wow. Are you one of those people who posts on LinkedIn about how they'd turn down a million dollars for the chance to wait on a billionaire's table?

Please. Steve Jobs is only famous because he was an asshole.

He did have other qualities, including that of recognizing talent and inspiring them. His interest in counterculture probably served him well in other ways, but that was not particularly unusual for his time.

Steve Jobs' path to being a billionaire required the sheer gall to steal others' work, and bully employees into burnout, over and over again.

[grecy]

na, I'm one of those people who realize there is a lot of nuance to the world, and there's nothing to gain by just painting everything black and white.

[qwytw]

> Steve Jobs is only famous because he was an asshole

Are you saying that he only managed to achieve what he did because he's an asshole?

Because I think more people know of him because of what he did with the Mac and "creating" the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

> Steve Jobs' path to being a billionaire

He wasn't even that wealthy by tech billionaire standards.