"But Jobs was not a universally popular figure. He oozed arrogance, was vicious about business rivals, and in contrast to, say, Bill Gates, refused to have any truck with notions of corporate responsibility. He habitually parked his Mercedes in the disabled parking slot at Apple headquarters and one of his first acts on returning to the company in 1997 was to terminate all of its corporate philanthropy programmes.
Jobs's management style owed less to Zen Buddhism than to George Orwell. No aspect of corporate life was immune from his authority and he was almost pathologically controlling when it came to dealing with the press. Journalists found that he would try to stifle even anodyne stories if they had not received his blessing. One described getting an interview with Jobs as about as easy as getting an interview with Saddam Hussein, "except Saddam would probably be more helpful and certainly more polite"."
Jobs's management style owed less to Zen Buddhism than to George Orwell. No aspect of corporate life was immune from his authority and he was almost pathologically controlling when it came to dealing with the press. Journalists found that he would try to stifle even anodyne stories if they had not received his blessing. One described getting an interview with Jobs as about as easy as getting an interview with Saddam Hussein, "except Saddam would probably be more helpful and certainly more polite"."
