What Am I Best At? — Steve Jobs
An insightful interview, after resigning from Apple.
Fascinating insights from a 1985 Newsweek interview of Steve Jobs, a week after he resigned (or, was pushed out) from Apple. He was 30 years old, and had not yet founded NeXT Inc.
What stood out to me from this interview was his self-awareness and clear sense of what he was best at, as a guide to what the future would hold for him.
His interview is a good reminder for each of us to identify what we are best at and most enjoy doing, in order to best contribute to society.
Seven of his quotes that resonated with me:
If I look at myself and ask, "What am I best at and what do I enjoy most doing?" I think what I'm best at is creating sort of new innovative products. That's what I enjoy doing. I enjoy, and I'm best working with, a small team of talented people. That's what I did with the Apple II, and that's what I did with the Macintosh.
I personally, man, I want to build things. I'm 30. I'm not ready to be an industry pundit. I got three offers to be a professor during this summer, and I told all of the universities that I thought I would be an awful professor.
I don't think that my role in life is to run big organizations and do incremental improvements.
What I'm best at doing is finding a group of talented people and making things with them. I respect the direction that Apple is going in. But for me personally, you know, I want to make things. And if there's no place for me to make things there, then I'll do what I did twice before. I'll make my own place. You know, I did it in the garage when Apple started, and I did it in the metaphorical garage when Mac started.
I think the best use that society can put me to is to really do what I know how to do.
My philosophy is that everything starts with a great product. So, you know, I obviously believed in listening to customers, but customers can't tell you about the next breakthrough that's going to happen next year that's going to change the whole industry. So you have to listen very carefully. But then you have to go and sort of stow away—you have to go hide away with people that really understand the technology, but also really care about the customers, and dream up this next breakthrough. And that's my perspective, that everything starts with a great product. And that has its flaws. I have certainly been accused of not listening to the customers enough. And I think there is probably a certain amount of that that's valid.
If Apple just becomes a place where computers are a commodity item and where the romance is gone, and where people forget that computers are the most incredible invention that man has ever invented, then I'll feel I have lost Apple. But if I'm a million miles away and all those people still feel those things and they're still working to make the next great personal computer, then I will feel that my genes are still in there.
Jobs did get at least one thing wrong in the interview: “I helped shepherd Apple from a garage to a billion-and-a-half-dollar company. I'm probably not the best person in the world to shepherd it to a five- or ten-billion-dollar company, which I think is probably its destiny.”
