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Comment by dnsworks | Hacker News Reader

Jobs isn't capricious, he's an asshole. I have two friends who both had the misfortunate position of being Jobs' personal IT bitch at Apple. He fired my one friend, and I quote, "because I'm tired of struggling to understand your gimpy voice". Jobs is added proof to the argument that nice guys finish last.

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I don't doubt that jobs is an asshole from time to time. You kinda have to be to get where Apple is today, from where they were. But unless you were present at the firing of your friend, or he recorded it, I don't think it's 100% fair to quote Jobs, especially out of context. Just because he can be an asshole at times, doesn't mean we get to slander and spread hearsay. Your friend wasn't doing what his boss wanted. The boss said something mean for whatever reason. Anyone in a long term relationship has said something mean. So if an employee isn't the right fit for the company, chances are, every once in a while, something mean will be uttered when they are canned. You're making to much out of it. Unless that's the typical way Jobs fires someone. Then he truly is an asshole.

"Your friend wasn't doing what his boss wanted. The boss said something mean for whatever reason. "

Are you sure? For all we know, Jobs really did fire him for his voice.

Fine. He was fired for not having the magic ability to change his voice in order to please his asshole boss. My only point was that he shouldn't be quoting someone unless it's first-hand. We have no way to verify it.

We have no means to verify 99.99% quotes in the news, yet we assume they are true.

Without giving too many details away, my friend was chosen by Jobs to take this role, pulled away from one at Apple where he was very happy, given a promotion and a raise, then fired 6 weeks later. The quote is from his blog (which I'll not post due to his desire to be discreet) but I trust him, and he says it's verbotem, and knowing his speech impediment very well, I find the story very believable. Further corroborated by having worked for a friend a few years back who had this same position as well (more successfully and for a longer period of time, neither knew each other btw) before he got fired on the spot while Jobs was outraged over something (my speculation is he spilled some spinach goop on a mock turtle neck and decided to take it out).

Its confusing to say you're quoting from a blog, a pretty public place normally but this quote has the expectation of discretion. but the quote cannot be found on any blog using google. I don't know. Maybe this ain't a quotation as most people understand it, even if secondhand. Is it more accurate to say you are paraphrasing?

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