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Comment by bgroins | Hacker News Reader

I love the incessant deification of Steve Jobs, regardless of his mistakes, juvenile behavior, and constant stories about his abuse of his staff. In this story Jobs mistakes the wrong person for John Carmack, becomes deeply offended by a silly t-shirt, screams at his staff and slams his hands the table like a 2 year old. But the author is impressed with Jobs and makes him out to be the hero. At my work we would call this a hostile and abusive work environment, but within the Jobs cult of personality it's a net positive.

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I don't disagree with your assessment but, right or wrong, Steve Jobs was on another level.

Most great leaders have character flaws. Some of them are very obnoxious petty people. See Nick Saban or Michael Jordan.

Steve Jobs pushed people to achieve extraordinary things. My guess is they would not have achieved many of those things without his influence and authority. That's what great leaders do.

But it's true. If you are a selfish narcissistic jerk people remember that too. Maybe more than what you accomplished.

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if anyone else at Apple behaving like Jobs would quickly receive a warning from HR if not shown the door.

For example, You may note that Scott Forstall doesn't work at Apple anymore.

* Scott Forstall doesn't work at Apple anymore*

and neither does software ...

Ouch

> behaving like Jobs would quickly receive a warning from HR if not shown the door

Jobs was constantly called by HR for meetings during late 80's due to his behavior. Source - Steve Jobs book

Yeah, I have interactions with managers all the time where I state my ideas, someone else disagrees and then my boss makes the right call.

For some reason that doesn’t sound dramatic without the possibility of someone being yelled at or fired.

The negatives are over exaggerated, just like the positives. Its ridiculous to reduce someones entire career 20 incidents out of the hundreds of daily interactions over a few decades amounting to > 1million.

Ironically, your approach is no different than the persons you're criticizing. You're also basing your opinion on 1% of the dataset, just a different 1%.

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