I get that real estate developers don't always have the best of reputations. We build buildings that cast shadows. We invest in (or gentrify) neighborhoods. And yes, like every other for-profit business, the goal is to make a bit of money along the way.

But believe it or not, there are developers out there who care deeply about the work that they do. They care about their craft. And they want to do the right thing.

In 1987, Apple thought working from home should look something like this:

Cool studio apartment with killer view. Hard disk that stores over 10,000 pages. Curious photoshoot-type lamp facing your bed. And fascimile machine capable of sending hard copies to anyone in the world. All while being steps from your refrigerator.

But over three decades later, it instead turned out to be more like this:

Isn't technology liberating?

According to Walter Isaacson – the bestselling author of their biographies – it is this:

I started with Ben Franklin, and then Einstein, and then Steve Jobs—[they were all] innovative and creative. And I said, “Well, what pattern [leads to] that?” The pattern wasn’t that they were smart, because you’ve met lots of smart people, and they don’t usually amount to much. The pattern tends to be curiosity across disciplines.

This excerpt was taken from a conversation between Isaacson and Adam Grant, which you can read or watch here. 

Here is another excerpt that speaks to the way in which Jobs prided himself on working at the intersection of technology and the humanities:

I’ll give you a tiny example. The Mac that came out in 2000 had a handle on it, and they say, “This is a desktop machine. We don’t need the handle—people aren’t really supposed to move it around. It’ll cost us another sixty dollars [per computer].” And Steve said, “The handle is there because it makes the machine approachable. My mom is afraid of her computer, but if there’s a little thing [where] she can put her hand, where she can touch it and she knows it won’t break, that makes her connect emotionally to the computer better.” And he was right. But it cost money, and the Mac didn’t make as much.