Here’s a great tale from former Apple employee John Lilly, describing what it was really like to work under Steve Jobs back in the late 1990s.
This was just after Jobs had returned to the company from his years outside, and he was determined to rebuild it into something great. He did, of course, but at the time, you can understand that his staff were uncertain about the company’s future.
One of the problems back then was leaks. Too many Apple secrets were dribbling out from the building and into the public eye. So Steve put a stop to it:
In the face of all those leaks, I remember the first all company e-mail that Steve sent around after becoming Interim CEO again — he talked in it about how Apple would release a few things in the coming week, and a desire to tighten up communications so that employees would know more about what was going on — and how that required more respect for confidentiality. That mail was sent on a Thursday; I remember all of us getting to work on Monday morning and reading mail from Fred Anderson, our then-CFO, who said basically: “Steve sent mail last week, he told you not to leak, we were tracking everyone’s mail, and 4 people sent the details to outsiders. They’ve all been terminated and are no longer with the company.”
Boom. As Steve probably didn’t say that day.
This tough crackdown was an essential part of Apple’s later success. The company was able to work in total secrecy on new products which, when announced to the public, were literally years ahead of the competition. The iPhone, in particular. The world’s other phone manufacturers were knocked sideways by the original iPhone, and they’re only now beginning to catch up.
Apple would never have got that head start if it hadn’t stopped the leaks.
There’s a lot more in Lilly’s post, too, particularly about Jobs as a manager, a leader and about the way he dealt with people. He wasn’t always the smiling charmer that the world saw on stage introducing new products.
It’s a particularly enlightening and interesting article. Go read it.
(Photo by Alan Turkus on Flickr, used under Creative Commons license – thanks Alan!)
Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.
12 responses to “How Steve Jobs Stopped The Leaks”
It’s interesting that people didn’t leak too much from home, presumably unsupervised, environment.
Is John Lilly the head of the Mozilla corporation that oversees the development of the early days web browsers?
An very good example is iPad and Mr. Schmidt
For that matter look at what happened with Gawker over the iPad and the iPhone 4.
as for the ‘not always a charmer’ I suspect that was very true. Attention to detail is something you can see in an OCD level with Steve going way way back. Remember the tales of demanding in the logic boards ‘look nice’ in the early computers. I’ve also heard stories of Steve going off over things like that one outside panel being a slightly different shade of gray at one store. Insisting that all the stone tile was the same to the point that Apple bought the quarry. If the company that made the tables ever shut down, ALL the tables would be replaced if needed so they look exactly the same. Having railings in elevators etc changed at the 23rd hour because they weren’t polished ‘the right direction’ and so on.
This is hilarious. I read quite a few rumor sites, but I understand the importance of secrecy. Also, if you were told not to leak info and choose to do so then you took the risk and need to deal with the repercussions. Best of luck. I hope to hear more interesting stories like this. I wish Jobs wrote a book about how to be a CEO, granted he was probably an asshole at times but look where it took the company.
beginning to catchup? android has been more popular and more technologically advanced for over a year