Apple CEO Tim Cook on How Steve Jobs Recruited Him and More | The Job Interview

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. Hi. How are you doing? Great. It's my first job interview in a while. 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. 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 three 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 doing, 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.

你知道吗，Steve曾是一位老师。他教会我专注的重要性、简洁的重要性，让我明白创造简单的东西比创造复杂的东西更难。对于那些有幸与他共事的人来说，他堪称一生的良师。 嗨。嗨，你好吗？很好。这是我很长时间以来的第一次面试。你记得你最擅长的第一件事情是什么？我想是数学，令人意外吧。你知道吗，我那时是个相当不错的学生，我很喜欢数学，喜欢解决复杂的方程等等。我想成为一名工程师，所以数学和工程对我来说是很好的搭配。 告诉我你第一份工作的情况。我第一份工作是送报纸的工作，那时我大概12岁。在我家，大家都被期待能够工作。我每天凌晨三点起床，拿报纸，然后开始送。通常送完报纸再回去小睡一下然后去上学。送报纸帮助我开始了我的大学教育，我也是家里第一个上大学的人。我知道能够上大学是一个不应该被浪费的机会。那时以及希望现在的每个人都会认为，上大学能打开很多扇门，并让人站在父母的肩膀上前进，教育就是为此而存在的。

Your first job after you graduated from Auburn was at IBM. Yes. 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 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. 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 love that vision, and I also love 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.

你大学毕业后找到的第一份工作是在IBM工作。是的。跟我说说你第一天的经历。我在83年1月初开始工作，我开着车把所有的家当带到了一个租来的公寓里，那是我第一次租自己的公寓，里面什么家具都没有。起初我只能睡在地板上，因为还买不起床。这是我第一次为了工作而穿得正式，而不是仅仅为了去教堂。但那是一个很了不起的地方，那里有来自世界各地非常聪明的人。当史蒂夫·乔布斯邀请你加入苹果时，你说你凭直觉信任他。你是怎么知道这是个正确选择的呢？在和史蒂夫交谈时，我有一种感觉，他是一个非常不同的CEO。他专注于产品、产品，再就是产品，并且相信小团队能够做出惊人的工作。我喜欢他的这种愿景，我也喜欢在其他人都投身于那种企业型公司的时候，他想把苹果重新聚焦到消费者上。这个想法很了不起，因为在当时没有人这样做。

Everybody thought you could not make any money selling to consumers. And I 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. 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 I'm so glad to have been a part of that team. 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 look at the size of the iPod team initially. I look 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.

每个人都认为向消费者出售产品赚不了钱。而我从来不认为随大流是个好主意。我觉得我有一个千载难逢的机会去与创立整个行业的创意天才合作，我不想错过这个机会。你当时觉得自己为苹果公司带来了什么吗？人们已经忘记了，但苹果曾濒临破产，那真是段糟糕的时期，许多人建议我不要去苹果，因为他们认为它正走向下坡路。但我看到了不同的东西。我看到史蒂夫眼中的光芒，那意味着我们可以实现这个美国珍宝的逆转。我很高兴能成为这个团队的一员。你从史蒂夫那里学到了哪些管理方面的经验？他教会我创新的价值，教会我小团队也可以做出非凡的事情。我看看最初的iPod团队的规模，再看看iPhone团队的规模，这些团队在大局中都算是很小的团队。雇佣最优秀的人，他们能挑战你，拥有你没有的技能，并对此充满信心。而且不要拘泥于过去的看法，要有勇气在面对新证据和情况时改变你的想法。

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. 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. Did you change his mind about something? 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.

他能够这样改变自己。一开始我对此感到有些吃惊，后来却深深为之着迷。很少有人有这种能力，因为他们往往固守自己的过去观点。而我认为这是一种非凡的能力。他改变了你对什么事情的看法吗？哦，他在很多事情上改变了我的看法。而他自己也改变了对很多事情的看法。那你改变了他的某些看法吗？当然，他喜欢辩论，也喜欢有人和他辩论。如果你的观点足够好，你总能改变他的想法。我们互相改变了对方的看法，这就是我们合作得如此成功的原因。

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'd 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 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 coming together of thousands of different components and parts coming together to create something.

你对物流的热情来自哪里？制造业一直让我感兴趣，因为我非常好奇东西是如何制造出来的。我喜欢去工厂看看东西是如何组装的，又是如何创造出来的。我的学位是工业工程学士，工业工程实际上就是研究人与机器如何协同工作，创造出他们单独无法完成的东西。我一直认为，当供应链运作良好时，它就像一件艺术品，因为这是成千上万不同的组件和部件共同作用的交响曲，最终创造出一个完整的产品。

What sacrifices do you feel like you've had to make to get to where you are now? Sleep. And fortunately, I love coffee. How much coffee are you drinking a day? Many cups. Please do not benchmark that. 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. 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.

为了达到现在的成就，你觉得你做了哪些牺牲？睡眠。不过幸运的是，我很喜欢喝咖啡。你每天喝多少咖啡？很多杯。请别拿这个作为标准。那能谈谈你的晨间例行公事吗？你一天是怎么开始的？我每天都起得很早，马上打开电脑浏览过去几小时来的邮件。很多邮件是客户告诉我他们如何使用我们的产品以及产品带来的效果。所以我会收到一些积极的反馈，也有一些不那么正面的反馈，因为大家都愿意畅所欲言发表意见。我觉得这是件好事，因为这让我能够掌握公司动向。你如何应对那些批评？我的心态比较强大。我会试着内化这些批评，并问自己这些意见是否准确，而不是立刻采取防御姿态为我们所做的辩护。

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. 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.

你觉得人们对你的工作有什么不了解的地方？那就是这份工作有多有趣。时常听到一些其他CEO谈论他们的工作多么糟糕，而我的工作却很棒，我非常喜欢。你觉得曾经那个收拾文件、攒钱去奥本大学的Tim，会想到他今天能坐在这里吗？完全没想到。我在杜克大学读研究生时制定了一个25年的计划，头一两年还算准确，可之后就根本不值一文了。生活总是有办法打乱你的精心计划。我认为最重要的是随遇而安，并能意识到机会来临时去抓住它们，然后选择一个门走进去。