[bityard]

I'll heartily agree with that but will point out that Jobs was absolutely famous for believing his opinion was the only correct one, micromanaging anything that caught his interest, and routinely chewing people in public out over unimportant details and simple mistakes. So, great sentiment, not a great example. :)

My favorite company I ever worked for was much like what you describe. The management attitude from top to bottom was, here's what we think we need to succeed in this market, tell us what you need to get it done and we will give you the freedom to do it. There was a culture of people fixing small but annoying bugs in between major feature work, prototyping ideas that would make all devs' lives easier, and strong communication within and between teams. You were never chastised for dropping everything to help someone else get unblocked. People were nice to each other and were even not afraid to engage in a little light humor now and again.

It was profitable even throughout the great recession but could only scale to a certain point. So the founders decided to get out at the top and sold it to another company that didn't know what to do with it and most of the good people left when the culture changed to more traditional top-down management.