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Former Apple employee reveals one of the worst things about working for Steve Jobs

Published Jun 17th, 2015 11:40AM EDT
What It's Like To Work At Apple

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Steve Jobs was a visionary who literally helped shape the future of the world. He was a driving force in the personal computing revolution, and then he and his company reinvented the smartphone to move computing off of our desks and into our pockets. Like many other successful founders, Jobs was a genius. And like many other geniuses, Jobs was incredibly difficult to work with at times.

Now, a new account from a former Apple employee gives us a fresh perspective on the worst things about working with Apple’s iconic co-founder.

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We’ve seen several accounts of what it was like to work with Steve Jobs over the years. He seemingly demanded almost as much from his colleagues as he did from himself, and he certainly didn’t beat around the bush when making his opinions known. Jobs was hardly afraid to yell and reprimand employees, according to accounts, and he could certainly be hard on his teams.

According to a new account in a recent post on Business Insider, he could be even more demanding than you might expect.

An unnamed former Apple employee who claims to have worked with Jobs before his untimely passing recounted what he viewed as one of the worst things about working with Jobs. In a nutshell, there was absolutely no work-life balance. We’ve heard that before, but this new example may take things to a whole different level.

Here’s the passage in question:

Every two weeks, we meet with Steve Jobs and it’s on a Monday. So that means every other weekend, I don’t get. No matter what’s going on, whether it’s a deadline or new ideas for the future. We have to work every other weekend all the time no matter what … And then you meet with him, and he craps on all of it. He might like one or two ideas, and usually he wants you to redo those one or two ideas. And so that whole next week, you’re redoing those one or two ideas plus coming up with new ones. That’s all year, all the time, every two weeks.

That sounds rough indeed, and we can imagine the stress that would lead up to those regular meetings with Jobs. This employee reportedly worked on the all-too-important Human Interaction team though, and not everyone is cut out for such a demanding job.

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.