Mark Papermaster — the former lead of the iPhone hardware team at Apple — unceremoniously left Cupertino five months ago, shortly after the Antennagate debacle… but despite possibly being fired by Steve Jobs himself, Papermaster has managed to land safely on his feet over at Cisco.
The news broke over the weekend, when it was announced that Cisco Systems had hired Papermaster as their new vice president of their silicon switching technology group.
It’s good to hear that he landed safely. According to earlier reports, Papermaster had a hard time fitting into Apple’s corporate culture, where executives were expected to micro-manage the smallest details of their departments. A personality clash with Steve Jobs was also rumored, ultimately resulting in Steve losing confidence in his ability to handle his own unit.
It always sounded like Papermaster was competent, but that his way of managing just didn’t fit in with Apple’s unconventional corporate culture. After 25 years at IBM, Cisco seems like a much better fit.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
