The Truth about Steve Jobs and his story with Apple
How Steve Jobs Got “Fired” From His Own Company
“The conventional wisdom was that Steve Jobs was a great visionary but not a good businessman,” Deutschman said. “But in his second time at Apple he wasn’t just a visionary. He made a point of learning how to be a great businessman.”
Jobs put it this way in his speech to Stanford graduates:
“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter into one of the most creative periods of my life,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love.”
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-fire-company/story?id=14683754&page=2
Former Apple CEO John Sculley says he never fired co-founder Steve Jobs
Sculley disagreed with Jobs’ approach, arguing that, as a public company, Apple needed to set expectations for sales and profits. He asserted that the Mac wasn’t ready for what Jobs wanted to do and remained staunch in continuing to focus on the Apple ][.
“So, that was a major disagreement between us. I said if you try to change that on your own, then I have no choice but to go to the board, and we need to bring this issue up with the board. And he didn’t think I would do that. And I did,” Sculley said.
The board responded by asking Mike Markkula, then a vice-chairman at Apple to interview key people at Apple to determine whether Jobs or Sculley was right. After 10 days, Markkula reported that Sculley was right that the technology for the Macintosh wasn’t ready for what Jobs wanted to accomplish. As such, the board asked Jobs to step down as leader of the Macintosh division.
Steve was never actually “fired” from Apple, but he was demoted from the role of leading the Macintosh division and then he went off on sabbatical and then he eventually resigned from the company and took a number of key executives and started NeXT Computing,” Sculley told Greelish.
According to Sculley, the board was “outraged” that Jobs took executives with him, as he had promised not to but did it anyway.
