Another bum CEO or a CEO bum just for alexy

From the WSJ, Tuesday, May 3, 2005, page A16, bottom right corner:

breastle: "Vladimir Ilyich Jobs?" (about Steve Jobs) by Rich Karlgaard

some quotes:

"But there is, always has been, a dark side to his genius. Once again we see it. Angered out of scale by an unauthorized biography called 'iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business,' Mr. Jobs went nuclear last week. He banished iCon from Apple stores. You might say, fine, that is his prerogative. But is it wise? Apple's shareholders, not its CEO, own the stores my note: no they don't. The harmless potboiler would've driven buyers to Apple stores. Mr. Jobs, alas, didn't stop with iCon. He also yanked from 'his' stores all books from iCon's publisher, John Wiley & Sons. These include dozens of popular nerd books, such as 'Macs for Dummies,' written to help Apple's customers. The dummy here is Mr. Jobs."

"Mr. Job's war on iCon follows another stupid public relations move born of, well, totalitarian impulse. In January, Apple sued three bloggers for publishing leaked information on Apple products. One is a young college student who began writing Mac devotionals at age 13."

"For all this, America loves Steve Jobs. Me, too, though I shouldn't. Years ago, he phoned me on a Saturday morning and tried to squash a story my then magazine, Upside, was about to print on NeXT, Inc. NeXT was his second startup after apple. But it was failing and our story said so. One the phone Mr. Jobs cooed and threatened, including warnings to 'watch my backside' and, strangely, 'don't ride a bicycle alone on dark roads.' We ran the story. Michael Moritz, before he was a venture capitalist funding Yahoo adn Google, once covered Apple as a Time magazine reporter. Mr. Jobs repeatedly tried to get him fired."

The next covers the author's love affair with the Mac and how he started magazines and got into business using Macs and just gushes over the Mac.

Back to the quotes.

"But, like many revolutionaries, Mr. Jobs appears to be one who loves the world and loathes people. He has been known to bring misery to people's lives, and not just book authors. His capacity for cruelty runs the gamut from verbal lashings of his own customers to rumored summary dismissals for the sin of having brought him the wrong brand of bottled water. He denied the paternity of a daughter for years. In a book called 'Infinite Loop,' writer Michael S. Malone describes how, in the early 1970s, Mr. Jobs even screwed over his eventual Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak."

The next paragraph goes into the deal where Jobs and Woz were to share the work and pay for programming a game for Atari, but in the end, Atari gave jobs $7,000 and Woz got $350 but Woz "...did all the work." and "Mr. Jobs took all the credit for writing the game...."

And, they give these guys big jobs no pun, big pay, big egos, and let other people do the work.