Earlier this week MacDigger published memories of one of the Apple employees who told me how hard it was to work with Steve jobs. Anonymous employee described Steve jobs as a very demanding boss, who squeezed all the juice out of their subordinates. However, it is unlikely for someone, this could be a revelation.
Now we want to tell the story of another ex-Apple employee, who was not afraid to give his name. Former project Manager in the “Apple” of the Corporation Erin Caton says that jobs was not just an incredibly demanding; he was “a real bastard”, who did not appreciate their employees and shifted the blame for his mistakes on others.
Today Erin Caton works as a private consultant and she sure as hell never going back to Apple. Why? In his memoirs Caton lifts the curtain on the workflow under the supervision of the founder of Apple.
It was a pleasant enough
Caton worked as a project Manager in the MobileMe team. The MobileMe service, as we know, turned into a complete failure, so no wonder that her experience in the Apple was not positive. But despite all the discontent and the resulting judgment, she may be right: like many other successful leaders, Steve jobs could be a very nasty person.
Caton recalls two meetings with Steve jobs in the days work at Apple. The first case occurred in the dining room when she was standing in the lunch line: a man was unceremoniously climbed ahead of her. When she asked her colleagues that this was a scoundrel, she said jobs.
The Failure Of MobileMe
Caton remembered the time of preparing the cloud service MobileMe. The entire team that worked on the project, knew that the launch would be a disaster. The product just wasn’t ready and they begged the management to postpone the start. However, jobs demanded to meet the originally defined periods.
When MobileMe went out on launch day, hundreds of members of the team worked all night to fix errors and recover service. When they managed to do it, they were called on the carpet for jobs.
“We all came to him as sentenced to death rise to the scaffold, – says Caton. – He stood in front of us and screamed. Said that we should hate ourselves for being so disappoint each other and that the service should run parts. He was indignant that we (the people, the backbone of the company that is actually creating the best products in the world), didn’t try to do what we should have. It was the best in the world demotivating speech.”
