14 DAY TRIAL // Back in the early days of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak could not be trusted in managerial positions, therefore Mark Markkula, the company's first backer, chose Michael Scott for the role of Chief Executive Officer.
In an interview with Business Insider, Scott recalls that "Jobs did the talking, and Woz was the quiet one."
"I don't know how much he's changed being a manager, but he would not, for instance… he was never allowed to have much of a staff while he was there because he would not supervise them," said Scott.
"He wouldn't make sure they got their reviews on time or that they got their raises, or that they got the health they need,” Scott added.
It’s his opinion that, as a person who is responsible with managing a team, “You have to take care of the people as well as the product.”
“…at times you have to yell, but at times you have to be supportive too, and I would say that that's still what makes Steve, Steve," Scott revealed.
Apple’s first CEO also reveals that Jobs was so obsessed with design that he simply drove people insane trying to get just the right look and feel of a product.
“[He] was maybe more particular [then than he is now],” Scott said referring to Jobs’ compulsion.
“The Apple II case came," he recalls, "it had a beige and a green, so for all the standard colors of beige available in the world, of which there are thousands, none was exactly proper for him. So we actually had to create ‘Apple beige’ and get that registered.”
But Jobs also wanted rounded corners, so that the Apple II did not “have a hard feel.” According to Scott, “They spent weeks and weeks arguing exactly how rounded it would be.”
“So that attention to detail is what Steve is known for, but it also is his weakness because he pays attention to the detail of the product, but not to the people,” he believes.
Scott also laid it on the interviewers that, for all his bad temper and obsessive nature, "Steve's never shy about telling you what he wants and where he stands.”
“He's very straightforward to deal with. Unlike other people that don't tell you what they mean. If you're a politician versus a businessman, that attitude can have its ups and downs," Scott opined.