Good bye, Mr Jobs

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I felt very sad when I learned that Steve Jobs lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. As the spokesman and decision-maker for Apple and for Pixar, we tend to associate him with all the fun and pleasure and excitement that we have intensely felt with our exotic gadgets and entertaining movies. So his unfortunate passing leaves the impression that we may never have shiny new toys ever again.

Yet, as you read all the touching obituaries and endearing tributes to Mr. Jobs, you get a feeling that he alone invented and designed and built each iPad and iPhone and iPod; that he alone did all of the marketing and all of the sales and all of the accounting.

You have to give him credit for being one of the main driving forces behind Apple's success. However, if you've ever worked in a manufacturing environment, you know that the job of head honcho is to meet with his (or her) managers and then yell at them for not making enough profit. They in turn meet with their sub-managers and scream at them for not meeting overly ambitious sales goals. These subs-managers then get to meet with their sub-sub-managers and curse them out for not bringing products to market quick enough.

Eventually, you get far enough down in the corporate food chain to the people who make things happen. For example, the overworked and underpaid engineers who get screeched at for taking more than a day and spending more than a dollar to design, build, and quality-test a new, complex product; and the equally unappreciated production people who get browbeaten for not working at 200% of their capacity.

Yes, the hype may credit Steven Jobs with changing the world, but I guarantee that he stood on the shoulders of thousands of people to do so. You probably will rarely hear the news lament about any one of unsung heroes when their life ends.