The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback
I realize that it's an aside in the article but I wanted to contradict something:> What’s less well understood is that Apple’s board and investors were absolutely right to fire Jobs. Early in his career, he was petulant, mean, and destructiveThis idea (Jobs needed to be away from Apple to improve himself) gets mentioned a lot but I think it's nonsense.First: Jobs was petulant, mean and destructive to people he disagreed with – for his whole life. He never dropped this trait. It might have appeared that he mellowed but he really just left an Apple that he no longer controlled and started another company where he had full control (he owned Pixar as well as NeXT but never exerted full control there).Second: Was Apple really right to fire Jobs? In his first 7 years at Apple, Jobs oversaw (not designed or engineered) the only successful product lines in Apple's first 20 years: the Apple 2, the Mac and the Laserwriter. The latter two happened against the best wishes of the board who only wanted to focus on the Apple 2. In the 12 years after Jobs left, Apple never launched another successful hardware product line, it merely upgrading the existing products (Mac II, PPC Mac or unsuccessful ideas like the Newton). The early 90's at Apple's R&D in particular was completely chaotic and directionless sinking billions into Pink, Taligent, OpenDoc, CHRP and other doomed initiatives.Jobs didn't need to leave Apple to fix himself. He left Apple because he disagreed with everyone (in hindsight: probably rightfully so) and he couldn't fire them. When he returned, he had the authority to fire everyone he disliked (and he did).As for the comparison to Larry Page – I don't think they were as similar as the article implies. Jobs – for better and worse – was his own special brand of crazy.