After Apple

It’s an often-told story that when Jobs went around finding his first batch of suckers, his sales pitch was to ask them if they wanted a job, or to change the world. After working at Apple for any length of time you realize that this effectively means, “Would you like a salary you can live on, or are hopes and dreams good for you?” Pity the sucker that took that job, for he changed the world and ate crackers and soup.

What Steve really meant, though, outside of stiffing the poor bastard, was that Apple concentrates on creative talent and hutzpah rather than on the meager details of business or life. What matters is the gem, the gold, the shiny new thing that’s going to change the world, and all that little stuff that’s needed to get that done, well, some other fool’s handling that, working the magic, making it work so that you can work on The Next Big Thing.

Sadly, that bohemian view of what it is to work in the age of computing never quite left California.