In the tech world, most people have an opinion on Steve Jobs. And in the past couple of years, quite a few people outside of the tech world have learned about Steve Jobs as well due to the success Apple has enjoyed in the consumer space. A lot of those people have formed opinions on him as well. And I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that most people either love him or hate him. He's just been that polarizing over the years. Some people hate him because of his Reality Distortion Field, his arrogance, his attitude or because of his belief in a closed system where he has full control. Some people love him for the products he's delivered, his vision, his showmanship and well, his Reality Distortion Field.
Whether you love or hate Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson's biography on the man is well worth reading. I found it to be a fascinating read, and quite funny at times as well. I was expecting it to have a somewhat balanced view on Job's personality, but the author went way beyond that. He doesn't waste many opportunities to point out a negative reaction by Jobs, which is good. There's no glorification of Jobs, just a balanced and honest view. Another important thing that I highly appreciate is that you often get both sides of the story. You get Jobs' recollections and opinions, as well as those of the people who were involved in the many situations that are covered. And again, differences between those recollections are not ignored.
Most things are covered in chronological order, from Steve being put up for adoption, to his time in college, to dropping out of college and going to India, to starting Apple, to getting ousted at Apple and starting Next and buying Pixar, to returning to Apple and returning it to prominence, to him getting cancer and eventually resigning from Apple because of it. There are also parts about his personal life and his family, though the majority of the book covers his successes and failures in his professional life.
For a long time, I thought Steve Jobs was the perfect salesman for what the various teams at Apple were cooking up. I knew he was involved with the product design, but I had no idea he was as involved as he really turned out to be. He was very hands-on in the way he worked with the various product teams, and in many cases he led them based on his vision for what a product should be. But it would be false to say that he originally thought of every successful product Apple has put out, though he apparently had no problems claiming other people's ideas as his own. Stories about his temper and the awful way he treated his employees have been around for a long time, and there are plenty of examples in the book.
What I did find surprising though, is that a lot of people he worked with claim that Jobs pushed them into achieving things they never considered possible and that they loved making such an impact with their work, despite their complaints of his outbursts and the way he treated people. I also found Jobs' take on it interesting. It was his way of making sure that Apple would have as many A players as possible, and to get rid of as many B players (or bozos, as he called them) as possible. He felt that A players only want to work with A players, and that mixing them with B players would reduce their value. You have to admit it's hard to disagree with the results of his approach.
As for his approach to being a CEO in the latter years of his career, the most interesting part to me was that he refused to split his company into divisions where each division had its own Profit & Loss balance. Instead, you just had many teams and the only Profit & Loss balance that they looked at was the company-wide one. Jobs forced them to work together instead of competing with each other (which is the complete opposite of what the young Jobs did in his first stint with Apple) and when people didn't work together, he'd get rid of them. He made sure everyone was on the same page and that there was no confusion about the priorities of the company. He made sure Apple only focused on a few products so they could do them as well as possible, instead of trying to do as much as possible. It's pretty much the exact opposite of how Microsoft is being managed by Ballmer, and that contrast seems to reflect in both companies' success over the last couple of years.
The way he dealt with people, both in his personal as well as his professional life, wasn't as impressive though. It must have been hard to know him personally, and there are 2 stories of his behavior in the book that are downright shameful. In many of the stories of the book, he comes across as a total dick and a cry baby. You can take that literally even: there are countless moments in the book where it's mentioned that Jobs began crying when he didn't get his way. Saying that he had a complex personality is quite the understatement. But he was very good at knowing what people wanted and what they didn't want, even if they didn't know it yet, as he often said. Of course, it's exactly that arrogance that many of the people who don't like Apple products hate. Different strokes for different folks I guess, though I wouldn't be surprised if Jobs turns out to be right in most cases when it comes to most people, or non-techies in particular.
Despite his financial success, I do believe he was driven by building great products, and not just money. Had money been his primary motivation, I think he would've ended up with a lot more of it. The money issues that sometimes come up in the book seem to be more about respect than pure monetary gain, with the exception of one case, when he screwed one of his longtime friends during Apple's initial IPO. In that particular case, the author should've have dug deeper to find out Jobs' motivation. But again, from reading the book it's hard not to believe in Jobs' drive to create things that were truly great. I enjoy many of Apple's products, so in my opinion he's clearly succeeded at that. Though many of the Jobs-haters would probably disagree. Despite what you may think of the man or the products he's introduced, he's had a profound impact on many of the ways in which you and a lot of people you know interact with technology and media. And for that, I am glad he was the man that he was, regardless of his faults.