"You'll never work in this town again" was a real threat in Hollywood if you pissed off (or refused to put out for) the wrong producer. Powerful people wield power indiscriminately to discharge fleeting grudges.
My personal favorite of the early Apple stories was the one where Jean-Louis Gassée saw him park his big dumb Mercedes in a disabled parking spot and said "I never realized those spaces were for the emotionally handicapped" [0].
[0]: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
Yes, we have anecdotes (plus all the other nice things people said about him, including his daughter in her book and the author of TFA elsewhere in Quora).
Those are not what he is remembered about though, but for building one of the biggest companies on Earth (at times, the biggest), plus doing it twice in his 20s and in his 40s, while also building two other companies (one worth billions for its movies, the other sold to his first company for half a billion), plus defining several modern consumer tech markets and/or phenomena.
And of course, there are far far worse employers than a demanding jerk (abusers, rapists, racists, thieves, even murderous CEOs and founders) - and with less saving graces and nowhere near the same results.
Entrepreneur most definitely, engineer... not so much.
After all, he was hired by Atari, and got parts delivered to him personally by Bill Hewlett and an internship at HP as he was a young electronics enthusiast.
Of course if he's being compared to Wozniak, well different league.
I don't think it's 'fucking up' to give something a good go but not quite make it, is it?
And why would every company in the industry even listen to a rant from Steve Jobs?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/04/23...
More likely he'd have problem being hired at that level simply because he would be associated with a major failed project, Jobs or no Jobs.
"OK, I've seen enough, " Steve interrupted me. "It's great. Apple is going to bundle it with the Mac. Congratulations."
But then he paused, and stared at me for a moment with an incredibly intense gaze, as if he was sizing me up or maybe just trying to scare me.
"But I don't want you taking advantage of this situation. I'm not going to allow you to take advantage of Apple."
"What do you mean?" I asked him, genuinely puzzled.
"There's no way that you could have written that program without confidential information that you learned by working at Apple. You don't have the right to charge whatever you like for it."
I started to get angry. "The program is only half finished, and if I don't think you're paying me fairly, I won't be motivated to finish it."
Steve gave me another intense stare as he paused for a few seconds. Then he stated a single number, without explanation.
"One hundred thousand dollars."
"I don't know," I told him, "I think it's probably worth a lot more than that."
"Don't argue with me. $100,000 is fair, and you know it."
I didn't seem to have any alternative but to capitulate to Steve's price setting,
there are better Steve stories on that site, mostly about abuse and psychological manipulation.
The previous paragraph
If I understand correctly,in this particular situation, fucking up would cost Apple at least $200M--so it had to be a total success for him.
This was an attempt to repair the damage that had already been done, by passing the UNIX compliance required to become an official, paid, licensee.
You are technically correct that this was a sales fuckup, but the shit storm would 100% be directed towards the “underperforming, delivery-target missing” programmers.
The engineers got time to asses if the project was feasible and what kind of support they need. Management fully supported them and made the other departments play ball and they made allies in other departments that helped them making the changes necessary.
They were asked if they could do a job and given the time and ressources to asses the situation. If they had any doubts they could've said no and let the legal department take over.
If the CEO sets a goal for the business, and you 'gave it a good goal' but failed, causing the business to miss its goal, with consequences including lost revenue or lawsuits, in that CEO's eyes you fucked up. The CEO was counting on you to take a letter to Garcia, and though you 'gave it a good go' Garcia never got his letter, so why would that CEO consider you someone to count on again?
> And why would every company in the industry even listen to a rant from Steve Jobs?
Because he built this industry.
Are you under the impression that for example lawyers are fired every time they lose a case and a company has to pay out?
I had never heard of project-based profit sharing or being fired and named/shamed for non-delivery. I had personally seen coding mistakes cost tens of millions in lost revenue and the developers were still there and many got promoted.
Surely if he was promised $10 million and Apple didn't pay up there would be grounds for a lawsuit. Especially since that stock would be worth so much more today.