That Fake Steve Jobs Deathbed Speech
I saw it make the rounds again a little while ago. There’s a Snopes article on it here.
I’m especially bothered by this bit of fakery because:
- It uses Jobs’ name to tell someone else’s agenda, an agenda that shouldn’t need fakery to be interesting by the way.
- It makes it seem like Jobs regretted his life, or somehow lived a life he didn’t want which is a huge disservice to the man.
To be clear, I didn’t know Steve Jobs personally but also, my information about him is only second hand. Not third, or worse. I knew many people who were in his orbit. So, keep this in mind when you read what I have to say and hence give my opinion whatever worth you deem appropriate. I’ll keep this brief.
On point the first, the fake article is full of lots of good advice. It didn’t need the animus of Steve Jobs to be worthy. Living a fulfilling life is its own reward and money isn’t everything and so forth. For the most part there’s a lot of solid advice in the fake article. But it wasn’t the main message of Jobs’ life and so putting his name on it is just a sham. It’s also tragic because the situation is “I have these really good ideas, but I don’t think anyone will pay any attention unless I put someone else’s name on them”.
That Jobs was very hard on his colleagues is legendary. However, being an advocate for excellence and challenging others to do their best work is not inherently a bad thing. Is it possible to do it more “gently” than Jobs did? Probably. Almost certainly. Could Steve have done it that way? I dunno. Maybe not. Probably not actually. We are who we are, and I don’t know that Jobs ever thought that he could find a more gentle way to motivate that would work for him. Maybe he could have learned one. I dunno. Maybe he tried. Maybe he didn’t think it was important enough. What we do know is that Steve was pretty much equal opportunity in demanding excellence. We also know that his approach worked. We even have a control experiment.
I’m not a huge Jobs fanboy by any means but my info tells me Steve often walked away from situations wishing he could have done more, could have done better. But nobody ever reported that he regretted the way he ran his life or his companies. Such a report is not just tripe, it’s also rejection of a lifetime of achievements that benefited billions.
Putting words like “I regret every important thing I did in whole life” into the mouth of a person on their deathbed is criminal. Nobody deserves that.
