Here's Why Some Apple Employees Didn't Get Along With Steve Jobs

Mark Kawano, who worked as a senior designer at Apple for seven years before taking on the company's User Experience Evangelist role, debunked a few key design myths about Apple in a recent interview with Fast Company.

One of those myths involved what it was really like working with Steve Jobs, and why some Apple employees excelled more than others.

According to Kawano, Jobs wasn't a cruel boss who wanted every worker to devote their nights, weekends, and vacations to work.

He was just passionate about making every Apple product the best it could be, and was confused when others working at the company didn't share his vision.

Here's what Kawano said to Fast Company:

That's where, a lot of times, he would get a bad rap, but he just wanted the best thing, and expected everyone else to want that same thing. He had trouble understanding people who didn't want that same thing and wondered why they'd be working for him if that was the case. I think Steve had a very low tolerance for people who didn't care about stuff. He had a very hard time understanding why people would work in these positions and not want to sacrifice everything for them.

Those who succeeded when working at Apple felt that their projects were worth sacrificing their personal time. In fact, Kawano recalls that many designers created features for future Apple products that resulted from projects made in their personal time.

Here's how he described the difference between those who excelled and those who didn't at Apple:

The reality is, the people who thrived at Apple were the people who welcomed that desire and passion to learn from working with Steve, and just really were dedicated to the customer and the product. They were willing to give up their weekends and vacation time. And a lot of the people who complained that it wasn't fair ... they didn't see the value of giving all that up versus trying to create the best product for the customer and then sacrificing everything personally to get there.

Kawano now runs a startup called Storehouse, which is a tool for sharing photos through the iPad. Storehouse is now raising $7 million in Series A funding led by Sherpa Ventures.

He had a lot of other cool stuff to say about working at Apple, so check out the full interview here >>