I worked for an overly demanding boss and would not want to repeat that experience. He was demanding in a petty way about things that didn't matter such as turning up the temperature of the thermostat in Winter when it got too cold. It was due to insecurity and ego that this boss went on his power trips.

I would have loved to work for Steve Jobs as he's passionate and demanding about things that do matter. The perfection makes a difference in the product rather than making a difference in his ego.

I've wondered about this myself - while I admire his accomplishments greatly, the stories of the kind of fear and admiration of Steve as a boss makes me wonder if that type of personality would have jived well with my wanting constructive feedback and positive reinforcement. It appears that in his later years (2000s), he attributed credit to his team and thanked them for hard work whenever he introduced a major product.

Tangent: One person would have first hand knowledge of Steve's management style: Andy Hertzfeld of the original Macintosh team: https://plus.google.com/117840649766034848455/posts

I imagine you're right, but so what? A lot of excellent people are unpleasant in person in some circumstances. There's a lot more to being praiseworthy than simply being a nice person.

Working for him in a mentor/protege context with mutual respect and trust would have been (despite the immense difficulty and enormous high expectations) a great opportunity. Working for him as just a regular VP? Not as much. Probably not worth the stress.

I'll bet some of the people who willingly did so for years didn't really like "working for Steve". If you get enough satisfaction out of the results, though, that doesn't really matter as much.

People sometimes stay in otherwise intolerably boring jobs for years because they really like their bosses and/or coworkers, and sometimes they stay in incredibly exciting and fulfilling jobs for years despite loathing same.