‘Sometimes you get so rich…’: Steve Wozniak slams Elon Musk’s mass firings

It’s no secret that the extensive purge of public employees, organized by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), might result in one of the largest job reductions in U.S. history. This current wave of layoffs could potentially affect around 300,000 positions. Steve Wozniak, the engineering innovator and co-founder of Apple alongside Steve Jobs, criticized high-profile Silicon Valley personalities like Elon Musk for taking on direct governmental roles.

Steve Wozniak calls out tech leaders who aspire for government jobs

“I don’t know what got into his head,” Wozniak said in a recent interview. “Sometimes you get so rich at these big companies, when you’re on top, it goes to your head, and you’re the most credible person in the world, you’re the brightest, and you’re gonna dictate what others will do.”

“Bullying is the best way to think of it,” Wozniak said. Wozniak was attending Barcelona’s Talent Arena developers fair on Tuesday, March 4 and took aim at tech honchos with political ambitions. “I think that the skills required in politics are very different to those skills needed in technology companies…It does make sense to run a government like a business,” he said.

Wozniak, who was widely perceived to be the geek-behind-the-scenes at Apple, also recalled the process behind Apple’s successful management.  “When Apple started, it was you who would set up your computer and it was all of your own work…But after the internet came, now you have to subscribe, subscribe and subscribe to everything and once you have subscribed, you still do not own it,” the Apple co-founder who stepped away from his role at the company in 1985, said. 

“The cloud is a problem as before you were able to protect your work, but now you need to trust companies with your creations,” Wozniak further said. 

Wozniak also addressed the limitations of generative AI. He shared that AI can produce ideas and directions on how to proceed, it lacks human emotional capacity. “I trust the I, but not the A,” he said, while warning against blindly trusting AI as it can “trick you into things”.