Success Quote by Steve Jobs

Jobs is doing two things at once: laying down a standard and preemptively justifying the discomfort that standard creates. "Be a yardstick" is a telling metaphor from a man obsessed with measurement, finish, tolerances - the hidden seams of a product you might never notice but feel anyway. He frames quality not as a taste or a virtue but as an instrument: something you apply, consistently, even when it makes people squirm.

The second sentence is the pressure valve and the warning label. "Some people aren't used to an environment..". is classic Jobsian social sorting. It suggests that resistance to his demands isn't necessarily a rational critique; it can be a symptom of having lived in softer ecosystems where mediocrity is normalized and no one gets called on it. The subtext: if you bristle, it may be because you're not excellent enough yet. It's motivational and vaguely accusatory, which is part of why it works. It turns a management philosophy into an identity test.

Context matters because Jobs sold "excellence" as both culture and product strategy. Apple wasn't competing on lowest price or most features; it was competing on coherence, taste, and the ruthless editing that makes a device feel inevitable. That requires a workplace where "good enough" is treated as a bug, not a milestone. The line also hints at the darker edge of that culture: excellence as expectation can inspire, but it can also become a cudgel, a way to moralize relentless pace and make dissent look like personal inadequacy.