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Working at Apple during the Steve Jobs era was no walk in the park. Michael Dhuey, engineer on the very first iPod, recalls: “Employees dreaded running into Jobs in the elevator. If you went up to the fourth floor, you had a few seconds to convince him before you got to the second floor.”
And it wasn’t an urban legend. A good answer could save you. A poor answer could mean your immediate dismissal. The pressure was so great that some employees even prepared questions in advance, just in case they happened upon the Apple founder.
Generation Z: the antithesis of Jobs culture
Forty years on, fear of the boss has disappeared. A recent PapersOwl report, conducted among 2,000 young people aged 18 to 34, reveals that 95% of young working people consider it normal to bend the rules at work. Steve Jobs would have hated this new mentality.
Steve Jobs 20 years ago, Steve Jobs explained how to succeed in life with a simple mindset.
Some edifying figures:
- 34% unscrupulously leave the office early.
- 27% pretend to be ill to take days off.
- 11% cheat on their working hours.
- 40% practice “coffee badging” – in other words, they clock in just to have a coffee and then disappear.
Silent quitting” and disguised absenteeism have become so commonplace that some companies are implementing strategies to counter them. At Apple, internal monitoring systems exist to prevent such practices. Jobs, on the other hand, would probably not have tolerated such casualness. He could have been intransigent, even laying off people in droves to get Apple back on its feet in 1997.
His extreme demands were reflected in his radical decisions:
- Cascading redundancies: on his return to Apple in 1997, he cut several product lines and fired hundreds of employees.
- Brutal criticism: “What you’re doing is crap”, a phrase he was quick to hurl at those who didn’t live up to his expectations.
- Employees fired and then recalled: Andrea Cunningham, a key figure in the launch of the Macintosh, was fired five times by Jobs… and rehired each time
The gap between Jobs’ vision and the new generation
The evolution is striking. From the fear of bumping into your boss in an elevator to the art of discreetly slipping out of the office, the transformation of the working world is profound. But is it really beneficial? If so, beware: it’s all about toxic management. If young people are no longer crushed and humiliated, so much the better!
On the one hand, Jobs’ authoritarian style would be intolerable today. On the other, the new generation seems to be at odds with the very idea of professional loyalty. This gap is partly explained by a different economic reality:
- Young people no longer have the guarantee that hard work will bring them stability and prosperity.
- Exorbitant rents and stagnant wages make work less motivating.
- The classic model of full-time work is being called into question.
Apple has changed, and so has work
Even Apple has had to adapt to this new paradigm. Under the leadership of Tim Cook, the company now offers partial telecommuting and has abandoned its culture of management by fear. Cook himself admits that he often works from home on Fridays, as Apple Park is almost empty on that day.
The debate is open: Steve Jobs embodied a vision of work where excellence came first, sometimes to the detriment of well-being. Today, new generations aspire to more balance, even if it means testing the limits of the system. Perhaps, like Apple, we need to find a happy medium between high standards and flexibility.
This is the real challenge: learning to “think differently” about the way we work, without sinking into the excesses of yesteryear… or those of today.
