http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/eric-schmidt-on-steve-jobs-10062011.html

Great personal experience story from Eric Schmidt about Steve Jobs. The common burn on Jobs is that he was “just the business guy” and didn’t make or build anything he’s attributed credit for. Arguing the value of programming languages isn’t something even many tech executives could do.

I’ve been in design and code reviews where I influenced someone else’s work based on my experience and expertise, directing them away from what would lead to problems technically and aesthetically. I’ve also worked with developers who had trouble articulating their value to executives. I can’t write programming languages, but I can assess the value of software performance and presentation quality equally and prioritize accordingly. It wins respect among the technically adept developers who saw beyond just making things work and were happy to have someone who wanted to help them in being ultimately successful and take on the responsibility to make sure their work was usable and appealing.

The deifying of Jobs is equally distrubing. He was just a guy and was far from magical. He didn’t foresee the future. He ruthlessly directed his company to push towards the new and not fear deprioritizing the old, as evidenced by this week’s announcements showing no change to the iPods other than price, color and digital watch faces for the nano. It’s not a growth market and iPhone is.

He was a smart guy who greatly cared about what he did for a living, probably more than most. Who doesn’t wish their day job was so fulfilling? Who doesn’t wish their manager cared about their work as much as their managed employees?

I’ve always greatly respected people who loved what they do so much, they do it to their last day they’re physically able to. Jobs and his Apple products were far from perfect, but it’ll be hard to find someone with a better batting average.

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