Part 5: Books about Steve Jobs; 'Let's throw darts'
No, Jobs says, he doesn't read what others have written about him. He then talks about how important it is to him to hire only the "best people in the world" to work with.
"I always considered part of my job was to keep the quality level of people in the organizations I work with very high. That's what I consider one of the few things I actually can contribute individually -- to really try to instill in the organization the goal of only having 'A' players. Because ... like in a lot of fields, the difference between the worst taxicab driver and the best taxicab driver to get you [across] Manhattan might be two to one. The best one will get you there in fifteen minutes, the worst one will get you there in a half an hour. Or the best cook and the worst cook, maybe it's three to one. Pick something like that.
"In the field that I'm in, the difference between the best person and the worst person is about a hundred to one or more. The difference between a good software person and a great software person is fifty to one, twenty-five to fifty to one, huge dynamic range. Therefore, I have found -- not just in software, but in everything I've done -- it really pays to go after the best people in the world."