techcrunch.com
Q: And did you take on the role then as CEO?
Jobs: Well, no, I did not. I was very concerned that Pixar was a newly public company with shareholders, employees, and I felt that - - to my knowledge there had never been a CEO of two public companies before. So I felt if I took the job, the Pixar shareholders and employees would think I was abandoning them.
Q: Mm-hmm
Jobs: And I decided I just - - that I couldn’t do that. So I took the title of interim CEO and agreed to come back for 90 days to help recruit a full-time CEO.
Q: How did that recruitment effort go?
Jobs: I failed.
Q: And when you say you failed, is it that you didn’t find anyone that you thought would be suitable to take on the role?
Jobs: Yes. Apple was not in good shape and everybody knew it and the kind of candidates that we were being offered up by the headhunters were not very talented.
Q: Okay. In other words, not the sort of people who could turn Apple around?
Jobs: Yes.
Q: Okay. So after that 90 days, what happened next?
Jobs: Well, it just kind of slid into the fact that I stayed. I kept the interim CEO title for quite some time, a number of years.
Seriously?
We’re supposed to believe that?
