On September 17, 1985, after a conflict with the chief executive John Sculley, Steve Jobs submitted his resignation to Apple’s board. In December 1996 Apple agreed to buy his company, NeXT, for $400 million. On September 16, 1997, Jobs was named interim chief executive of Apple.
In 1998 Apple introduced the iMac. In 2000 Jobs dropped the word interim from his title.
On November 7, 1962, after he lost the race for governor of California, Richard Nixon spoke to reporters at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. “You don’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” Sources differ slightly on the wording.
In 1968 he was elected president.
Under federal aviation rules, no pilot may act as pilot in command of an aircraft carrying other people “unless that person has made at least three takeoffs and three landings within the preceding 90 days.” Pilots in command also need a flight review, completed since “the beginning of the 24th calendar month” before the month of the flight.
A license alone is not enough.
What have you done for me lately? A demand to see recent results, not old ones.
You’re only as good as your last game. Also said of a film, a deal or a quarter.
Has-been. Someone whose success lies in the past.
One-hit wonder. A performer remembered for a single success.
Flash in the pan. A success that does not last.
Comeback kid. Someone who returns after a defeat.
In the National Football League, Black Monday is the first Monday after the regular season ends. It is the day many head coaches are fired. An Associated Press headline of December 29, 1998, read: “NFL coaches face ‘Black Monday’ with five fired.”
Long service does not protect a coach. In 2024 the New England Patriots parted with Bill Belichick after 24 seasons.
In the 1980s Jack Welch introduced a ranking system at General Electric. The top 20 percent of employees were the most productive, and the middle 70 percent did adequate work. The bottom 10 percent were to be fired. The practice became known as “rank and yank.” Welch called it “differentiation” and defended it. “If you want teamwork, you identify it as a value.”
Microsoft used a version called stack ranking. Each employee received a single rating from 1 to 5. The rating “triggered increases in merit pay, bonuses and the awarding of restricted stock units.” In November 2013 Microsoft’s head of human resources, Lisa Brummel, ended the system in an email to employees. “No more curve,” she wrote.
On February 19, 2010, Tiger Woods read a statement for about 13 minutes before an invited audience in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. “I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated.” “I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behavior.” It was a scripted statement, and he took no questions.
Nine years and four back surgeries later, on April 14, 2019, he won the Masters for the fifth time.
The quarterback Michael Vick served 18 months in federal prison for dogfighting. In 2009 the Philadelphia Eagles signed him. According to Reid, he spent much of his time off speaking in public.
In 2010 he was voted the starting quarterback for the NFC in the Pro Bowl by fans, players and coaches, and the Associated Press named him Comeback Player of the Year. His coach, Andy Reid, said: “You can never erase that, but you can sure help change others from falling into that same problem.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “there are no second acts in American lives.” The line comes from his working notes for The Last Tycoon, published in 1941, after his death. Americans often quote it only to disprove it. In 2013, NPR used it in a report on politicians who had “fallen from grace only to rise again and disprove the line”: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Eliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford.
Fitzgerald had used the phrase earlier, around 1932, in the essay “My Lost City.” There he wrote: “I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives, but there was certainly to be a second act to New York’s boom days.”
American law firms, consultancies and accounting firms run partnership tracks on which an associate who is not promoted within a defined period leaves. Standing still is not an available option — it is the definition of failure.