Becoming Steve Jobs - a book about life and an amazing career path

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

After Jobs's death, many biographies, articles, films and TV shows have been published. But the book by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli stands out from the crowd. This is an honest, detailed story of the life and career of a person who did not want to follow simple paths. Today we publish an excerpt from the book, dedicated to the first steps of the "young dreamer" in the world of business.

I didn't want to be a businessman

The story of Steve Jobs' first time at Apple Computer is the story of a young dreamer early in his career. After playing such an important role in the creation and organization of sales of Apple I, he had to face a difficult problem - the need to transfer his vision, intelligence, intuition and a ferocious desire to control everyone and everything from his father's garage into a much larger “space” - the corporate, the financial and industrial world of Silicon Valley. Steve may have been able to quickly learn everything he needed, but he had no idea how to do it. Some young people seem to be made for corporate life - Bill Gates immediately comes to mind. Steve was not like that at all.

But he understood: if you want to do something more serious than creating "cool" toys in the garage with your friends, you need to learn to play by adult rules. It turned out to be a tricky business. He told me several times: "I didn't want to be a businessman, I didn't want to be like any of the people I know who were doing business." Steve was quite content with the image of a critical rebel, visionary, flexible and impetuous David, fighting against the ponderous Goliath (whoever he was).

Collaboration with the Big People (to use Steve's terminology of those days) was not just problematic for him. It threatened to collide. Yes, he wanted to play their games, but by his own rules, damn it!

Steve has proven himself to be a strong leader of a small group of like-minded people on more than one occasion. Now he was faced with a difficult task: he had to figure out how to work under the leadership of Markkula and Scott. These people knew how to do what he could not yet do: plan, initiate and support the growth of a company that allows you to design, manufacture, distribute and sell computers. Wozniak did not consider it a problem to transfer control over what was happening to third parties, since he was not at all interested in the details of the development of the business. This "world-class electrical engineer" felt at ease only in his workplace, where he could invent and, as Apple's vice president of research and development, discuss various clever design details with fellow engineers.

Steve took the transfer of control much more painfully - and not only because of his adolescent maximalism. On the one hand, he was well aware of the importance of his unusual thinking for creating breakthrough products and how his ego encourages people to follow his vision. On the other hand, it was obvious that these qualities were not particularly in line with the "mature leadership" style that Scotty was instilling at Apple.

In essence, Scotty proposed the following system. If Apple could be thought of as a family, then Scotty would want to deal with the basic components of a household: opening bank accounts, paying on mortgages, and so on. Of course, since it was still about the company, he did a lot of more complicated things. Scotty, an engineer with extensive experience at National Semiconductor, was a quintessential techie - to the point of always carrying a special plastic case for pens and screwdrivers in his pockets - and also an experienced executive. He came to Apple with experience leading hundreds of people and overseeing complex chip manufacturing processes. At Apple itself, he was responsible for the complex management tasks required to build a high-tech company from scratch: renting an office, manufacturing space, and equipment; establishing reliable production, efficient sales team and quality control system; organization of management of engineering processes; setting up management information systems, as well as the formation of a financial directorate and an HR department engaged in hiring employees. He has forged relationships with key component suppliers and software developers. Watching Scotty, Steve learned a lot for himself.

Complicating matters, however, was that Apple was a pioneer in an already new industry that was very different from everyone else. Computers were systems that combined three key technologies: semiconductors, programs, and data storage methods. All of them were constantly improving. The company was physically unable to create a single unique innovative product, establish its mass production, and then rest on its laurels and cut coupons. Only Polaroid and Xerox could afford it, and even then only in the first decades of their activity. Since then, everything has changed. As soon as a computer company managed to breathe life into a new system, as soon as it had to start all over again and try to surpass itself - before some other player in the fast-moving market, like Prometheus, did not create a new, even more advanced version, “stealing flame". It happened over and over again, generation after generation. In the end, it became clear that companies in this "frantic race" have only one way out - to start working on a new product even before the previous one hits the market. Each of the three core technologies evolved independently of the others at their own dizzying pace. Ideas were "grabbed on the fly" and were rapidly brought to life, becoming available to thousands of users.

Even the greatest leaders, confidently leading their companies from victory to victory, were forced to admit that the rules they established were instantly outdated, unable to keep up with reality. And Mike Scott was by no means a great leader. In terms of his skills and personality type, he was more like an operations director. When he failed to achieve stability, he tensed. And with a partner like Steve Jobs, what kind of stability could we talk about ?!

Of course, despite his youth, Jobs was smart enough to understand that orderly and well-oiled management mechanisms were needed to realize his vision of the company. However, in contrast to Scotty, the rebel Jobs was literally in love with instability. His natural vision was based on destabilization, undermining the foundations of the existing computer industry. IBM was stable, and Steve saw Apple as anti-IBM.

Needless to say, the alliance between one person who loves uncertainty and another who craves stability is not destined to last. The first alarm bell rang in the first weeks after Scotty's arrival at Apple. Scotty wanted to put the numbers on the name badges of the employees of the new office on Stevens Creek Boulevard. He decided that Woz would be "Officer 1". Steve immediately went to him and rolled out the claim. Scotty had no choice but to back down and give Jobs an Employee # 0 badge.