With real power, comes real ability to be a complete jerk.
In the New York Times today, former iPhone engineer Francisco Tolmasky recounts his time under Steve Jobs when he was a fresh college graduate, hired to work on developing the Safari browser for mobile. While Tolmasky’s account of the late Apple boss is interesting, it does reveal much of Job’s famed penchant for being a complete a-hole:
Mr. Jobs was notorious for throwing his weight around however he could. One person on the iPhone design team was also named Steve, which caused some confusion in meetings. Mr. Jobs sought to change this.
“At some point Steve Jobs got really frustrated with this and said ‘Guess what, you’re Margaret from now on,’” Mr. Tolmasky said. From there on, members of the team would always address the designer Steve as Margaret.
For some, that sounds pretty hilarious, but spare a thought for how humiliating it must have been for the guy who suddenly becomes an object of ridicule for no other crime than sharing the name of his megalomaniacal boss. This is literally something straight out of the movies.
Oh but, iPhone! Yay! Admire Steve Job’s work all you want. But he created brilliant things in spite of being an awful human being, not because of it.
