Chapter 56 Section 2 The Tyrant Is Still the Lord

The most contradictory thing about Jobs is his unusual management style.Many called him a "tyrant", but many also called him a "lord".Now that all the stories are true, next, we might as well listen to those legendary stories about Jobs being both a tyrant and a master in management. A former Apple employee told us about the first time he met Jobs when he first joined the company.At Apple headquarters, new employees usually have a week-long orientation, and he was no exception when he joined the job.During the week, lectures and courses are arranged for new employees to familiarize themselves with the operation of the company and master the necessary skills as soon as possible.When the training was coming to an end, he found that Jobs specially arranged a session to meet new employees and accept questions from new employees.

As a new employee, everyone was very excited to have the opportunity to meet and ask Jobs questions during the first week on the job.In the conference room, Jobs wore the famous jeans and "turtle neck shirt", sitting high on the stage waiting for the new employees to ask questions. His posture was like a king receiving foreign envoys in the manor where he was stationed. But the enthusiastic questions from the new employees are often only a few cold words in exchange for Jobs.Jobs' answers to everyone's questions were always short and rude. When he felt that the question was not good or he didn't want to answer it, Jobs simply said on the stage: "Next!" His face flushed red and he was at a loss.A new employee asked Jobs: "What do you think is the happiest thing?" Jobs threw back impatiently: "There is no more stupid question than this." He turned his head to the side.The employee who asked the question was so wronged that he almost cried.

After participating in this kind of new employee training, perhaps most people will feel that Jobs is really similar to those powerful, one-sided, rude and arrogant tyrants in history. According to the recollection of a former Apple executive, Jobs often lost his temper in the company's internal project discussions, regardless of the face of the other party.Once, a product manager who joined Apple for only 4 months was transferred to a new product team.The product itself has many design and quality issues.The reason why he was transferred to the team was to better solve the problem.Unexpectedly, this unlucky product manager had just joined the team, and encountered Jobs' "thunder storm" at the first project discussion meeting.Seeing that the problems in the product could not be solved for a long time, Jobs didn't care whether you were a newcomer or not. He yelled at the unlucky product manager. When his anger reached its peak, Jobs waved his arms excitedly and tapped the product manager with his fingers. head.The poor product manager became Jobs' "punching bag" in such a grievous way.

Joe's "roaring" management was actually well known in the early days of Apple.If there were Weibo and "roaring style" in those days, then Qiao Gangzhu must be the best one who wrote "roaring style". In the early days of Macintosh design, Jobs once informed Kodell Retzlaff, who was in charge of user interface design, that he would come over to see the design of the graphical user interface in person.Retzlaff and the members of the design team sat in the conference room, somewhat uneasy, wondering whether Jobs was satisfied with the current design.But no one expected that Jobs would start yelling as soon as he walked into the conference room.

"You amateur bastards!" Jobs yelled, apparently having seen the design before coming here. "You're the ones who designed the Mac OS, right?" The design team, including Retzlaff, nodded timidly. "Hehe, it's really you!" Jobs' voice became higher and higher, "You are such a bunch of idiots! The current window styles and operations are too complicated. There are actually 8 different ways to open a window! Your brains are full of trouble. It's water!" Jobs spoke in one breath for a full 20 minutes.Retzlaff and the members of his design team sat below with trembling legs.Everyone except Retzlaff wondered if Jobs was going to fire the entire design team.Retzlaff himself was not worried at all, because he knew that, based on past experience, the more angry Jobs was, the more serious he made the situation, and his real intention was often to remind and beat the entire team, rather than disband the entire team. It's over. "I don't think he would have fired us," Retzlaff said, "because if he wanted to, he would have done so."

When he returned to Apple in 1997, due to large-scale layoffs and projects, Jobs' tyrant style was brought to the extreme.At that time, maybe one day, a certain project team will be disbanded suddenly, and colleagues who usually work together will suddenly come over to say goodbye to you. For several months, there was a lot of turmoil and panic inside Apple.There is a chilling story circulating among everyone: When more than one unlucky guy was taking the elevator in the company's office building, the elevator door suddenly opened, a cold light flashed, and the tall figure of Jobs came in front of the unlucky guy in the blink of an eye.The elevator doors closed slowly in the cold light.The entire elevator suddenly fell silent, only the heartbeat of the unlucky employee was heard.

At this time, the first sentence that the unlucky guy hears is usually: "What's your name? What project do you work on?" No matter how hapless the guy stumbled on the question, Jobs would keep asking, "What are your priorities? What's the value to the company? What's the plan for the future?" Almost no one can answer the above questions smoothly in the suffocating elevator room, surrounded by the majestic aura of Gang Leader Qiao.And once the employee's answer dissatisfied Jobs, the last sentence the employee heard in the elevator must be: "Well, you don't have to come to work tomorrow."

The myth of Jobs' "elevator layoffs" was widely circulated within Apple, so that in the second half of 1997, many employees would rather take the stairs than enter the narrow elevator room to "cast themselves in the net". Now it seems that the myth of "elevator layoffs" is somewhat exaggerated and fabricated.According to a secretary close to Jobs at the time, Jobs did have examples of firing employees immediately after questioning on the spot, but none of them happened in the elevator.But if you think about it carefully, even if such a thing didn't happen in the elevator room, it would still be enough to make your scalp tingle.

As rough as management was, some who worked with Jobs preferred to view Jobs' tyrannical behavior as a management tactic rather than a character flaw.Larry Tesler, a former Apple computer scientist, said: "Steve Jobs managed employees through a combination of grace and power. When Jobs was forced to leave Apple in 1985, everyone in the company had their own mixed feelings. At that time, Almost everyone had been intimidated or threatened by Jobs at work before, and the departure of the 'tyrant' gave them a sense of relief. But each of them respected Jobs very much at the same time, and everyone worried that without this 'tyrant' Tyrant', where would the company go without his unique charisma."

In 2000, Apple suffered its first loss since 1998, and its sales fell into a temporary slump.In the conference room of Apple's headquarters, the annual sales meeting gathered nearly 200 sales representatives from Apple's headquarters and various branches.The angry Joe gang leader stood on the podium and talked for an hour. In his speech, Jobs warned everyone more than once: "Our sales performance is too bad. You salesmen are a bunch of idiots. I can't wait to fire your entire team!" Jobs asked a female salesperson to stand up by name, and said to her in front of everyone: "You, yes, you are talking about you. Your performance is not good at all."

Unexpectedly, this female saleswoman was also a competitive girl. Regardless of Jobs' anger, she boldly argued with Jobs loudly, saying that she was very responsible in her work and that she could not blame herself for the poor sales performance. . Jobs waved her to sit down impatiently without waiting for her to finish her defense, and he didn't fire her for it.Obviously, Jobs at the time wanted to intimidate the female salesperson so that all salespeople would fear him in order to achieve his goal of rectifying the team.Whether or not the tactic worked, Jobs' tyrant image was inextricably linked to his management style. Wired magazine held a gathering of more than 1,300 former Apple employees in 2003.Even though Jobs wasn't there, he was still a central topic at the party."Almost everyone had their own story about Jobs being an asshole," recalled one attendee. This statement, while exaggerated, does show that Jobs' violent management style left a mark on many Apple employees. too dark a shadow. When most of the public labeled the relationship between Jobs and employees as a "tyrant" and "tyranny", few people noticed that the turnover rate of Apple's employees was actually very low, even in Apple's most difficult period. Not many people resigned voluntarily because they didn't like Jobs' management style.Under the tyranny of a tyrant, most people work hard and enjoy it. How did Jobs do it? The most accurate answer to this question is that Jobs was both a tyrant and not a tyrant.Two almost opposite styles co-exist magically in him.In many cases, the way he treats people and deals with things is completely a smart, generous, and broad-minded manager. Lu Jian, the former chief engineer of Apple and the dean of Shanda Multimedia Innovation Institute, personally wrote down such a story of his personal experience for us: In 1999, I worked as a senior researcher in Apple's interactive multimedia department.Like many companies in Silicon Valley, Apple gives employees a certain amount of cash rewards for their professional inventions.The bonus will be issued twice, once when the patent application is submitted to the Patent Office, and again when the patent is approved for issuance.At that time, Apple held a patent award reception (Patent A-ards Reception) every six months, and employees who submitted new patent applications or had newly issued patents within six months would be invited to participate in this reception. The patent award reception in the second half of 1999 was held on November 18, and I was invited to attend because there was a newly issued patent. The so-called patent award reception was actually quite simple. It was hosted by the company's legal department. First, Apple's general lawyer summarized and reviewed the company's patent application status, gave a thank you speech, and then read the inventor's name and distributed the award.There will be red wine, cheese and light refreshments at the reception.I was late that day and was the last to sit in a big conference room called the Garage.After a while, another person came in and sat next to me. I saw that it was Jobs.At that time, he was nominally Apple's iCEO (interim CEO, that is, interim CEO), and the company was still looking for a permanent CEO.But everyone knows that Apple is unlikely to find someone who can replace the iCEO. At first, the iCEO and I just said "Hi" to each other, without any more greetings.Later, when I went to the stage to receive the patent certificate and came back, our conversation started.Apple orders a special patent certificate for each patent inventor. It is an exquisite wooden plaque with a thin metal plate on it, engraved with abstracts and illustrations of the patent document.When Jobs saw that I had received the patent certificate, he said he wanted to take a look.Looking at the exquisite wooden plaque, he said "beautiful" (beautiful) several times like in a product launch event.Then he asked me which department I was in and what I did.I told him that I belonged to the QuickTime team and that the new patent was about QuickTime video compression technology.He asked a few more technical questions with great interest.Later he asked which patent was my first, and I said it was the first.He raised his head, paused for a moment and said softly: "I still remember the feeling when I got my first patent." At the end of the patent award reception, I asked Jobs if we could have a photo together, and he kindly agreed, so I have this rare and memorable photo. Many people saw this photo and thought it was Jobs who was giving me an award. In fact, he who was sitting next to me that day attended the reception as a patent inventor just like me.Some people looked at this photo and asked, are all Apple employees wearing black jumpers?Jobs was known for wearing a black jumper, and it was pure coincidence that I was wearing a black jumper that day.It was the jersey that our QuickTime team issued, and it wasn't all black, and it had a QuickTime logo on it, but it was just blocked by the patent plaque I was holding in my hand. My close contact with Jobs this time made me feel that he was approachable, at least at the time. Not only for engineers and researchers at Apple headquarters, but even for the low-level employees of Apple stores, Jobs will show a kind side.The previously mentioned Ian Maddox, an employee of the Apple store, once met a customer and made the other party very satisfied.That customer later went so far as to send Jobs an e-mail praising Maddox's service.Jobs immediately sent an email to Maddox, cc'ing the customer.The full text of the email is just one sentence: "great job".The entire email was in lowercase, with no punctuation, and no signature."That's enough," Maddox said. Moreover, in the memories and evaluations of different people, the "tyrant" component of Jobs' management style is also quite different. Paul Allen, the founder of Microsoft, believes that Jobs got angry a lot of times, maybe he was "playing" in order to achieve a certain purpose or effect. Ken Siegel, the inventor of Apple's "i" series of product nomenclature, said: "Steve Jobs had taste, temperament and uncompromising temperament at the same time. He hardly frightened employees. As a manager, he was neither rigid nor lacking. Charismatic. Most of the time, he's a charming and funny guy, which is why everyone wants to follow him. Of course, he sometimes loses his temper. I was there a few times when Jobs lost his temper. But that's not for me Yes. If something stalls, he'll go crazy. If you haven't made progress in the past two weeks, don't let him know." A former Pixar employee said: "Steve Jobs was by no means an ordinary tough boss. Unlike a real tyrant, he trusted us very much. He did get very angry when we let him down. None of us want To annoy him, it's not because we're afraid of him, it's because we're afraid of disappointing him, making him feel unworthy of his trust in us." An employee of Apple China also expressed a similar view to the author: "In the company, everyone does have a feeling of keeping Jobs at arm's length, but it's not because people don't like him. I think it's because Jobs is too picky about his work. , Too harsh, too perfectionist, people are afraid that they will make him angry if they don’t do well. Of course, this also brings a negative effect, that is, people would rather choose not to do things that they are not sure to do well, so as not to be blamed by Jobs .” A former Apple vice president said: "Steve Jobs seems to have an ability. He can accurately find the things that make him the most uncomfortable, and then severely criticize them. This ability can make a person unconscious for a moment. For example, during a product demonstration, Jobs said directly to me: "Well, the technology of this thing is very good, but the product design is terrible, it is a piece of garbage." This kind of direct harsh criticism always makes You are uncomfortable, but you can effectively remind and urge the critics to improve, which is a management method commonly used by Jobs.” A former director of Apple said to the author: "Maybe because of Jobs' family, Jobs' personality is withdrawn, but at the same time he is very contagious. When chatting, Jobs will not say unnecessary nonsense to you, he just talks He will be charming and eloquent when he thinks something valuable. In company management, Jobs often shows a casual and uninhibited style of behavior. For example, when Jobs held the board meeting with us, he would sometimes Suddenly I said to everyone: "Come on, I'll take you to Pixar to watch a 10-minute short film!" After finishing speaking, I must pull everyone and drive from Silicon Valley to Pixar in the north of San Francisco, just to show everyone Pixar's works .” Former Apple VP Jay Elliott tells another interesting story.That year, a project related to disk drives was at an impasse, and many people felt that the project should be cancelled.Jobs called a meeting for this, and the relevant engineers, marketing and sales personnel were all present. When everyone was arguing about whether to cancel the project, Jobs suddenly turned his head and said to Elliott: "Jay, I hope you can tell me what to do." Elliott said, "Well, how about the two of us going out for a walk?" The meeting is suspended.Jobs and Elliott walked out of the meeting, chatting as they walked. Elliott said, "Steve, you should kill this project. This is a complete waste of money. I can promise that I will properly place all employees on the project." The two returned to the meeting, and Jobs sat down and said, "Okay, Jay is going to kill the project. He also promised to properly place all the employees in the project. No one will lose their jobs." In this project change, Elliott felt that Jobs was full of trust in himself.He is not like the arbitrary and arbitrary tyrant rumored by the outside world, but more like a wise lord who listens to advice. Many people really understand and even appreciate Jobs' duality of being both a tyrant and a wise man.Jobs' former "enemy", the Frenchman Jean-Louis Cassie, who succeeded Jobs in managing the Macintosh team, later commented on Jobs' management style: "Democratic management doesn't make great products - what you need is a capable tyrant." Jobs himself explained: "The most important duty of a CEO is to coax, pray, and threaten your employees so that they will do everything they can to achieve the company's goals. I want them to see that the company's goals are more ambitious than they imagined. , more valuable, so that they will give everything to achieve these goals. When they try their best, but not good enough, I will tell them: I believe you can do better, go back, do better return." Many of Jobs' employees were also able to forgive his brusqueness, or, at least, put up with his temper.Jay Elliott said: "Part of the reason is that Jobs was a tyrant who understood the product, and everything he did was to release the best product in his mind." Jobs himself was not ignorant of this.At one point, he said earnestly to Elliott: "I know people complain about me. But one day, when they look back on this experience, they will regard it as the best time of their lives. They are just now I just don't know." "Steve," Elliott said excitedly, "don't underestimate your employees, they know this by now, and they love the experience!"