Steve Jobs’ ex intern on working for him: ‘Had a very hard, regimented schedule’

Chet Kapoor is now the CEO of generative AI company DataStax but he once worked for tech mogul Steve Jobs as an intern at software company NeXT. Chet Kapoor has been the CEO of cloud software company Apigee which was acquired by Google in 2016. He also held leadership positions at companies including Google and IBM. But he thinks that most of his success is due to his experience working as Steve Jobs’ intern in the early days.

He said, “Steve was this iconic individual and I didn’t know him … I was the guy that got coffee for the guy that made coffee. I was one step below the person that opened doors but that didn’t matter because I worked 20 yards away from him [Jobs] every day.”

Chet Kapoor said that he focussed a lot on the questions that Steve Jobs would ask in meetings as they gave an insight into his thought process. He said, “That exposure was absolutely phenomenal. I can attribute a large portion of my success to my first two or three years at NeXT.”

Reflecting on his journey, he said, “In 1983, I read this book called ‘A Little Kingdom’ and it was written by a guy by the name of Michael Moritz. This book was about two Steves: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. It was all about Apple. I was impressionable because I was 15 or 16. I was like ‘this is who I want to go and work for’ and it was very clear to me that I wanted to come and hang out and work with Steve Jobs.”

Praising Steve Jobs, he said that the tech mogul created a very “product and design-centric” environment at NeXT.

“Everything starts with what is the user experience. How is the user going to interact with this? That made all the difference in the world and the maniacal focus on that was absolutely amazing,” he said.

He added, “Everything starts with a very strong engineering culture. He drove a very hard, regimented schedule because otherwise, you just leave it, and it becomes a science project. He was very driven in that regard.”