Steve Jobs earned a reputation for merciless standards, yet sometimes his demand for perfection came wrapped in jaw-dropping generosity.
What Happened: Ron Givens, Apple’s AAPL director of quality from 1981 to 1986, recalled the day a secretary shuffled in late. Jobs stormed over to ask why, and she admitted her car had died that morning.
“That afternoon, he walks into her office, tosses a set of keys to a brand-new Jaguar and says, ‘Here, don’t be late anymore,'” Givens told WRAL in an interview back in 2011. A Jaguar XJ cost roughly $35,000 in 1981, about $123,000 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation, making the spur-of-the-moment gift an extraordinary employee perk.
The story illustrates the paradox of Apple’s co-founder, who was a boss employees feared, yet one who could motivate “out of your socks,” as Givens put it. Jobs, then 26, lived and breathed the company, prowling hallways to grill engineers on pixel placement one minute and springing surprises the next.
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Givens, two decades older, said he often thought Jobs’s ideas were “stupid” until their brilliance clicked later. Back in 2011, he said he still kept a $1,000 Steuben-glass apple Jobs had handed him unannounced.
Why It Matters: Steve Jobs ran Apple with icy precision, insisting on “only A players” and admitting that firing weaker talent, though “very painful,” was necessary to maintain high standards. His late-night demands could left teams exhausted, and Pixar’s Pete Docter later said Jobs’s 3 am phone calls were a work trait he would “never repeat.”
Elon Musk openly praises that edge, agreeing with Jobs that a CEO’s chief duty is “recruiting exceptional talent” rather than hand-holding staff, and he echoes Jobs’s view that “the greatest people are self-managing.”
Not every leader wants the full Jobs playbook. Bill Gates once called comparing Musk to the “genius” Jobs a “gross oversimplification,” warning that charisma can mask managerial chaos.
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