Did John Sculley really fire Steve Jobs? John Sculley says no (or rather not exactly)

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Did John Sculley really fire Steve Jobs? John Sculley says no (or rather not exactly) 

As per John Sculley, from the standpoint of accuracy, one cannot say that Sculley fired Jobs. Sculley disagreed strongly with Jobs on company strategy at a time when Macintosh was not doing well financially, and as CEO he felt obliged to go to the board with his disagreement. The board agreed with Sculley as they felt that Jobs' approach would financially harm the company, and then they cut down authority of Jobs in the company (and Macintosh division in particular), at which time Steve Jobs informally left (did not get fired to be precise, did not resign to be precise, as per John Sculley).

John Sculley: Steve Jobs 'was never fired' from Apple, https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/john-sculley-steve-jobs-was-never-fired-from-apple/articleshow/47376067.cms, 21st May 2015

John Sculley spills the beans on firing Steve Jobs, https://www.cnet.com/news/john-sculley-spills-the-beans-on-firing-steve-jobs/ , Sept. 9, 2013

As per Sculley, he had got caught in a difficult situation as Steve Jobs' had had some business failures and Sculley's job was to keep the company financially healthy.

Perhaps Jobs' over-dramatized the clash by saying that Sculley fired him and by painting Sculley as some bad guy, without revealing that Jobs' projects then at Apple were losing a lot of money, which is what prompted the Sculley-Jobs clash. 

Sculley claims to have been playing a typical CEO role (he got an MBA from Wharton) where he felt that Steve Jobs' proposal to reduce Macintosh Office software price and increase advertising money being spent on it, was very risky and could be very bad for the company. So it was his job as CEO to bring up the matter to the Board. And it was the Board that decided.

Sculley does accept that they (board and him) should have worked out something that would keep Steve Jobs in Apple, and that that episode could have been managed better, and that he lacked the understanding of how important the founder's vision is to tech. companies.

Note that during Sculley's CEO stint from 1983 to 1993, as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sculley, "Sales at Apple increased from $800 million to $8 billion under Sculley's management, although many attribute his success to the fact that Sculley joined the company just when Steve Jobs's visions and Steve Wozniak's creations had become highly lucrative". and "When Sculley left in May 1993, Apple had $2 billion in cash and $200 million in debt."

So Sculley seems to have kept Apple profitable. 

As per Steve Wozniak, "So Macintosh… the Macintosh failed, really hard, and who built the Macintosh into a success later on? It wasn't Steve, he was gone. It was other people like John Sculley who worked and worked to build a Macintosh market when the Apple II went away." Ref: Steve Wozniak on Newton, Tesla, and why the original Macintosh was a 'lousy' product, 27th June 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20160312014832/http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/27/4468314/steve-wozniak-on-how-the-newton-changed-his-life. 

I am not saying Steve Jobs was a bad guy. His wiki page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs - has an introduction section listing achievements of Steve Jobs which I think is quite correct. I also think that the wiki page introduction should praise Steve Jobs more for his entrepreneurial success of iPod and iPhone which became worldwide sensations.

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About John Sculley and his clash with Steve Jobs in 1985 resulting in Steve Jobs resigning from Apple then

'Asking Steve Jobs to step down was a mistake': Former Apple CEO (John Sculley), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGEWenVyGus, 3 min. 2 secs, by NDTV (Indian TV network)

The following video makes a misleading initial statement that John Sculley started at Pepsi by driving Pepsi trucks. Sculley did drive Pepsi trucks but that seems to have been as a management trainee getting familiar with Pepsi's work. From https://www.businessinsider.in/john-sculley-went-from-an-entry-level-job-at-pepsi-driving-trucks-to-its-ceo-in-10-years-here-are-his-secrets-for-how-to-rapidly-climb-a-corporate-ladder/articleshow/60065391.cms "Sculley: I was the first MBA and they didn't know what to do with me, so they put me out in Pittsburgh, in a bottling plant, and I worked in the bottling lines, and then I was sent on to Phoenix, Arizona, where I also drove trucks and I put up signs, Pepsi signage, in various neighborhoods in 120-degree heat and I was then sent on to Las Vegas for a month of training, and then I finally ended up in Milwaukee. So I got a really hands-on introduction to the soft-drink industry."

As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sculley, Sculley got an MBA from Wharton. He started work with another company in 1963. In 1967 he joined Pepsi as a trainee with the training period lasting 6 months (when it seems, as mentioned above, he drove Pepsi trucks in initial days of training). In 1970, at age 30, Sculley became Pepsi's youngest marketing vice-president.

So it is not as if Sculley joined Pepsi as a Pepsi delivery truck driver and rose to become marketing vice-president in 3 years! 

Steve Jobs Never Forgave Me' Says Former Apple CEO John Sculley, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j-CWflL-10, 4 min. 22 secs, by C-Suite TV, 27th Feb. 2018.

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[I thank Wikipedia, businessinsider.in (small extract) and theverge.com (small extract), and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extract(s) from their website on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]