Music vs. Theater

I was just on John's left, but they cropped me out.

Having worked at Pixar since 1993, I have quite a number of Steve Jobs stories. Most of those I keep well within the confines of the building or my close friends, but this is one that I think really exemplifies Steve. (Names and email addresses have been changed.)

In the early days of Pixar, Steve seemed fairly hands off. I didn’t see him in person until 1995, after I had been working in this fairly tiny company for two years.

Around that time, a particularly outspoken employee (we’ll call him Richard) sent an email to the entire company (pixar@pixar.com) that was quite critical about some decisions that Steve had made. About 30-45 minutes later, Richard sent a sheepish follow up email to the smaller, more casual Pixar email address (pixarchat@pixar.com) warning us that “Hey everyone, I just found out the hard way that Steve actually reads mail sent to pixar@pixar.com. Thought you should be aware.”

Five minutes later another email goes out to pixarchat, this time from Steve Jobs:

“Hey Richard. I also read pixarchat.”