# Did CEO worship die with Steve Jobs? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 23, 2016, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930 "2016-03-23T09:29:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930/61 "2016-03-24T05:06:45Z")
I dunno. There was never a [www.shitjobssaid.com](http://www.shitjobssaid.com), but there is a [www.shitelonsays.com](http://www.shitelonsays.com). ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930/62 "2016-03-24T11:03:18Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Yep- he was moderately tech geek famous for being one of the co-founders of Apple, but what got him the real CEO “street cred” was the turnaround of Apple, and probably more than that, positioning Apple’s products as “cool” more than as technologically capable. > > THAT is what Jobs did that was remarkable; managed to figure out how to sell technological products as a lifestyle choice, rather than as a geeked-out decision, or as a rather utilitarian decision based on specs. Which happened first: Jobs sold a lifestyle, or the innovative products demonstrated their ability to integrate into people’s lifestyle and reshape them, and Jobs spun the heck out of that to serve his company? Yes, it has centered around iPods and iPhones, but he is still the face of an inflection point in social behavior. If Teslas get a much bigger share, Musk can be even more out front as a CEO Idol. If Echo becomes a social-behavior-shaping platform for a broad swath of people, Bezos could step out even more. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930/63 "2016-03-24T11:18:27Z")
Too late to add: Worshipped CEOs typically represent some trend or type of performance that is held up as The Way to Do Things for that era. - The In Search of Excellence Companies - The Good to Great companies - In the 90’s it was Business Process Reengineering gurus, followed by the Dot-Com pioneers. - In the 00’s it was Social Media and companies who could offshore parts of their Ops to save big money - Now it seems to be Gig Economy Enablers and Lifestyle Influencers Right now, a Jack Welch, who was idolized in a previous era, wouldn’t have currency as a CEO idol the way Travis Kalanik (sp??) of Uber does. Thinking out loud. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930/64 "2016-03-24T12:23:03Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > The OP is talking about one flavour of CEO worship: the worship of the mega-famous billionaires. Largely, yes, although a guy like Jack Welch wasn’t to my knowledge a billionaire. > [@](#): > > What about the founders of up-and-coming companies that are still “only” in the millions of dollars ballpark? Not so famous, but if you read an article on such a person it will invariably be gushing and with a “here’s how you can be more like this person” slant. > [@](#): > > Which is by and large a good thing. Not everyone who founds a successful start up is necessarily deserving of adoration, but it makes sense for society to generally want to emulate such success. If that CEO/company are really adding value to society, I’m all for it. Too often, however, it’s the clickbait of its era. You know, _Cosmo_ will always have sex tips and weight loss tips on the cover, and _Men’s Health_ is going to have “Get abz of titanium in 5 days!” Doesn’t matter if it’s 1988 or 2008. Wash rinse repeat. And Forbes (when it was just a shitty magazine and not yet a shitty website) had to have its own cover wank material, so it was CEO worship and the same personal finance tips and the latest stock picks or whatever. Over and over. Need content! Need content! Need content! Same old story, literally. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930/65 "2016-03-24T13:00:03Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Elon Musk as a person definitively gets more hero worship than anyone on your list save Steve Jobs. He was the inspiration for freaking Iron Man and he’s amassed a massive cult of personality. You may not personally be familiar with it but it’s there and it’s huge. Given that Iron Man first appeared in the comic books in 1963, I don’t see how Musk could have inspired anything. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930/66 "2016-03-24T13:57:47Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Which happened first: Jobs sold a lifestyle, or the innovative products demonstrated their ability to integrate into people’s lifestyle and reshape them, and Jobs spun the heck out of that to serve his company? Yes, it has centered around iPods and iPhones, but he is still the face of an inflection point in social behavior. > > If Teslas get a much bigger share, Musk can be even more out front as a CEO Idol. If Echo becomes a social-behavior-shaping platform for a broad swath of people, Bezos could step out even more. Not to make this a Steve Jobs discussion, but what happened is that when Jobs came back, Apple repositioned themselves (internally anyway) as a “cool” company, and started selling cute looking iMacs that … GASP!.. came in different pretty colors, while your bog-standard Windows/Intel PC of the era was either a black box with a couple of LEDs, or a putty-colored box with a couple of LEDs, and similarly colored unsexy peripherals. The iMacs weren’t any cheaper, more powerful or anything else than the earlier un-sexy Macintoshes, or for that matter, than a PC of the era. But they were pretty, and they were cool. That started the whole lifestyle status positioning of Apple’s products as more of a lifestyle status item, as opposed to something (the PC) with a design ethos that was practically military in its relentless championing of function over form. They continued that up through the present day with the Justin Long Mac vs. PC ads, the dancing silhouette iPod ads, and all the various nifty iPhone ads. Which, if you’ll note, have VERY little actual discussion about any technical superiority, perceived or otherwise, but focus on how cool it is to take your iPad to the mountains, or on your bike ride, or at the museum, or whatever. Their competitors have started doing the same, but for the most part, the people susceptible to that sort of thing are already in the Apple camp. And to change the topic a bit, I think \*\*WordMan \*\*is onto something, except that a lot of the ideas of the past were more approachable, or at least conceptually less strange to the average layman. Taking a company from “good” to “great” makes some intuitive sense to most everyone regardless of socio-economic strata or age, and there’s an assumption that there’s some serious business jiu-jitsu involved. But stuff like “enabling the gig economy” or being “lifestyle influencers” sounds to most anyone over 35, or not super-tight into the modern urban lifestyle, like some spacey bullshit that dumb-ass millenials would be involved in, and that either won’t last, or that won’t really change much of anything in the real world. So the CEOs known for that kind of thing aren’t idolized, but are actually viewed with some suspicion, or at least a cocked eye. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930/67 "2016-03-24T17:15:46Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Given that Iron Man first appeared in the comic books in 1963, I don’t see how Musk could have inspired anything. The Marvel movie Iron Man, not the comic Iron Man. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930/68 "2016-03-24T17:18:40Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Since then, most CEOs have been either doing solid work in under-the-radar in traditional industries (who knows about Don Fites, Mark Hurd, Alan Mullaly or Anne Mulcahy?) or they’re more famous for being the inventors of widely used technology products (Zuckerberg, Gates, Brin/Page, and Musk) than they are for being successful CEOs. Add to that a certain skepticism of internet/technology success brought on by the late-1990s/early 2000s Internet boom, and combine it with the fact that none of them really expound on business concepts too often- they mostly pontificate about technological or socio-technical ideas, and you get a group of famous, but not really adored CEOs. In the case of Alan Mulally, I’d say a lot of people are aware of him due mostly to the bankrupcy hearings. Although he never presented himself as the “savior” of Ford Motor Co. IMO if you asked me who actually _saved_ Ford, I’d say Don LeClair. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2016, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930/69 "2016-03-24T19:41:48Z")
> [@bump](#): > > And to change the topic a bit, I think \*\*WordMan \*\*is onto something, except that a lot of the ideas of the past were more approachable, or at least conceptually less strange to the average layman. Taking a company from “good” to “great” makes some intuitive sense to most everyone regardless of socio-economic strata or age, and there’s an assumption that there’s some serious business jiu-jitsu involved. > > But stuff like “enabling the gig economy” or being “lifestyle influencers” sounds to most anyone over 35, or not super-tight into the modern urban lifestyle, like some spacey bullshit that dumb-ass millenials would be involved in, and that either won’t last, or that won’t really change much of anything in the real world. So the CEOs known for that kind of thing aren’t idolized, but are actually viewed with some suspicion, or at least a cocked eye. Good insights! Combine that with the market crashes, and people probably think, “What’s the latest scam?” instead of, “What’s the latest world-changing innovation?” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ceo-worship-die-with-steve-jobs/749930.md?page=3)