Chapter 58 The fourth quarter is either a genius or an idiot

Andy Herzfeld told a dumbfounding story in "Once Upon a Time at Apple". In January 1982, Herzfeld and Jobs interviewed a senior candidate.As soon as the candidate walked into the conference room, though, Herzfeld knew the guy was going to be in trouble.The candidate seemed tense and faltered in answering the first few questions. Jobs became impatient, and he rolled his eyes skyward from time to time. Suddenly, Jobs asked the candidate: "At what age did you lose your virginity?" "What?" The candidate couldn't believe his ears. "Are you a virgin?" Jobs repeated his question in another way.Herzfeld and the people present laughed out loud.The applicant looked at a loss and had no idea what Jobs was doing.

Seeing that the applicant did not answer, Jobs threw out a new question: "How many times have you taken LSD?" The applicant blushed and stared at Jobs blankly.In order to ease the awkward atmosphere, Herzfeld brought the topic back to the technical discussion.But candidates still can't answer technical questions well. Jobs became impatient again, and he began to imitate the turkey's cry: "Cack, croak, croak, croak." Herzfeld couldn't take it anymore and started laughing.Jobs laughed himself. The poor candidate finally had some self-knowledge. He stood up and said to Jobs, "I don't think I'm suitable for this job."

"You really aren't a good fit," Jobs said. "That's the end of the interview." I don’t know how Herzfeld felt about this strange interview experience after sending off the applicants.I believe that most people in this world will not understand why Jobs humiliated applicants in such a face-to-face manner.In fact, in most American companies, interviewers are absolutely not allowed to ask candidates any personal privacy questions, let alone whether they have taken LSD, whether they are virgins, or even religious beliefs and family conditions. Otherwise, there will be suspicion of discrimination and invasion of privacy.But all these rules and regulations, in front of Chief Qiao, turned into meaningless stinky shit. As long as Chief Qiao likes it, he can ask whatever he wants.

Later, when many books about Jobs mentioned this story, they tried to find a suitable reason for Jobs's outrageous behavior.One of the most popular sayings is that the reason why Jobs asked the other party strange questions such as ecstasy and virginity was entirely to assess the applicant's ability to adapt to various extraordinary situations. This is the reason why Jobs inspected and identified talents One way - please, even if you want to make money for the leader of Qiao, don't do this kind of thing that insults the readers' IQ, okay?Jobs humiliated applicants in public, what is the reason for this matter!Jobs was always that kind of person, as long as he wanted to, he didn't care what rules you had, since he could scold employees who didn't do a good job, why couldn't he sneer and drive away an applicant who didn't answer questions reliably?

There is one and only one reason behind this incident: in the eyes of a person with strong duality like Jobs, the applicants are either geniuses or idiots, and there is no transitional state.For geniuses, Leader Qiao warmly welcomes them; for idiots, Leader Qiao just wants to watch them go away in embarrassment. In fact, within Apple, Jobs also used the same method to treat those idiots who couldn't do their jobs well.Apple marketing manager Bill Curley (Bill Curley) recalled: "Once, I was in a meeting with Jobs and several other managers, and Jobs was wearing shorts, running shoes, and no socks. Just take off your shoes, put your bare feet on the table, and point the soles of your feet at that person's face."

Another time, in the company cafeteria, Jobs shook his brown semi-long hair and said angrily to more than 100 employees in charge of internal IT systems: "You are all a bunch of idiots! If you have the ability, you should go to Developing computers.” One of those 100-odd idiots at the time, ex-Apple employee Peter Kavanaugh, said, “Meeting Jobs means being humiliated, and you’re going to be looked down upon. Jobs has to be right, Even if he's wrong." This is the way of knowing and employing people.In Qiao's eyes, there are only two kinds of people in the world: geniuses, who should be caught by all means; fools, who should be despised without hesitation.

Take Macintosh's "pirate team" as an example. Jobs' creed is that everyone in the "pirate team" should be the best pirate, and, because the best pirates must have equally good friends, Jobs encourages everyone in the team A member recommends a friend to join Apple. "Every best engineer is a huge talent multiplier," Jobs said. Jobs offered a reward of $500 to employees who successfully referred friends, which was a lot of money at the time.Moreover, the Macintosh team often sends the best engineers back to their schools on a regular basis to recruit the best talents among their juniors and younger sisters.

One afternoon in the spring of 1980, Jobs and other Apple employees went to Stanford University to give a recruiting speech.Mike Murray, then a student at Stanford University and later Apple's marketing director, recalled: "We were sitting in a room, giving a speech, and a young man came in, wearing a waistcoat and blue jeans, and we These students were no different. He didn't care that there were people from Apple who were speaking at the time, and he just jumped on the table and said, 'Hi, I'm Steve Jobs. What do you want me to say?' I listened to him I was very excited about the speech, so I skipped class and ran back to the dormitory, found Apple’s phone number, and called them. I said, “There is a man named Steve, because of his speech, I want to be a summer intern at Apple.” .'"

In 2007, an ordinary Chinese female student joined Google after graduating from Stanford University. The New York Times interviewed the female student for an article on Google's talent strategy.Unexpectedly, Jobs saw this report.The gang leader Qiao, who was eager for talent, actually called the female student himself, and asked her why she didn't choose Apple, and asked her to talk about the reasons why she chose an employer. Even in recent years, Jobs often personally interviewed people for important positions.According to the employees of Apple China, the core managers and important sales representatives of Apple China have all been personally interviewed by Jobs when they entered the company.

When Jobs interviews an applicant, he usually does not prepare any plans in advance. Many questions are thought of while chatting with the applicant.He likes to ask questions from an angle that candidates are not familiar with, and often asks candidates to design a brand new product, and often has tit-for-tat debates with candidates during interviews.He only wants to hire candidates who have a perfect understanding of the product, who can withstand his careful questioning, and who have no stage intimacy in exchanging opinions with him in person. Jobs called the talented employees he most wanted to hire "A-level," that is, people who are better than "B-level" and "C-level."One of his favorite sayings is: "Once you hire one B-level person, they bring in more B-level and C-level people."

As long as you meet Jobs' definition of "A-level", no matter whether you have qualifications or diplomas, he will eagerly recruit you into Apple.When Apple was started, Jobs hired a guy named Randy Wigginton.Wigginton was still a high school student at the time, and became Apple's No. 6 employee after joining Apple.Later, Wigginton presided over the development of the famous MacWrite software, which proved that Joe's boss is indeed very accurate in reading people. Of course, not every genius has the opportunity to be discovered by Jobs' discerning eye. Some geniuses entered Apple purely by their own persistence.Donna Dubinsky, who would later become Palm's CEO and Handspring's founder, was an Apple employee, and her experience at Apple was unusual.Dubinsky is a graduate of Harvard Business School.In class, she saw an Apple II computer running VisiCalc software, and was amazed by the magical charm of Apple II and VisiCalc in processing spreadsheets. She decided to find a job at Apple.But after an interview, Apple rejected her application.The reason is that Apple has never recruited students who graduated from Harvard Business School before, and most of Apple's employees come from technical backgrounds.Dubinsky, who refused to admit defeat, simply stayed at Apple and sat outside the door of the interview room all day long.Every time he saw an Apple recruiter walk out of the room, Dubinsky went up to chat.Until the end of the day, Dubinsky's persistence touched the Apple employees, and she was allowed to enter the follow-up interview and successfully got a job. I have to mention again that after Jobs returned to Apple, the story of identifying heroes from the huge design team and discovering and promoting the master Jonathan Ivey is really the most proud of Jobs' experience in identifying and employing people.After returning, Jobs was dissatisfied with the design of all Apple products at that time, and wanted to replace all the people in charge of design.Jobs specifically found a headhunting company and asked them to look around for designers who met their requirements. Apple's main designers at the time, including Jonathan Ive, were all on Jobs' layoff list.Fortunately, before Jobs had time to find a suitable replacement, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the master figure he was looking for was within the company.Jobs let go of Ivey like all the monarchs who know people and be good at responsibility, let Ivey control the design direction of all products as the chief designer of Apple, and specially created the most mysterious and most valuable industrial design team in the company for Ivey .The good story of Jobs returning and discovering Ivey is by no means inferior to the wonderful stories of knowing and employing people such as visiting the thatched cottage three times and chasing Han Xin on a moonlit night in history. Regarding why it is necessary to look for outstanding talents, Jobs said in an interview: "I think what I always look for are those who are really smart people and people who want to work with them. Of all the things I have ever done, there is no Which major jobs can be done independently by one or two people, or even three or four people. Some people, like Michelangelo, can do magnificent works of art alone, but other jobs, like making semiconductor circuits or Boeing 747 aircraft , all require teamwork. In order to do things that cannot be done alone, you have to find extraordinary people.” Jobs continued: "The key here is that in life, two things of average quality are usually worth one of the highest quality. For example, in New York, the best taxi is worth more than the average quality. Taxi, about 20% faster. For computers, the best computers are about 30% faster than the average computer. The difference is not very obvious. However, in the research and development area I focus on, I found that, Usually 50 to 100 average people contribute as much as one top-level talent. Given the difference, you'd surely suggest that we seek out the best of the best, and that's what we're doing. Only by pursuing Only A+ level talents can create a good team. A small team composed of A+ level talents can completely compete with a super large team composed of B and C level talents.” The reporter asked Jobs: "However, in an entrepreneurial company, managers may not be able to spend much time on recruiting." Jobs retorted: "I don't agree at all. I think recruiting is the most important job. Suppose you want to start a startup and you want to find a partner. Then you will spend a lot of time finding the most suitable cooperation. partner, right? Because that partner is going to be the other half of your company. So why don't you spend as much time finding the other third, the other quarter, or the other half of your company? What about the other fifth? When you start a startup, the first 10 people who join will make or break the company. Each of them is a tenth of the company. Why wouldn't you spend as much Time to recruit and ensure that every employee in the company is A-level?"