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Tesla CEO Elon Musk Agrees With Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs On Guiding Talent: 'You Know Who The Best Managers Are?'

Benzinga ·  Dec 4 20:43

Tesla Inc. CEO and the world's richest person, Elon Musk, voiced agreement with legendary Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs – yet again, this is about the best way to manage top talent in the company.

What Happened: Jobs has spoken aplenty about hiring the best talent and effective leadership to guide them.

Now, Musk, who has been similarly open about keeping his ship lean, thinks Jobs' idea of identifying the best managers is "absolutely true."

"We went through that stage at Apple where we went out and thought, 'Oh, we're going to be a big company. Let's hire professional management."

Jobs quipped that Apple did just that, and the results were not what they expected.

"We went out and hired a bunch of professional management. It didn't work at all."

Elon Musk Agrees With Steve Jobs On The Most Important Job Of A CEO

Jobs was sharp in his criticism and didn't hold back. "Most of them were bozos."

In particular, Jobs called out the inability of these professional managers to do anything. "If you're a great person, why do you want to work for somebody you can't learn anything from?"

This hearkens back to Jobs' belief in hiring only the best talent – he believed in having a small team of "A" players instead of large teams of "B" and "C" players.

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The Best Managers: Interestingly enough, Jobs draws a parallel from a popular philosophy on leadership – the best leaders are the reluctant ones.

"You know what's interesting? You know who the best managers are?" asked Jobs in an interview.

"They're the great individual contributors who never ever want to be a manager, but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them."

Absolutely true

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 4, 2024

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