People are saying that Jobs was being an asshole. I don't know much about the man, but what he's doing here is intelligent negotiation, plain and simple. The bravado of shredding the paper and loudly announcing the desired figure is a dead giveaway that (1) the other details of the contract don't mean much to him, and (2) the 50% figure means an awful lot to whoever else was supposed to hear it.
You have to keep in mind what Jobs is trying to accomplish here. It's like a kid loudly putting stuff away when their mom walks by, "yea mom, just cleaning my room!"
The ruthless part is that Jobs would have no problem if she didn't pick up on that and came back with the same contract and the 50% rate. I think that the lessons in this post are valuable for negotiating with intelligent people.
You have to keep in mind what Jobs is trying to accomplish here. It's like a kid loudly putting stuff away when their mom walks by, "yea mom, just cleaning my room!"
The ruthless part is that Jobs would have no problem if she didn't pick up on that and came back with the same contract and the 50% rate. I think that the lessons in this post are valuable for negotiating with intelligent people.