“We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. And so, at 30, I was out… and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.”
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“Steve was never fired. He took a sabbatical and was still chairman of the board. He was down, no one pushed him, but he was off the Mac, which was his deal – he never forgave me for that.
“He started NeXt and was sued by the board for hiring Apple engineers, but he was never fired by Apple.”
“I look back and think what a mistake on my part. Corporate America was secular and there just wasn’t the passion you see today where there is such respect for founders. To remove a founder, even if he was never fired, was a mistake.”