Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [54]
But Jobs instilled in his team a passion for their work, which is critical when trying to invent new technologies. Without it, workers might lose faith in a project that takes several years to come to fruition. Without a passionate commitment to their work, they might lose interest and abandon it. “Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive,” Jobs has said. “You’re going to give it up. So you’ve got to have an idea or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you’re passionate about; otherwise you’re not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that’s half the battle right there.”
Jobs’s passion is a survival strategy. Many times when Jobs and Apple have tried something new, there have been a few true believers, but the wider world’s reaction has often been disdainful. In 1984, the first Mac’s graphical user interface was widely derided as “a toy.” Bill Gates was mystified that people wanted colored computers. Critics initially called on Apple to open up the iPod. Without a strong belief in his vision, a passion for what he was doing, it would be much harder for Jobs to resist the critics. “I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes,” Jobs told Rolling Stone. “I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.”
Instilling in employees a passion for what the company is doing has a very practical application: staffers are generally happy to work extremely long hours, even by Silicon Valley’s workaholic standards. The Mac team worked long, hard hours because Jobs made them believe the Mac was their product. It was their creativity and work that was bringing the product to life, and he made them believe they would have a profound impact. What better motivator is there? At Apple, technology is a team sport. The Mac development team worked so hard that it became a badge of honor. They all got sweatshirts emblazoned with “90 hours a week and loving it.”
The Hero/Asshole Rollercoaster
Many of Apple’s staff genuinely believe that Apple is making a dent in the universe. They strongly feel that Apple is leading technology, setting trends, and breaking new ground. To be part of that is very enticing. “People do believe that Apple is changing the world,” said one former staff member. “Not everyone believes it 100 percent, but they all believe it at least a little. As an engineer, what Apple is doing is very exciting. There was always something exciting about to happen. The company has incredible momentum.”
At Apple, the corporate culture trickles down from Jobs. Just as Jobs is exceedingly demanding of the people who report to him, Apple’s middle managers demand the same level of high performance from their staff. The result is a reign of terror. Everyone is in constant fear of losing their jobs. It’s known as the “hero/asshole rollercoaster.” One day you’re a hero; the next you’re an asshole. At NeXT, Jobs’s employees called it the “hero/ shithead rollercoaster.” “You live for days when you’re a hero and try to get through the days when you’re an asshole,” said a former staffer. “There’s incredible highs and there’s incredible lows.”
According to several staffers I talked to, there’s a constant tension at Apple between the fear of getting fired and a messi anic zeal for making a dent in the universe. “More than anywhere else I’ve worked before or since, there’s a lot of concern about being fired,” explained Edward Eigerman, a former Apple engineer. “You’d ask your coworkers, ‘Can I send this e-mail, or file this report?’ People would say, ‘You can do whatever you want on your last day at Apple.’”2
Eigerman spent four years at Apple working as an engineer in a New York sales office. Everyone he worked with eventually got fired for one reason or another, he said, mostly for performance-related issues, like not meeting their numbers. But on the other hand,