At no time did I think there'd be any retribution or problems because of this. We both had strong (and in this case, contrary) opinions, and Steve respected you a lot more if you voiced those opinions rather than just accept whatever he told you. He was also perfectly happy to over-rule you if you didn't persuade him, but he didn't want Yes-(wo)men around him.
I don't get that vibe from Musk. It's like he read some stories about how a maverick CEO can be an asshole and get away with it in some trashy red-top newspaper, and modeled his entire character around that.
I doubt if any CEO can pull it off for the long run without being caring enough about his/her inner circle. Even ruthless dictators have to be 'mostly' nice to their inner circle ( guards, butlers etc.).
The larger point being that often they can be ruthless with people who are not in the 'inner circle', sometime justifiably so and sometime not so justified. I'm basing all of this on typical human behavior, not specifically on Jobs/Musk/Bezos, of whom I know nothing. You will see this trait even in families, the stereotype of the current ruthless man being a gentle and loving father to his kids.
Your comment made me wonder, how much of Bezos and Musk sociopathy is innate, versus imitation of some excerpt popularly known of earlier successful albeit at times abrasive characters. And how might they be different if the decent stories were so well known, because they do exist.
That's an oxymoron if I've ever seen one...
If you don't accept that people new to something will make mistakes, then you're not going to get very far. Steve changed as much as Apple did over the years, and mostly for the better.
Can you please fix CoreBluetooth? It desperately needs async-await APIs :)
Also a non-location-permissions-based bluetooth background wakeup mode would be amazing
While we're at it, not locking new Swift features behind iOS X would be incredible. WWDC each year is basically "here's all the stuff you can use in 3-4 years when you can up the min-spec iOS"
I was similarly told to be with my very sick parent, no time constraints, and I was part of an inner sanctum engineering team, and later similar when I had a pet get ill, in all cases because we all had one another's backs, and we all were NOT fungible assets, but, rather, harmoniously integrated by years of working together and a strict hiring filter in the first place.