Job (the Movie)

I watched the movie titled Jobs which is about founder of Apple company, Steve Jobs. One thing I like about the movie is the strong similarity in appearance that the cast of actors playing the various characters have with their real-life personalities. I couldn’t have thought of a better actor who bore such semblance in appearance to Steve Job than Ashton Kutcher. And I thought he delivered a compelling performance of Steve Job as portrayed in other sources – Intense, independent-minded, domineering, manipulative, revengeful, cold, ambitious. Co-actor Josh Gad played the part of Job’s trusted friend, co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, who spots the milder geeky personality, quite the Yin to Job’s Yang, and complementing the business acumen of Job with his technical genius for hardware engineering.

The basic storyline, probably well-known to most people familiar with the biography of the various personalities of the computer industry is as follows. Job discovers a prototype of an unprecedented graphic-interface computer in Wozniak’s house which Wozniak had been working on as his own personal project. He convinced Wozniak to start a company together and market the invention. They obtained the interest of a retailer who made a deal to buy the new invention from them. Job and his team begin working to produce the agreed quantity of the invention in Job’s home garage. Apple later expanded, this time having a board of directors, one of which playing the role of the antagonistic role of the disapproving shareholder representative. Job head-hunted for John Sculley from Pepsi to lead the marketing team at Apple. The board later became dissatisfied with what they saw as Job’s exorbidant spending of money into his unprofitable pet project, and replaced him as CEO with Sculley. Job quited Apple. Many years later, with Apple floundering and in need of direction, the new board invited Job back to the company. Job was reinstated to position as CEO, and led Apple to become the world’s most valuable company.

Job is portrayed as a character with a brilliant intelligence but with a terrible personality. He is casted as this genius who knows better than everyone else, and criticisms or opposition from others are never constructive, but are mere stumbling blocks towards the ideal that Job knows better. Job perceives difference in opinion as a lack of foresight on the part of others. He yelled at a fellow game designer at Atari because that colleague was of the opinion that the prevailing technology does not allow for color games, and demands to be given his own project to lead at Atari. He smartingly proves that colleague of his wrong by introducing the game “Breakout”. A judgement of his subordinate in his team developing the Lisa computer that multiple typefonts is not a necessary urgent development is construed by Job as an irreconcilable difference of vision, which merits that subordinate an extremely harsh shelling and firing by Job in front of all the other team members. When the board of Apple remarked that the Apple II failed to sell well because of the high price racketed up by Job in developmental cost, Job retorted back by laying the blame squarely on his marketing director for poor marketing strategy. There is no second guess on Job’s part that the opinion of others might be correct. He is confident that he is right and they are not. And supposedly for Job, being a jerk is justified if you are right. Well, I suppose it is better than someone who is wrong (or simply because he is the boss), and behaves like a jerk regardless. But I would think that working environments would be more civil and humane if we take away the ‘jerk’ manner of dealing with people altogether.

I like this quote attributed to Job that was made at the end of the show - “When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way that it is. And that your life is to live your life inside the world, and try not to get in too much trouble, and maybe get an education, and get a job, and make some money and have a family. But life can be a lot broader than that when you realize one simple thing: that everything around us that we call life was made up by people that are no smarter than you. And you can build your own things. You can build your own life. Build a life. Don’t live one, build one.”

I guess a good question that people can ask themselves in their daily lives is how things in the society or the world they live in can be better, and if they are capable enough, to find ways to achieve that vision. This can be in both the little and the big things.  For Job, his belief of a better world is in the technology products he develops. But I am sure that there are more things in the world that can be improved than just technological advances. For one, I believe society can be kinder, caring, and more compassionate, and people should look out for the interests of one another rather for themselves alone.