Unattractive?, but true for Jobs. If he was just a hustler off the street he would not find any takers.
Bill, you're way out with this one. Where do you get this from?
I would like to respond to some of the points you've made against Jobs in the last couple weeks. These are your criticisms, as I remember them:
Jobs micromanages
By this I assume you mean that Jobs involves himself too much at the level of individual projects. In my view, this was sorely needed. Take Sculley as a counter-example. He was very hands-off, and let his lieutenants do whatever they wished. He wasted billions on useless R&D, all the while failing to back crucial projects, like licensing, Star Trek, etc. Steve Jobs is the only person I would trust to know what projects should be killed, and what should be pushed forward. He needs to micromanage in order to make those decisions.
Jobs surrounds himself with yes-men
You're quite right that weak leaders tend to surround themselves with weak people. One of the first things Jobs did when he took over, however, was to dump the old BOD and bring on the strongest BOD Apple has ever had. These are not yes-men.
Jobs nickles and dimes
Either you mean that Jobs is cutting unnecessarily, or raising money from inappropriate sources. But with constantly dropping revenue, Jobs has to cut everywhere he can, and he has to do it intelligently (see above re: micromanagement). And as far as raising money, AAPL needs all the revenue streams it can get. It wasn't long ago that they didn't even charge for OS upgrades. That had to change.
Jobs is too arrogant, strong-willed, etc.
It's often the case that people with very strong personalities come under a lot of criticism from those who work with or under them, especially the ones who get fired, whose projects are killed, or who get argued down in meetings, etc. I think we need to judge Jobs by his results. Gil Amelio said that running Apple was like herding cats. Jobs doesn't seem to have any problem. Apple is more focused now that it has been since it was developing the Macintosh.
Jobs is old and has no vision
This is the strangest criticism of all. If there's one thing even Jobs' worst detractors grant him, it's that he has vision. Often, like with the Mac and the NeXT cube, his problem is that he is too far ahead of the industry. Granted, he rarely invented things himself. But he has the insight to know when something is the way of the future.
respectfully,
rhet0ric |
