The Steve Jobs Complex

It's good to have people you look up to. It's good to be inspired and strive to be better than the people who are currently better than you. But it's bad to try to mimic them.

There seems to be this disturbing trend among start-up CEOs to not only admire Steve Jobs and his success, but to try to actually act like Steve Jobs. They run design reviews in a "Steve Jobs way" or to talk about how "every detail matters" and "pixel perfection."

I actually started writing this post a few weeks ago and was debating whether it was worth posting. Then Jason Goldberg, the CEO of Fab.com, wrote this post saying that CEOs must be product managers.

He even had this quote about Steve Jobs:

In my first company a lot of people cautioned me not to focus on the product, rather to focus on managing the managers. This was entirely wrong. There’s a reason why Apple is so successful - Steve Jobs owns the product. I once had someone lecture me not to be Steve Jobs. They said that everyone hates working for Steve, don’t be Steve Jobs. F-that. Steve Jobs wins. You win by insisting it’s done the way you want it done and ensuring that the company’s most tangible asset — the user experience — is exactly the way you want it to be.

First, don't try to be Steve Jobs. And not because people hate working for him. Don't try to be Steve Jobs because you're not Steve Jobs. Be you. You're not Apple. You're not Steve Jobs. Acting like someone else makes you look dumb, immature, and incompetent. Be yourself.

This is like someone who wants to be good at baseball deciding to act like Alex Rodriguez. Acting like him will not make you good at baseball: it takes natural talent, an incredible amount of hard work, and an insane amount of experience to be that good.

Reading Don't Make Me Think and The Design of Everyday Things does not instantly make you a genius when it comes to product design and user experience.

If you've spent your entire life working on the business side of companies you're going to add the most value working on the business side as a CEO. If you happen to have spent you're entire life as a designer or product manager you should have a lot of input into design or product. Maybe you're a good engineer. Awesome. Then you'll probably create a great company for engineers.

Good managers hire people who are better than them. If you're the CEO and you think you're the best product manager your company can find, you're fucked.

Being CEO does not instantly make you a competent product manager. You should be able to convey your vision for what the company should be without being a dictatorial asshole and micromanaging people.