"By this point in my life, I’d also had enough experience with government, corporations, and academic bureaucracies to understand what happens to organizations as they get larger. The middle-managers and empire-builders start to take root. Each problem results in a new guideline or process meant to prevent the problem from ever occurring again. Metrics are added, because managers can’t manage what they can’t measure. Individual incentives shift so far from the stated corporate goal that they actively work against it. Intrinsic motivation wanes. The ability to do truly great work all but disappears.
As it turns out, Steve [Jobs] had another lesson to teach me. He returned to Apple and, well, you all know the rest of the story: iMac, iPod, iTunes, Mac OS X, iLife, iPhone, iOS, iPad. Boom.
My childhood revelation about humanity’s potential to alter its reality had a particular technological focus, but was an otherwise unremarkable intellectual coming of age. But this second and, sadly, final chapter in the life of Steve Jobs rewrote the rule book for the innocent and cynics alike.
In a post-Steve-Jobs world, there is no longer an excuse for large corporations to be less bold than start-ups. Elegance, character, artistic integrity, and ruthless dedication to design can no longer be derided as luxuries of those who don’t have anything to lose."
— Siracusa