Working with Steve Jobs

Business week has an article featuring many well known individuals who have worked with Steve Jobs. To summarize, the article portrays Steve Jobs as a man who was demanding, focused on quality and did not hesitate to berate his employees or suppliers while also being a loyal friend and a sometimes fair business partner. 

However, inadvertently it also reveals how Steve Jobs would work with companies but only on his terms, would undercut them if it was in the interests of Apple and steal their know-how if he needed to.

In particular (former Motorola CEO) Ed Zander's bittersweet recollections of his encounters with Steve Jobs clearly indicate that Steve Jobs chose to work with Motorola only to gain enough information about the cell phone industry. What is not clear in this article is why Zander who was unceremoniously booted out from Motorola let himself be manipulated like this.

 Zander claims, in an attempt to paint a softer profile of Jobs,  that Jobs always regarded him as his friend and offered his personal support and advise on numerous occasions. Based on his revelations in this article,  Zander should be sued for breach of fiduciary duties for the manner in which he handled the relationship with Apple and Jobs. But this would take up it's own blog and detract from my final point below. 

After reading the article, I was left with the feeling that the title was wrong. Nobody, including his suppliers or partners, worked WITH Jobs - they always worked FOR him. Of all the people featured in this article only Ed Zander, comes close to realizing this. Jobs must surely be laughing AT these people and definitely not WITH them.