Name: Apple’s Tim Cook on Lessons From Steve Jobs, His Morning Routine and More
Uploaded: 2024-10-21T01:00:00Z
Duration: 9 min
Description: Apple CEO Tim Cook sits down for The Job Interview with WSJ. Magazine to discuss working with Steve Jobs, his first job as a paperboy and his first days working at IBM.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook sits down for The Job Interview with WSJ. Magazine to discuss working with Steve Jobs, his first job as a paperboy and his first days working at IBM. Photo: Andy Hoffman

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Apple CEO Tim Cook sits down for The Job Interview with WSJ. Magazine to discuss working with Steve Jobs, his first job as a paperboy and his first days working at IBM.

Apple’s Tim Cook on Lessons From Steve Jobs, His Morning Routine and More

You know, Steve was a teacher. He taught me the value of focus, the importance of simplicity, the fact that making things simple is so much harder than making things complex. For those of us that were fortunate enough to work with him, he was the teacher of a lifetime. Hi.

Interviewer: Hi. How are you doing?

Great. It's my first job interview in a while.

Interviewer: What is the first thing that you remember being good at?

I think math, surprisingly. You know, I was a pretty good student and I loved math. I loved figuring out complex equations and so forth, and I wanted to be an engineer, and so math and engineering really went well together.

Interviewer: Tell me about the first job you ever had.

Oh. My first job was delivering papers, and I was about 12 years old. Everybody was sort of expected to work in my family. And I'd get up at 3:00 in the morning, pick up the stack of papers and start throwing, and usually come back and take a nap before school. Throwing papers helped start my college education, and I was the first person in my family that went to college. I knew that being able to do that was a privilege that I needed not to waste. Everyone saw college in those days, and hopefully today, as opening many doors and being able to stand on the shoulders of your parents, that education would do that.

Interviewer: Your first job after you graduated from Auburn was at IBM?

Yes.

Interviewer: Tell me about your first day.

I started at the beginning of January of '83, and I drove with everything I owned in my car. Rented an apartment, my own apartment for the very first time, and I had no furniture at all. I was sleeping on the floor for a while before I could afford to actually buy a bed. It was the first time I really had to dress up to do anything, other than maybe go to church, but it was a marvelous place where there were a lot of really smart people from all around the world.

Interviewer: When Steve Jobs recruited you to join Apple, you said you trusted your gut. How did you know you made the right decision?

There was a feeling that I had in talking to Steve, that he was a very different kind of CEO. He was focused on products, products, and products, and had a belief that small teams could do amazing work. I loved that vision, and I also loved that in an environment where everyone was going to an enterprise kind of company, he wanted to refocus Apple on consumers. And it was brilliant, because at the time, nobody was doing that. Everybody thought you could not make any money selling to consumers. And, you know, I've never thought it was a good idea to follow the herd. I thought I had a chance of a lifetime to work with the creative genius that started the entire industry, and I didn't want to pass that up.

Interviewer: Did you feel like you were bringing something to Apple that was missing at the time?

People have forgotten this, but Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy, and it was a really awful time. And people advised me not to come to Apple because they thought that it was headed straight down. But I saw something different. I saw sort of the sparkle in Steve's eye, and it just meant that we could pull out this turnaround for this American treasure, and... Ah, I'm so glad to have been a part of that team.

Interviewer: What lessons about management from Steve did you learn?

He taught me the value of innovation, the fact that small teams could do amazing things. I looked at the size of the iPod team initially, I looked at the size of the iPhone team. These were very small teams in the scheme of things. Hiring the best people to surround you that challenge you, that have skills that you don't, and being confident with that. And also not to be married to my past views, you know, not to be so proud you can't change your mind when you're presented with new evidence and things. He could change like this. I initially was sort of taken aback by that, and then I became so enamored with it. Very few people have that skill because they get married to their past views, and I thought it was a brilliant skill.

Interviewer: Did he change your mind about anything?

Oh, he changed my mind about a lot of things and he changed his mind about a lot of things.

Interviewer: Did you change his mind about something?

Yes, of course. He loved to debate, and he loved someone to debate him, and you could always change his mind if you had the best idea. We changed each other's minds. That's the reason it worked so well.

Interviewer: Where does your passion for understanding logistics come from?

Manufacturing has always interested me because I'm very curious about how things are made. I like to go to factories and see how things are put together, how they're created. My degree is in industrial engineering, my undergraduate degree. And industrial engineering is essentially the study of people and machines, and how the two working together can create things that they couldn't create on their own. And I've always viewed it, the supply chain piece of it, to be a bit of a piece of art when it was done correctly because it's a symphony of things of coming together of thousands of different components and parts coming together to create something.

Interviewer: What sacrifices do you feel like you've had to make to get to where you are now?

Sleep. And fortunately, I love coffee.

Interviewer: How much coffee are you drinking a day?

Many cups, I'm... Please do not benchmark that.

Interviewer: So tell me about your morning routine. How do you start your day?

You know, I get up very early, and I quickly go to the Mac and begin to go through the emails that have come in for the last several hours. A lot of what I'm reading are from customers that are telling me how they're using our products and what it's doing for them. And so I get notes both that are positive and some that are not so positive because people feel free to reach out and voice their opinion. And I think this is great because it keeps my hand on the pulse of the company.

Interviewer: How do you deal with some of that criticism?

I have relatively thick skin, and so I try to internalize it and ask myself, "Well, is that accurate or not?" And not just quickly put up a defensive shield and say, "Why? What we've done is right."

Interviewer: What do you think people don't realize about your job?

How much fun it is. At times, I hear some other CEOs talk about how terrible their jobs are. Mine is fantastic. I love it.

Interviewer: Do you think that the Tim who was throwing papers, saving money to go to Auburn, did he have any idea that he would be sitting here today?

Zero. You know, I did a 25-year plan when I was in graduate school at Duke, and the first year or two was reasonably accurate. After that, it wasn't worth the paper it was written on. You know, life has a way of happening and throwing you off from some well-crafted plan, and I think the most important thing is to roll with it and make sure that you recognize when doors are opening, that they're opening, and you choose the one to walk through.

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