I read this article (
What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs) and it confirms what my buddies at Apple (some of them are up there, but not top-level) say about Steve Jobs as well.
It's sad the public humiliation, near fascist control of the company, and the intimidating, goading, berating, belittling, and even humiliating of employees. "When he was Bad Steve, he didn't seem to care about the severe damage he caused to egos or emotions... suddenly and unexpectedly, he would look at something they were working on say that it "sucked," it was "****.""
Although he was a genius and an innovator and I have respect for his work, these things taint his legacy, in my opinion, and I think people need to be fair and look at the whole picture. He's not the black turtlenecked Jesus of technology. It's not so different than how we view other legends of their fields, like Michael Jordan, who's competitive drive is well-documented (he punched his own teammates, gambled on everything, and had no ounce of graciousness during his Hall of Fame speech).
I'm not trying to speak ill of the dead. But I agree with the writer when she writes, ""He's been hailed as 'a genius' and "the greatest CEO of his generation" by pundits and tech journalists.
But a great man's reputation can withstand a full accounting. And, truth be told, Jobs could be terrible to people, and his impact on the world was not uniformly positive."
