Steve Jobs deposition: Very rewarding to lieutenants

Techcrunch sifted through the March 2008 deposition that Forbes got through the Freedom of Information Act.  What did they find?  Steve Jobs really went to bat for one time lieutenants like Fred Anderson (who was known to be interviewing at Dell) and Jon Rubinstein who he brought over from NEXT.  As we told you before, both eventually left Apple to go to Elevation Partners who invested heavily in Palm to help build the Palm Pre.  The Pre will soon be going head to head against the iPhone.  Gratitude!

Tim(othy) Cook and Avie Tevenian also came up in the deposition, below:

Jobs on the origins of the 4.8 million-share mega grant to Apple’s top executives:

"Apple was in a precarious situation in that we’d, you know, had the internet bubble busting, and I thought that Apple’s executive team and the stability of Apple’s executive team was one of its core strengths. And I was very concerned because Michael Dell, one of our chief competitors, had flown Fred Anderson, our CFO, down to Austin, I guess, him and his wife, I think, to try to recruit him. And I was also concerned that [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] two very strong technical leaders, were also very vulnerable.

So I was very concerned that Apple could really suffer some big losses on its executive team with the business environment we were in and the competitors coming after our people.

. . . Well, I talked with the board almost every meeting about, you know, key personnel, because I think that’s the key asset Apple has, is its talent"

 

Q. All right. And who did you consider to be these ultra key people?

Jobs: [Timothy Cook] who at the time I think was our Executive Vice President of Operations, maybe sales and operations, actually. Fred Anderson, our CFO. [Jon Rubinstein] head of hardware. [Avi Tevanian] head of software.

Who am I forgetting? I think those were the four key ones.

Steve Jobs' Deposition below: