What I Learned from Having Steve Jobs Swear at Me
Weird take. But here goes. Jobs was a jerk. But -- speaking for myself here and many of my colleagues -- we engineers are, ourselves, a pretty egotistical bunch. And when operating from a place of ego, it&#x27;s just a lot harder to get great work done. If someone can simultaneously (a) crush your ego while (b) implicitly telling you that you are, in spite of your errors, capable of great work... well, some great things can happen. It no longer becomes an issue about impressing someone (Jobs was notoriously difficult to please) -- it instead becomes a matter of producing excellent work.<p>But what do I know. I have several friends that worked for jobs directly. And he could in fact be a jerk. I have heard him privately described as needing to piss on things. But as a friend of mine said -- &quot;he almost always was right.&quot;<p>Incidentally, this position I am taking is to some degree a somewhat Zen &#x2F; Tibetan Buddhist position. That is, that dissolution of the ego is the most important thing for our well-being. And that teachers, but also anyone, really, that challenges us could actually -- if seen from a pretty advanced perspective -- be seen to help us wake up. To quote a zen master, Torei Enji:<p>&quot;If by any chance such a person should turn against us,
become a sworn enemy and abuse and persecute us,
we should sincerely bow down with humble language, in reverent belief that he or she is the merciful avatar of Buddha,
who uses devices to emancipate us from sinful karma
that has been produced and accumulated upon ourselves
by our own egoistic delusion and attachment
through countless cycles of kalpas.&quot;<p>This is not to say that Jobs was a &quot;Buddha&quot;... but that, perhaps, anyone who challenges us in a tremendous way... may be in a way helping direct us to waking up, being our best &quot;self.&quot;