Was Steve Jobs Correct?

Have you heard of this Steve Jobs quote about managers? In this video, Matt gives his take on how different types of managers hire. And it’s not exactly lined up to Jobs’ quote. 

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video:

For the Steve Jobs quote, A players hire A players, B players hire C players. The reason for it is fear. A players love working with other A players because they know the demands of the job and the team dynamics just make them better. B players frequently say, look, I’m a worker B and I know I’m not an A player and that’s okay. But some of them are fearful and say, well, if I have too many B players around, let alone A players, I will look terrible. It will be very obvious that I’m just not that good. So the way to fix this is for me to become a manager and for me to hire a bunch of people who aren’t very good at all. Like much worse than me. And then I’ll look like the tallest mushroom and that’ll be great. 

Matt’s Review:

Yeah, I mean, I agree with the idea that the best people you wanna hire are the best people you can find and good people are looking out for good people. I don’t necessarily think though that average people are intentionally looking for sub-average people so that they ensure they look better. I think average people are just not using the same criteria. They’re not asking the hard questions. They’re not expecting as much ’cause they’re not used to giving as much or thinking through it as much or as applying as much critical thinking to the project as the A-players. So I don’t think, I mean there’s a few people who are schemers and sort of you know trying to make sure they look good at the cost of others, but I think most people who are average are not intentionally trying to hire down, they’re just not scrutinizing as hard, they’re not expecting as much, they’re not used to asking as much from themselves as A-players, and so they’re not looking for as much from the people they hire. They’re looking for people who look like themselves, which is average. So, I don’t, yeah, I don’t think he is on the mark, in my opinion, for most people, that they’re intentionally sort of sabotaging the workforce. I think you just get better results when you have better people, and better people are naturally higher achievers, expect more, produce more, and they want to work with other people who look like them. We all kind of want to work with people who we feel like we’re similar to, and the top people feel like they’re similar to the top people. So I think that it’s as simple as that.