Steve Jobs Has Fallen off My Pedestal

Steve Jobs has been my idol, the person I looked up to the most.

But after watching

and hearing from many people about what an asshole he was, including directly from someone who worked with him for years, I’ve concluded he was a manipulative psycopath who damaged many people, which no accomplishments can offset. He has fallen off my pedestal.

Neither is Elon Musk my idol — he's an unethical person who doesn't honor his contracts and promises, is overconfident, has made Twitter buggy, and so on.

Many people venerated by the press don’t deserve to be. Don’t put them up on a pedestal in your own mind.

We should learn lessons from these people in specific areas (like designing great products) but rejecting their example in others (like how to treat people). Learning about product design from Steve doesn’t require deifying the man.

For that matter, there are positive lessons we can learn from anyone, even the worst people, like Hitler. For example, Hitler was good at understanding the mood of the population and used that to grab and hold on to power. The lesson here is that leaders can succeed only if they understand the emotions of they people they’re leading. We can take this lesson without condoning Hitler.

Or Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk.