Page 46 - The Apple Experience

CHAPTER 3

Cultivate Fearless

Employees

If you don’t feel comfortable disagreeing,
then you will never survive.

—Tim Cook, Apple CEO

Apple is willing to hire people based 10 percent on their knowledge and 90

percent on their personality, but employees must be 100 percent fearless.

When evaluating potential employees, Apple hiring managers will ask

themselves, “Would this person have been able to go toe-to-toe with Steve

Jobs?” The Apple cofounder was known for being a demanding boss,

especially as it related to the customer experience, and he felt as though it

was his duty to be hard on people. “I don’t think I run roughshod over

people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face,” Jobs told Walter
1
Isaacson for the biography Steve Jobs. “It’s my job to be honest. … That’s the

culture I tried to create. We are brutally honest with each other.”

Few employees ever met Jobs in person, but if they had, would they have
been able to hold their own with Steve—really go toe-to-toe with him—or

would they have wilted into a blubbering mess? Apple wants employees who

have a confident and fearless attitude toward customers, managers, and other

superiors. The philosophy started with the most fearless employee of all—

Steve Jobs himself.