What I meant was he made some really horrible _business_ decisions while at NeXT, things that would be considered obvious today, like constant opinion changing on whim, constant product delays, product decisions that for the most part seemed to make the product more expensive and less functional, skipping important business meetings because oh-I'm-so-important when they really needed the sales etc. Granted I got all this from a podcast and didn't dig into the details myself, but I think for the large part he did objectively make some pretty horrible decisions in the early days at NeXT, although in the end it seems that he did seem to learn from them and turn things around, and arguably made him the guy he is more known for today.
Again, my amazement mostly stems from how he even had the chance to turn things around given the way the company was going and how he clearly still had some pretty talented people stick through the whole ordeal and end up producing valuable products through all that was going on.