- Steve Jobs was not the biggest fan of consulting.
- Jobs once criticized consulting in a 1992 talk at MIT, where some consultants were present.
- He advised them to pursue jobs with which they’d have more ownership over their decisions.
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The late Apple founder, Steve Jobs, once had some choice advice for consultants: “You should do something.”
He made the comment at a lecture at MIT back in the spring of 1992, and he didn’t stop there.
Consulting misses critical elements of a meaningful job — autonomy, the space for failure, and growth opportunities, he said.
“Without owning something over an extended period of time, like a few years, where one has a chance to take responsibility for one’s recommendations, where one has to see one’s recommendations through all action stages, and accumulate scar tissue for the mistakes, and pick oneself up off the ground, and dust oneself off, one learns a fraction of what one can. You’re coming in and making recommendations and not owning the results.”
As a result, consultants only gain a two-dimensional experience, he said, comparing it to a wall covered with pictures of fruit. “You never get three-dimensional,” he said. “You never taste it.”
Jobs’ perspective may resonate with younger Gen Z consultants, who are searching for more meaningful careers — even if it requires sacrificing the stability and high pay that comes with a consulting job.
The Apple founder certainly took his own advice. He dropped out of college to found Apple in 1976 and saw the company through highs and lows. He even left in 1985 to launch NeXT, a computer company specializing in computers for higher education, before famously returning in 1997.
Yet his boldest decision may have been to lead Apple into the iPhone era, which has become one of the company’s main sources of revenue. iPhone sales accounted for about 46% of net sales in the second quarter of 2024, according to Apple’s second-quarter earnings report.
Throughout his career, Jobs has always advised people to take risks to pursue a greater purpose.
He once told the writer Walter Isaacson, author of a bestselling biography on the Apple founder, that “We’re all part of the flow of history … you’ve got to put something back into the flow of history that’s going to help your community, help other people.”