I disagree. It's true that the management style he had during the 1980's definitely would have had a stronger and faster backlash in the 2020s - he would have been forced out of the company even sooner than he really was. But this style also didn't work all that well in the '80s and led directly to him being ousted and Apple entering a slow death spiral they had to be rescued from a decade later. His second act really was different and he was much more mature as a leader; certainly he still worked people hard and was unusually blunt compared to some other current FANG CEOs, but you didn't see the sort of petulant and intensely personal abuse that you would sometimes see from him in his first act.

I think if he was CEO of Apple in the current environment, certainly there would be less hero worship outside of Apple, and a lot more people would be writing pieces critical of his leadership style and effect on the world, but there wouldn't be anything serious enough to force him from the company given how well things would be going. In other words, he'd be much closer to Musk than Kalanick both in terms of the severity of the criticism and his ability to weather it.

You know what they say... you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villan. That definitely would have happened with Jobs.

People do change, and I wouldn’t dismiss the capacity of anyone to adapt to new circumstances. With Apple growing, Steve would have grown, too.

That's a problem for the 2020s, then.

One could argue Elon Musk's style of working and personal history is in some ways similar to Steve Jobs, and Musk is doing fine in the 2020s.