While I totally agree with this speech, it also seemed a bit odd coming from Steve Jobs. Sure, he lived his life that way, but it took thousands of Apple employees doing exactly what he wanted to fulfill his vision. His success came from being an uncompromising task-master as much as being an uncompromising visionary. Take away either of those factors and he wouldn't have made the impact he did.
As far as I can tell, this advice only applied to people who weren't in the same room as him.
(I'm hesitating to hit submit on this comment - please regard this as a criticism of Steve Jobs the force of nature not Steve Jobs the person.)
There's a quote I can't find now but it goes something like: "A good leader convinces the people to fulfill his vision, a great leader guides the people to fulfill their vision". Steve was very much the later.
I started working for Apple at the Apple store. I later moved to Server Engineering. When I first arrived in Cupertino, the one thing that struck me was that the engineers at Apple were leveling harsher criticism at OS X and the rest of Apple's software than I had ever heard before. Even the most ardent Windows or Linux fanboys couldn't hit as hard as these engineers.
So many people seem to talk about "Steve the task-master". In reality, his true talent was picking people that would be as obsessed with perfection as he was. I suspect that the random report you hear from a "former Apple employee" complaining about Steve as some sort of tyrant were the result of the handful of times that the hiring process didn't go according to plan (it happens). My experience was largely that, as you went up the chain of command at Apple, managers weren't demanding more work from their underlings, but less. In other words, it was much more common to hear "if you're not happy with that feature then cut it and move on" than "I'm not happy with this feature, you need to refine it some more"...
[IANAL] He was invited for what was effectively a performance. Stanford probably has a standard copyright agreement for performances at the venue (i.e. the stadium), much like a football game.
it's weird that everyone they spoke to seems to have "found it", six years later. or at least, not one said they were "still looking, haven't settled".
In real life, there are people still lost and others who think they've found it, but who won't find out until later that something else is what they were meant to do. And some who never will find it.
But none of that makes for an article that puts everything in a pretty box and ties it up with a shiny ribbon.
There likely is some self-selection involved. The just-divorced/bankrupt/jailed for life (not all will exist, but they may) will not be that willing to comment on this.
Learning to trust your gut and your self is critical.
Or perhaps, it is learning not to trust it is probably why people get lost.
We start out in life trusting ourselves. But we are taught and conditioned to not trust it.
Please avoid doing that if you're raising a child. Allow your child to explore and make mistakes, to train their own gut with experience.
That doesn't mean you never make demands upon them. Life makes demands and you can't prepare them for it without doing the same.
But you can't make every decision for them and spare them of consequences of mistakes. You have to protect them from permanently hurting themselves to a degree while they develop, but at some point, you have to push them out of the nest and let them fly.
True story. That speech was a major factor in my decisions to leave legal practice and later to found my own startup. Jobs' words that day have had a major effect on my career.
Great speech. I graduated in 2005 from rival school Berkeley and we had Eric Schmidt. It was fascinating to see how the two of them would duke it out in the 6 years following my graduation. Eric was also a great commencement speaker.
As far as I can tell, this advice only applied to people who weren't in the same room as him.
(I'm hesitating to hit submit on this comment - please regard this as a criticism of Steve Jobs the force of nature not Steve Jobs the person.)