Posts filed under 'Steve Jobs personality'
The lowdown on Steve Jobs’ future Woodside home
OK, so for about two whole weeks, the WWWW (Whole World Wide Web) has been a-buzzing about the supposedly exclusive plans that Gizmodo unveiled of Steve’s future home in Woodside. Now that the story is a little more behind us, I thought I’d recap and use the occasion to come back on the whole Woodside affair, that’s been going on for years.
1. Context
As most of you know, Steve has owned a mansion in Woodside since 1984. He bought it with the money he made at Apple after the company’s IPO in 1980. The mansion — 14,540 sq.— was built in the 1920s by a copper magnate, Daniel Jackling, hence its nickname “the Jackling house”. It is located in the exclusive neighborhood of Woodside, not too far from Larry Ellison’s Japanese estate. Steve lived in it when he was a bachelor, roughly from 1984 to the early or mid-1990s (shortly after his marriage with Laurene). You can see pictures of Steve inside his mansion on all about Steve Jobs (I chose one of my favorites here).
Steve in Woodside in September 1985, the day he announced he was quitting Apple.Note the mansion on the right, which looks really nice.
One thing you will note is that most of the rooms are devoid of furniture. As a matter of fact, the only room that was fully furbished inside the mansion was the kitchen — not that Steve was a great cook, he hired a couple who cooked for him.
Understandably, Laurene refused to live in this empty mansion, and had Steve and their new family move to a less reclusive — and slightly more furnished — house in Palo Alto. The Woodside mansion has been abandoned since then. (more…)
Stop comparing yourself with Steve Jobs
The prestigious Harvard Business Review recently published an interesting article: Stop Comparing Yourself With Steve Jobs by Dan Pallotta. The main idea is that you should draw inspiration from the people you admire, but certainly not compare yourself with them. The reason the article uses Steve Jobs is explained in the first paragraph already:
Comparing yourself with Steve Jobs is not healthy. Never mind that it’s probably the pastime of every alpha male and female businessperson on the planet these days.
There are two reasons why the article caught my eye:
– one, some people who (sadly) don’t spend enough time on the website think that the section “Being Steve” refers to “how to emulate Steve Jobs”. Maybe the name is a bad choice — though I like it and don’t intend to change it, sorry folks. But if you spend a couple minutes on the website, you’ll see it’s a description of Steve’s personality, things that have to be dealt with on all about Steve Jobs but have nothing to do on the biography. So — no, it’s not a manual on how to “be like Steve”.
– second, and more importantly, during my current studies in business school, I do have often heard Steve Jobs quoted in many a class by my teachers as a great inspiration. This is quite ironic to me.
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