Young Steve Jobs on how to hire, manage, and lead people
A "bozo" is a derisive term used by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to describe an incompetent employee who could damage a competent company. Jobs recommended hiring "A" players and avoiding "B" players as they would bring in "C" players to make themselves look better, leading to a "bozo explosion".
Quotes[]
On John Sculley[]
I began to realize this a[sic] months after he arrived. He didn't learn things very quickly, and the people he wanted to promote were usually bozos.
—Steve Jobs
On Gil Amelio[]
I thought to myself, I either tell him (another board member) the truth, that Gil is a bozo, or I lie by omission. He's on the board of Apple, I have a duty to tell him what I think; on the other hand, if I tell him, he will tell Gil, in which case Gil will never listen to me again, and he'll f**k the people I brought into Apple. All of this took place in my head in less than thirty seconds. I finally decided that I owed this guy the truth. I cared deeply about Apple. So I just let him have it. I said this guy is the worst CEO I've ever seen, I think if you needed a license to be a CEO he wouldn't get one.
—Steve Jobs
A players[]
What I saw with Woz was somebody who was 50 times better than the average engineer. He could have meetings in his head. The Mac team was an attempt to build a whole team like that, A players. People said that they wouldn't get along, they'd hate working with each other. But I realized that A players like to work with A players, they just didn't like working with C players. At Pixar, it was a whole company of A players. When I got back to Apple, that's what I decided to try to do. You need to have a collaborative hiring process. When we hire someone, even if they're going to be in marketing, I will have them talk to the design folks and the engineers.
—Steve Jobs
References[]
- The Bozo Explosion by Kevin Paul Scott (2019-06-25)
- Why Every Company Needs A 'No Bozos' Policy by Eric Jackson, Forbes. 2012-01-31.
- What I Learned From Steve Jobs by Guy Kawasaki (2011-10-08)