zlacker

> There's only one major ethical mistake documented in his entire life (being an absentee father while his first daughter was young)

Jobs lied to Steve Wozniak. Atari gave Jobs $5000 to make Breakout for Atari. He told Wozniak he got $700 so Wozniak took home $350.

>>jedber+(OP)
IIRC Jobs also later blamed Wozniak's head injury from a plane crash for him not remembering several good things Jobs did for him, as a cover for those things never happening.

>>jedber+(OP)
There is also the story where early Apple employees didn’t get any stock and Wozniak gave some of his.

>>jedber+(OP)
Steve Jobs gave Woz half of the base amount, which is what Woz agreed to. Jobs withheld the fact that he was going to receive a bonus on top of the base amount, and did not share any of that money.

Was it an ethical mistake? Sure. He should have at least disclosed that he was receiving the bonus money, even if he didn't want to share it.

But claiming it was a "major ethical mistake" seems fairly out of touch with reality.

And of course, taken in the context of all of the good things they did together, it was completely insignificant and Woz has said as much.

>>rqtwte+45
Things are always more complicated than this...

As a rule, Apple gave stock to employees prior to the IPO, many of whom got rich. But some employees weren't eligible according to the criteria Steve (really, the board) came up with, and so they did not receive stock. Their criteria were typical for the time.

Woz and a few others felt bad about this and shared some of their stock.

Whether those ineligible people "deserved" stock is a matter of judgement...

>>staunc+k5
When you decide to hide money from your partner it's not called a "mistake".

>>varjag+bV
Woz in this case was acting as a subcontractor, doing a one-off favor for a friend. This was before they became partners when creating Apple.