Daily Inspiration Quote by Andy Hertzfeld

Evangelism, in this sentence, isn’t a soft skill; it’s a production tool. Hertzfeld’s “drum into us” frames Steve Jobs not as a manager issuing tasks but as a human metronome, pounding belief into a team until it becomes tempo. The phrasing admits coercion and care at once: repetition bordering on indoctrination, deployed in service of momentum. This is how small groups attempt outsized change - not by calmly agreeing on milestones, but by sustaining a shared, almost stubborn conviction that the work matters.

The most revealing word is “actually.” It hints at the private doubt inside the room: late nights, fragile prototypes, the creeping suspicion that you’re polishing toys for hobbyists. Jobs’ “job,” as Hertzfeld presents it, was to fight that suspicion. Not by debating specs, but by supplying a narrative big enough to make the pain feel chosen. The subtext is that motivation was not optional and not self-generating; it had to be manufactured and maintained.

Context matters: Hertzfeld was a key engineer on the original Macintosh team, a famously intense, insular group operating with limited resources and a siege mentality against larger corporate forces. In that environment, grandiosity becomes a kind of fuel. The line also carries a quiet ambivalence: the world-changing story can be visionary, but it can also justify burnout and push ethical questions offstage. Jobs’ genius, as remembered here, is the ability to turn “what we’re building” into “who we are,” and to make that identity feel historically urgent.