What really set Steve Jobs apart is that he never should have gotten to where he did. I don't mean he didn't deserve it or anything but based on that structures that exist to filter people who attain the positions that he did. By luck, or accident, or raw determination, he became a person in the drivers seat that no one would have chose to put there. He was so much not the person they would have chosen that they kick…
> treated people in ways they felt uncomfortable with and achieved things that people thought were out of reach.
The biggest misunderstanding about leadership from people and orgs who don't appreciate that it's a science vs. an art is that to do the impossible, to stretch orgs and do it in unorthodox fashions, that "make people uncomfortable," the Jobs-isms that made him awful part has to come along with it.
This is just patently untrue.
Where this trope comes from is understanding a bit more about toxic leadership. Toxic leaders tend to excel. They're very talented. They can produce. The thing is: they do it by shredding their teams. If the incentives are right and the feedback loops are a certain way, they'll rise all the way to the top (and possibly stay there) just on the back of their product/production sense, with a history of angry teams, colleagues, partners and "a rep." Just like jobs. That's all there is to it.
What's happened is the growth of a narrative, in part via posts like this to be respectfully candid, that the toxic stuff has to come with the unothordox/visionary leadership stuff. It really does not. Kevin Mandia (showing up in another thread today on HN) is a good counter-example. If it's a stretch to compare Mandia vs. Jobs, and it definitely is outside of a lab setting, look at the Google founding team's reps vs. Jobs, or the netscape crew vs. Gates.
Why this screed - leadership is important, and it's a science that goes beyond running on pure charisma or pure talent. Tech must learn it better.