Steve Jobs once told consultants what he really thinks about consulting

• Steve Jobs wasn’t the biggest fan of consulting.
• Jobs once criticized consulting in a 1992 talk at MIT attended by some consultants.
• He advised them to pursue jobs where they would have more ownership over their decisions.

The late Apple founder Steve Jobs once had some choice advice for consultants: “You should do something.”

He made this comment at a lecture at MIT in the spring of 1992, and he didn’t stop there.

The consultant misses the essentials of meaningful work — autonomy, room for failure and opportunities for growth, he said.

“Without owning something for a long period of time, like a few years, where someone has a chance to take responsibility for their recommendations, where they have to see their recommendations through all the stages of action and accumulate tissue scarred for mistakes and to choose. to pick yourself up off the ground and dust yourself off, you learn some of what you can.

As a result, consultants gain only a two-dimensional experience, he said, comparing it to a wall covered in pictures of fruit. “You never become three-dimensional,” he said. “You never taste.”

The jobs perspective may resonate with younger Gen Z consultants who are looking for more meaningful careers – even if it requires sacrificing the stability and high salaries that come with a consulting job.

The Apple founder certainly followed his own advice. He dropped out of college to found Apple in 1976 and has seen the company through its ups and downs. He even left in 1985 to launch NeXT, a computer company specializing in computers for higher education, before returning in 1997.

However, his boldest decision may have been to lead Apple into the iPhone era, which became 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 always advised people to take risks in pursuit of a greater purpose.

He once told writer Walter Isaacson, author of a bestselling biography of the Apple founder, that “We’re all part of the flow of history…you have to put something back into the flow of history to help you. your community, help others.”