Return to the Little Kingdom_ Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple - Michael Moritz [39]
“We’ve yet to see diddly squat,” Carter said.
Bottles of apple juice, packets of potato chips, and plates of turkey, chicken, and salami sandwiches lay at one end of a long conference table. At the other end Steve Jobs, rigged out in shirt, tie, and corduroys, was tapping his feet on the rug and drumming his fingers against the tabletop. He was waiting to start a weekly lunch meeting with the managers of different departments in the Mac division. Bob Belleville, the head of engineering, Matt Carter, the head of manufacturing, Mike Murray, the marketing manager, Debi Coleman, the financial controller, Pat Sharp, Jobs’s personal assistant, and Vicki Milledge from the human resources department strolled into the room.
“C’mon! We’ve got a lot of shit to get through today,” Jobs said to the six managers as they chatted and sauntered around the table. He began to quiz Bob Belleville, the bespectacled engineer, about a dispute between two of his staff.
“What are you going to do about George eventually?” Jobs asked.
“Eventually,” Belleville replied in a mild tone, “I’ll be dead.”
“The only way we’ll keep George,” said Jobs ignoring the quip, “is to give him all the analog electronics. Unless he feels responsible for all analog electronics he’ll go somewhere else. He’ll get a great job offer to run engineering in some start-up.”
Belleville predicted that any such promotion would upset Hap Horn, another engineer who was working on a troublesome disk drive.
“If Hap blackmails you and says he’ll quit,” Jobs said, “you go by him. Once Hap gets off the critical path you ought to do it.”
“We need to finish this discussion off line,” Belleville said demurely.
Turning his attention to the long agenda, Jobs fretted about the production of instruction manuals. Activity in the publications department served as a rough barometer of progress since it monitored conditions between two fronts. One was formed by the gusty tinkering of the lab bench while the other loomed in the shape of the implacable introduction date.
“I see this stuff slipping and slipping out of pubs,” Jobs said turning to Michael Murray, the marketing manager. “They’re doing a great job but they’re not getting anything done. Get on top of it.” Murray nodded.
Jobs worked his way farther around the table and addressed Matt Carter, who was responsible for manufacturing the computer and monitoring progress at Apple’s factory near Dallas. “Can I suggest something?” Jobs said. He didn’t wait for a reply and his supplicatory tone evaporated. “Your group doesn’t interact with marketing or engineering. They’re not back in the lab. They’ve got to get into the spirit of Mac. Introduce them to everyone. You’ve got to push ’em into interaction.”
“I’m taking a party to Dallas,” Carter grinned. “So that they can interact the shit out of each other.”
Jobs abruptly changed the discussion to the growth of the division. Recruiting new people was a perennial feature of life at Mac and gobbled up much of the time of its senior managers. Jobs glanced at a sheet of paper and said: “We had forty-six people last month.”
“We’ve got sixty today,” corrected Vicki Milledge, the woman from human resources.
“God! Wow! We’re really cracking,” said Jobs.
“There’s been a whole trail of people through here,” Michael Murray observed and mentioned a candidate from Xerox. “She’s in the process of resigning from Xerox which takes much longer than interviewing at Apple.”
“When’s Rizzo going to let you know?” asked Jobs, referring to a candidate for the same position.
“He’s procrastinating,” said Murray.