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New Book Reveals Apple's Steve Jobs Was First Choice for Google CEO
A Reader notes, Steven Levy's latest book, In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives, lifts the lid on the secretive world of Google, revealing how the founders fell out with Apple's Steve Jobs and what happened in the search engine's exit from China. Levy claims that when Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were on the hunt for a chief executive they wanted Steve Jobs to take the job. Obviously, he didn't, and later the two companies became fierce rivals rather than allies.
It makes you wonder how things would have turned out if Jobs had accepted the offer. Then again, the competition between the two is likely to still lead to some new innovations that might not surface otherwise.
. o O { don't feed the troll, don't feed the troll, don't feed the troll...}
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This isn't necessarily a bad thing, for the most part, just a case of different people with different personalities finding roles in society where their traits are assets rather than liabilities.
You have to be kidding. Bullying and walking over people is never an asset in a civilized society. Only about 2% of people are like that, and they cause almost all of the problems.
If we didn't have the problem of sociopaths and psychopaths (pigs might fly), then our political and business system would actually be ethical, since 98% of the population doesn't have much of a problem with being ethical.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
And your degree in behavioral psychology is from the University of ________?
The fact is, progress depends on people who are willing to place their own interests -- or those of their "tribe" -- above those of others. Your statement suggests that you're either 12 years old, or have spent all your life in a Zen monastery.
I always felt that those people who insist in demonizing Jobs and Gates look much more psychopathic than Jobs and Gates. They are surely less grounded and in touch with reality, even if just because they did *not* manage to get large companies up and running from nothing. They're purely negative and destructive, just reacting to something they don't understand or don't like, with no means to do something successful on their own.
I'm not saying there are no psychopaths in the industry but mostly you find them in meager positions of power that cater to their special "talent". The "captains" mostly are bright and realistic guys, even if often with an iron will and/or personal quirks. Like it or not but success is the most clear indicator for psychological health we have. There are exceptions in certain dysfunctional communities, but usually true madness sinks to the bottom. Describing Jobs as a sociopath just because he has very clear (and obviously very correct) ideas how devices for the masses should work is, well, mad.
If the story is true, at the time Jobs intentionally screwed over his supposed friend for money. What's the relevance of what happened after?
You do realize that psychology isn't actually science, right? And that argumentum ad hominems just make you look like a dumbass.
Most humans, despite the beliefs to the contrary are more or less decent people, there's just this nasty tendency towards confirmation bias that makes it seem otherwise. People tend to be social and without those 1-2% individuals that behave like that, I'm really not convinced that people would behave like that.
That being said, there's no way of knowing because we'll never get rid of those sorts of people in the population at large long enough to actually answer the question.
To soften the blow and make Jobs look like less of an asshole than he is?