Quote: "Even Steve Jobs wasn't Steve Jobs initially. He only outed himself as a giant jerk after he had a company that could afford to have a huge turnover, and he had a pile of minions that hero-worshiped him no matter what he did."
This isn't true. I knew Steve when he and Steve Wozniak were starting Apple, in the late 1970s, and he (Jobs) was always intolerable -- it wasn't something that came out after he acquired power. I couldn't stand working with him, so, even though people at Apple asked me to stay, I wouldn't. (I eventually worked with Apple on various software projects, but not at Apple.)
Steve Jobs had the worst interpersonal dynamics of anyone I have ever met. All that proves is that being perpetually rude and having terrible people skills isn't a deal-breaker in corporate America.
I'm often frustrated at folks who take the wrong lesson from Steve Jobs.
As this piece describes, they look at the dude and take away that they should be jerks because that's how things get done. And that's a terrible lesson.
In my read, as a guy who's been following Apple since he was a kid, there's one principal lesson for leaders and entrepreneurs:
If you care about making exactly what you want, make sure you're the boss.
That's it. You can define the agenda, you can get the right people, you can motivate them according to your style. You get to win all the design arguments. You get to slip the deadlines for quality.
You can definitely be a jerk in that context, but you don't have to.
Its a testament to his legacy that these "You are/not like/dislike Steve Jobs" articles keep popping up. Jobs is what you call an EXTREME OUTLIER. People like him come around once every 30 or 40 years. You don't compare outliers to the mean, because they skew everything.
Nothing anyone ever writes about what to do or what not to do like Steve Jobs is relevant, because he was so far off from any of the data points we have or probably ever will have to matter. You get people like this in history; ones that seemingly do so much wrong yet change the entire world. I don't know if we'll ever have a concrete explanation for it, but for some reason the bad things ARE part of the reason for their success.
Another more common example of this is Jim Morrison (or any really good drug addict musician). Do you have to be a drug addict to be a musician? Of course not. And I seriously doubt they're gonna start dropping acid at Juilliard. But somehow there's a few of them that make it work, and I would argue that if Jim Morrison wasn't a drug addict he wouldn't have been as successful as he was.
If Jobs wasn't such an asshole, he wouldn't be Steve Jobs. There's some mix assholishness and genius (that he got absolutely perfect) that creates a legendary figure.
Agree. Pursuing your Morrison analogy: so many artistic and literary figures are similarly hard to characterize. Polarizing their colleagues and fans, causing denunciations, feuds, embarrassment. Difficult to compare to anyone (i.e., outliers, as you say). Think of someone like Norman Mailer, or Gore Vidal. These people are not role models!
They don't have to be that way, but it's a lot more likely.
After they are gone, asking "were they a good person" is usually not the right question (unless you were close to them).
If you know them mainly through their work, the right question is, "do you value their work?" Here's the relevant quote from Auden:
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
Your affection for the man, the legend, has nothing to do with the fact that the iCloud project launch went wrong, or that he was simply an asshole.
The bureaucratic blockages, and the failure of communication along the chain of command, was ultimately the responsibility of this legendary, line-cutting CEO, who you prop up as a God.
In the end, you have no idea whether Jobs could have been even more successful had he not been an asshole.
And please don't draw parallels with Jim Morrison, who died at 27 not 56. Morrison had an alcohol problem more than drugs. That you argue the drugs led to, or were the reason for his success is preposterous.
Steve Jobs' "mix of asshole and genius he got absolutely perfect" you say? Well, I'm glad you've found your idol, but the person who actually worked with him, and saw his methods first hand, doesn't see things through the same rose-colored glasses.
If it really was Steve Jobs's "fault that the MobileMe launch went so poorly" because of "the system that he created," and her team was really as "completely kick-ass" as she says it was, then why has Apple had so much success with so many projects run exactly the same way?
The problem with MobileMe was the engineering management, not the system.
If anything this shows how vulnerable the Apple "system" is to the quality of the people they hire, and why they spend so much effort trying to hire and hold on to A-grade people. That just doesn't jive with the tired lore of Jobs being an asshole all the time. They wouldn't be able to hold on to folks like they have.
I'm not so sure. Apple hires the best and their evaluations of new candidates are rigorous, so I doubt they have idiots running things. We all know there's a lot of the worlds best talent at Apple. But they struggle a lot with the web services they've tried to create. Mobile me, iCloud, game centre, ping, Maps; these have all fallen short of Apples promises. It's a repeating pattern that to me indicates a culture issue inside Apple.
From what I know from a few engineers that were directly involved in the MobileMe launch, yes the failure was in the engineering management that did not want to listen to the engineers/project managers/qa folks, but instead wanted to please SJ by showing nice Ajax UI.
This is why the VP of MobileMe was let go soon after: he came from Microsoft/Starbucks, and did surround himself with various ex-microsoft folks.
If you know folks at Apple that were in that group at the time, you will find out that the failure did happen at the VP/Director level that didn't want to listen to the project managers / engineering leads / QA leads.
If the engineering management sucked, then that was also Steve's fault. You're not the iron fist of Apple and get all the credit without taking any of the blame.
I didn't think I was going to like this from the opening paragraph but she quickly won me over. My take away is "You are not Steve Jobs. You are not a massive arsehole!" - pretty much in agreement with calinet6. However, actually it's a lot richer than that. I love this paragraph in particular:
"Now, regardless of whether no one in the inner sanctum of dudes-that-Steve-listened-to-at-the-time told him all the things we told our bosses, or who-up-the-chain-of-command was not brave enough to suggest we do something not-Apple-like — this was the system that Steve created. He made himself so fearful and terrible that an entire group of amazing, talented, hard working people, ended up getting screamed at wrongfully. It was his fault that the MobileMe launch went so poorly, not ours."
Even if that's not even remotely true (I wouldn't know), I find it a good lesson that a boss could be so terrifying that no-one wants to be honest with them and this flows down the hierarchy to the point of dysfunction. I've heard of it before, but I like the clarity of explanation this nth time around.
Absolutely everything I have read about Steve Jobs paints him as a narcissistic asshole who is impossible to work with. How is it that he was so successful and how did apple become the behemoth it is today if the man at the wheel was so insufferable?
I want to believe that this has only been a recent development and that he used to be an easier person to deal with in apple's early days, because to be quite frank the only way I could see such an individual being so successful with the attitude he had was if he was just riding the coattails of other forces in the company.
Hopefully someone can enlighten me as to how this kind of person could lead a successful company when everyone fears him and doesn't question anything he says.
Steve Jobs was not a "hacker". [‡] He knew almost nothing about computer languages, computer architecture, and according to Neil Young, he listened to vinyl records at home [1] — which shows that he was ignorant of how audio quality works (see [2]). Steve did not contribute any original ideas or any important technological innovations. He claimed during his Stanford commencement speech that if Macintosh had not included eye pleasing typography, then computers would never have had typographically pleasing typefaces (because "Microsoft just copied Apple); this is ludicrous. In fact, Apple's software patents for digital typography added unnecessary difficulties. [3] Many people are unhappy about Apple culture of paranoia, litigation, and features that restrict user's freedoms that Steve created.
Steve is known for having a great sense of design, but it seems that he only had taste in choosing among the good designs of others. Just look at the yacht he designed without Jonathan Ive's collaboration. [4]
Many of you may say that I'm missing the point; that his ability to convince others of what was important and his "vision" is what made him great. My contention is that he appropriated other people's original ideas, and other people implemented his modifications. I'll admit that directing such efforts is not an easy thing to do, and most breakthroughs are improvements upon others' ideas. But it is very rare for the original creators to be alive and ignored while the modifier is celebrated with maudlin elegies.
EDIT: The media's treatment of his death, President Obama's statement that he was a great "inventor", etc. was not his fault. But I think that when the deaths of people like Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy in the same month as Steve are ignored, then the world is suffering from a serious case of myopia. Ignoring Dennis and John while celebrating Steve is like fawning over the interior decorator with praise about the warmth of a house while ignoring the carpenter and contractor.
Perhaps I should add that I am being critical of Steve because of an abundance of articles that did not focus on what he actually contributed, or criticized only his behavior towards others. Steve did seem to be able to hire, attract, or motivate as many talented engineers as he did drive away. This is a very hard thing for a CEO to do, and he deserves a large amount of credit for doing this. The talent that he helped attract and the products they create are responsible for Apple's stock price rise and continued profitability since his death.
Hacker (n) "An enthusiastic and skillful computer programmer or user."
Ok, computer user then.
Steve Jobs built Apple 1.0 that popularized desktop computing & publishing.
Then on the side he bought a failing business, and turned it into the company that's become the future of entertainment with Pixar.
In between he founded NeXt where he demonstrated his understanding that integrated hardware design and supply-chain-management was going to be essential to the next generation of computing, and hired amazing people to help him realize this vision when back at Apple.
With these experiences upon his return to Apple, he bet on mobile and consumer products and turned a failing computer hardware maker into the world's most valuable company - out pacing even EXXON that's entire business is pumping liquid gold out of the ground.
He authored or co-authored 323 patents at Apple alone.
So I strongly disagree that he was not an "inventor", a "hacker", or undeserving of the media's attention and analysis.
I either do not like Steve Jobs, or I feel sorry for him. One of those two.
I do not like to speak ill of the dead, but I also do not like to sugar-coat things.
Steve Jobs was mentally ill. A lot of people don't like to say that, but that is what he was. I cannot diagnose his exact condition, but he shared many traits of the common sociopath -- all except that he was never very charming, generally speaking. [0] Steve clawed his way to the top, and turned himself into a god, when all of his talents were really nothing more than hiring the right people (Steve would have been an absolute nobody if he had never met Wozniak (or a man of similar talent) to flush out his ideas) -- in fact he probably would have turned out to be a homeless person (if you had met him at Atari, you would have thought so). Steve was a bag of ideas -- ideas that were not original but, to his blessing, very consistent. And as most of us agree, ideas are only worth the quality of their execution. A lot of people look up to Steve for this reason - he was a non-engineer who came to rule the tech world. If he could do it, so could they.
I have no real agenda against Jobs, and I would definitely say that his life was filled with interesting accomplishments (even if the only accomplishment was only swindling the world to pay 2x as much for his products). But this is one man I would never place on a pedestal, because he is not a model human being.
The only heros I have know humility. Steve Jobs, even in the face of death, never learned that.
You don't listen to vinyl for the "audio quality" in the sense of getting the most precise reproduction of a recording. You listen to it because of the color that the playback process adds to the music. There is something charming about the occasional click or pop, not to mention that a lot of older music transferred to CD wasn't necessarily transferred well. And music targeting vinyl to begin with is usually mastered differently.
>and according to Neil Young, he listened to vinyl records at home [1] — which shows that he was ignorant of how audio quality works (see [2]).
This is total and utter BS. I know how audio quality works. I've got a CS degree, have take information theory and DSP classes, have even written audio plugin code (VST/AU), and have worked with DAWs and samplers for nearly two decades.
Still, I like vinyl better.
What you said has nothing at all to do with "audio quality" and how it works. It only has to do with audio _fidelity_, at best. Quality and fidelity is not the same thing. And fidelity and human preference towards a sound source is not the same thing either. For example, people prefer (and enjoy more) colored sound over more neutral reproduction all the time.
Not to mention vinyl is also about the cultural experience (connection with the cottage era of the music industry, large cover art, etc), the tactile feel, and even the patina and fragility of the medium (which can even include the crackle). Consumption of art, any art, is not at all about perfect reproduction.
>But I think that when the deaths of people like Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy in the same month as Steve are ignored, then the world is suffering from a serious case of myopia
Steve Job's work was important to the economy and the consumers at large in a manifest way (ie. building the company with the largest quarterly earnings of all time, for one).
Ritchie's work, no so much and in a much more roundabout way. And McCarthy's work was even more marginal. Those two are important for computer science, and the programming industry, but not for the economy, market, culture etc at large.
>Many of you may say that I'm missing the point; that his ability to convince others of what was important and his "vision" is what made him great. My contention is that he appropriated other people's original ideas, and other people implemented his modifications.
That's the very role of a good CEO.
You probably mistook him to be something like Tesla?
At the time of his death, he had turned around a company that was about 90 days from death and turned it into one of biggest companies in the world, which made products used by hundreds of millions of people.
Now, I could go on debating what I thought he was but that would be pointless. Steve changed the world, with whatever combination of qualities and abilities that he had.
You know what doesn't accomplish anything? Debating on Hacker News if it's better to be like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, Steve's design ability, which of the ideas from Apple were his, why he listened to music on vinyl, etc.
If you can't understand why Steve Jobs was a household name and Dennis Richie wasn't, well, sorry... I guess you don't understand life. There really isn't any use in whining about it though. In 200 years, most of us will probably be forgotten, including Steve.
Steve Jobs was a product of Silicon Valley and he interned at HP at age 12, and then later he was later a worker bee at Atari: So your idea that he "knew almost nothing about computer languages and architecture" seems a bit misplaced. You wouldn't be building blue boxes and hanging out at homebrew meetings if you didn't know something about the field.
Also the "logic" that if you listen to vinyl records makes one ignorant about audio quality is silly. And honestly you can can like Steve Jobs and still appreciate someone like Dennis Ritchie.
> But I think that when the deaths of people like Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy in the same month as Steve are ignored
Steve Jobs was a media figure who was present up to the end of his life, whereas Dennie Ritchie has invented something extremely important decades ago and then kept a low profile. The respective amount of media coverage has nothing to do with who was objectively the more important human, only postings like yours claim to know the answer to this, and I think it's rather tasteless.
The last 35 years of technology history is unfathomable without Steve Jobs. Jobs was the one responsible for getting the most influential early personal computer to market with the Apple II, driving the creation of the first viable GUI computer with the Macintosh, ensuring that CGI animation became the de facto standard with Pixar, founding a company that produced the machine that the World Wide Web was invented on, being instrumental in the introduction of PostScript and desktop publishing, and on and on. He may not be the sole inventor of these things, but ask Steve Wozniak, Bill Atkinson, Ed Catmull, Tim Berners Lee, John Warnock, et al where they and their inventions would be without Steve Jobs.
>>> he listened to vinyl records at home [1] — which shows that he was ignorant of how audio quality works
Obviously you are ignorant of the difference between an analog music and digital music,
many people still prefer vacuum-tube amplifier than solid-states amplifier because of
the music quality it produces.
People listened to Vinyls because of their distinct sound it makes, for people who are as old
as Steve Jobs and Neil Young, the experience listening to Vinyls is nostalgic.
A preference for vinyl does not equate to ignorance of audio technology.
Your article [2] mentions mastering issues. In many cases, the master for the vinyl edition of an album differs significantly from that of the CD or digital release; for example, the vinyl edition may feature less compression, preserving dynamic range.
Oh it's just so easy for people who have never carried the onus of a multi-billion-dollar company (or really a company of any size) on their shoulders, as someone like Steve Jobs does, to issue middlebrow comments like this one.
No organization/endeavor/enterprise rises to tremendous success without an extraordinary leader at its helm, yet many failures have had armies of smart engineers/builders/managers on their staff. There are underlying reasons for that but I'm of the opinion, of late, that absorbing them from a book or commentary is rather hard for most people - you need to actually experience/witness the right set of circumstances to really appreciate the true nature of what transpires behind success at the top tier.
He was not a hacker and that's precisely why he could lead the creation of great end-user products. He certainly did know a whole lot about programming : check his WWDC 97 address, in particular this sequence at 22' :
he knew that coding isn't measured by the number of lines you write, and that providing a good environment to developers is absolutely essential. I don't know too many managers or CEOs who really grasp that.
"My contention is that he appropriated other people's original ideas, and other people implemented his modifications."
So what? Ideas aren't very special in and of themselves. I have lots of ideas every day that end up having no impact on the world, because I don't do anything about them.
Also, I think you underestimate the importance of editing. There is a reason writers have editors, bands have producers, actors have directors, and so on.
I would argue Steve Jobs is a "hacker" more than most people here. He knew how to add circuits to modify games when he worked at Atari. Most people here can't do that, let alone design and ship a classic game like Breakout.
Yes, you're totally missing the point, but you said it yourself:
"it seems that he only had taste in choosing among the good designs of others"
That's all it was--a matter of taste, and his was the very, very best. He had an order of magnitude capability in expressing his taste into product visions that he forced into the world, sure on the backs of others, but nonetheless.
Steve Jobs was not a perfect man, but this criticism is just asinine. No great leader implements all ideas of their own. Ideas are one small factor in achievement. As you should know from hanging out on hacker news, execution with brilliance and competence matters far more than the non-existent notion of "original idea."
Right, because Apple would have been one of the most significant technology companies in the world under the apt leadership of Gil Amelio.
Secondly, the house metaphor about ignoring the carpenter and contractor is silly. Comparing Jobs to an interior designer is complete ignorance -- Jobs didn't "decorate" technology -- he saw what technology could potentially accomplish and pushed his teams to execute that vision. He wasn't arranging digital throw pillows -- he was reinventing how people interact and use their "houses."
That contractor and carpenter build what the designer/architect create. Contractors and carpenters, while certainly skilled tradesmen, are merely inputs to a system. Inputs are generally interchangeable. There are very, very few contruction projects that require one specific carpenter's skills. I can find thousands of carpenters (and hackers) who can built competently. But it's rare that you find a hacker (or anyone) that has the vision, and executive ability to create something like Apple, Google or Microsoft, just as a carpenter might be able to build a Frank Lloyd Wright home from a blueprint, most carpenters wouldn't be able to concieve of that final product, having never seen it before. Who can name the carpenter of a Frank Lloyd Wright home? Who cares? The person living in the house certainly doesn't care about the individual inputs -- they care about the finished product. The ability to take disparate inputs and create something magical, amazing, useful and functional.
Dennis Ritchie, while certainly the father or pretty much most of what we do on computers, doesn't matter to the general public. People love to also suggest that Elon Musk of Tesla as a visionary as well, but without Michael Faraday, electric motor technology might not have developed as it has.
Genius always stands on the shoulders of greatness, but let's also remember that simply inventing some technology or another doesn't make one a "genius" or even a groundbreaking figure -- it's the application of that technology into a form that benefits society. Theories of flight don't matter a bit until someone like the Wright Brothers actually build the damned thing.
The C Language or electric motors didn't matter one bit to the world (aside from academics) until some follow-on "genius" actually does something with it.
Steve Jobs, while maybe not a hacker under the definition used amongst a select group of disgruntled HN-snobs, did something bigger than simply "hacking" -- he turned a group of inputs (highly talented to be sure) into products and companies that changed the world.
> Ignoring Dennis and John while celebrating Steve is like fawning over the interior decorator with praise about the warmth of a house while ignoring the carpenter and contractor.
* The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel.
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members.
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
* The leader is not accountable to any authorities.
The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group.
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
The group is preoccupied with making money.
The most loyal members (the "true believers") feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.
Jobs was a cult leader, a pathological narcissist who would do anything to shape the world in his image. By some billion-to-one fluke, Jobs was right about nearly everything. His impeccable taste was the driving force of an entire industry for several decades. You can't emulate an outlier like that, any more than eating chicken nuggets will turn you into Usain Bolt.
As a general rule, if you're a CEO and you find yourself assembling a group of people who don't directly report to you, so you can tell/yell them how they failed you... stop yourself.
The people who failed your are (a) your direct reports and (b) you yourself. Figure out how the correct information didn't get to you, or how you ignored it, and fix that problem.
There's zero chance a roomful of individual contributors all got it wrong at the same time -- the only way they all got it wrong was that they lacked the proper leadership.
I worked at Apple as a contractor after Steve's return. He was in front of me at the salad bar one day - he didn't cut, was just there ahead of me. I noticed he piled a huge amount of shredded carrots in his plate... anyhow.
Steve was wearing his usual black turtle neck and blue jeans. He was kind of leaning forward and I noticed that I could see his underwear since he wasn't wearing a belt. I seriously pondered, "I REALLY SHOULD GIVE JOBS A WEDGIE". Sure, he'd be pissed. Sure, my contract would be cut short. But I would be THE guy who gave Steve Jobs a wedgie. I chickened out and didn't do squat. Missed my chance for greatness.
I believe he was successful in spite of his negative qualities, not because of them. What I mean by this is that we shouldn't worship his negative traits and spin them somehow to be positive qualities in a leader, such as some people have done. He was very much a human being. A highly-intelligent man and visionary in the right place at the right time, surrounded by the right people, making a lot of good, and a few poor, choices. Don't try to reverse-engineer his success so as to duplicate it.
Lets not forget that it's hard to imagine Steve being successful if he hadn't paired with the equally extraordinary Woz. Yes, Jobs got along just fine without Woz, but only after the Apple ][ gave him enough runway to continue pushing his vision. Jobs was special, but he still made errors that would've tanked lesser companies.
It should also be noted that Jobs should be given credit for dragging a reluctant Woz into the spotlight..their estrangement is to me one of the most bizarre and saddest mysteries about Apple.
I think pointing out problems directly and efficiently will eventually make someone a total asshole, and that's what I think Steve Jobs really did. However, some people(especially those blink-eyed Steve Jobs enthusiastics) just mistook the whole point. They thought it's being a total asshole making him efficient and successful, and by being a total asshole will eventually lead to him/her being an awesome leader of big cooperation. These people really have to learn some principles of logic before they start to learn anything from Steve Jobs. Pardon my poor English.
I don't get the point. I am not Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was.
I am me.
Also, all the criticism in this thread that he wasn't a great engineer and Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy should have been given more coverage in the press the month he died is naive to say the least. They were both older. He still had much to do and was the boss of the world's biggest corporation. A bunch of Hackers on Hacker News won't reckon much on Steve Job's contribution to their field, but then he never was a hacker! He was a visionary who appreciated minimalistic design even if this meant that Apple products did fewer things. He made tech popular for the general consumer by simplifying it to just the essentials and burying all of the complexities.
Hackers like to have every choice to exploit. That is why they like PCs and increasingly the Linux OSes. Everyone else that actually wants to get on an accomplish some creative work just ponies up the money for an Apple and what extra they pay out on hardware they tend to save on software - MS Office > iWork.
Choosing which minimal set features to include in a product is harder than just lumping everything in, but the interface is far less cluttered and intrusive with less stuff to learn and therefore easier to use - which may not matter to Hackers like you, but is undoubtedly a factor in Apple's continued success.
The cafeteria anecdote is interesting because I've been in line in a cafeteria with a billionaire (former) CEO - Phil Knight. Very personable (he certainly didn't cut in line) and he seemed comfortable in his Nikes and jeans.
Knight built his empire quite differently than Jobs. While it's not great being a developer at Nike, the company's atmosphere is somewhat laid back. Things still get done and they make a lot of money doing it.
Oh crap, she's already biased. That product was a shit-show from the get-go. It doesn't matter how devoted the employees were, the reliability and apparent technical excellence of the product was lacking and that speaks to "poor programmers". You can be the most devoted employee around, but if you simply can't do your job well, that's nobody's fault. iCloud, by comparison, works pretty great.
[+] [-] lutusp|13 years ago|reply
This isn't true. I knew Steve when he and Steve Wozniak were starting Apple, in the late 1970s, and he (Jobs) was always intolerable -- it wasn't something that came out after he acquired power. I couldn't stand working with him, so, even though people at Apple asked me to stay, I wouldn't. (I eventually worked with Apple on various software projects, but not at Apple.)
Steve Jobs had the worst interpersonal dynamics of anyone I have ever met. All that proves is that being perpetually rude and having terrible people skills isn't a deal-breaker in corporate America.
[+] [-] danilocampos|13 years ago|reply
As this piece describes, they look at the dude and take away that they should be jerks because that's how things get done. And that's a terrible lesson.
In my read, as a guy who's been following Apple since he was a kid, there's one principal lesson for leaders and entrepreneurs:
If you care about making exactly what you want, make sure you're the boss.
That's it. You can define the agenda, you can get the right people, you can motivate them according to your style. You get to win all the design arguments. You get to slip the deadlines for quality.
You can definitely be a jerk in that context, but you don't have to.
[+] [-] SurfScore|13 years ago|reply
Nothing anyone ever writes about what to do or what not to do like Steve Jobs is relevant, because he was so far off from any of the data points we have or probably ever will have to matter. You get people like this in history; ones that seemingly do so much wrong yet change the entire world. I don't know if we'll ever have a concrete explanation for it, but for some reason the bad things ARE part of the reason for their success.
Another more common example of this is Jim Morrison (or any really good drug addict musician). Do you have to be a drug addict to be a musician? Of course not. And I seriously doubt they're gonna start dropping acid at Juilliard. But somehow there's a few of them that make it work, and I would argue that if Jim Morrison wasn't a drug addict he wouldn't have been as successful as he was.
If Jobs wasn't such an asshole, he wouldn't be Steve Jobs. There's some mix assholishness and genius (that he got absolutely perfect) that creates a legendary figure.
[+] [-] mturmon|13 years ago|reply
They don't have to be that way, but it's a lot more likely.
After they are gone, asking "were they a good person" is usually not the right question (unless you were close to them).
If you know them mainly through their work, the right question is, "do you value their work?" Here's the relevant quote from Auden:
[+] [-] exodust|13 years ago|reply
The bureaucratic blockages, and the failure of communication along the chain of command, was ultimately the responsibility of this legendary, line-cutting CEO, who you prop up as a God.
In the end, you have no idea whether Jobs could have been even more successful had he not been an asshole.
And please don't draw parallels with Jim Morrison, who died at 27 not 56. Morrison had an alcohol problem more than drugs. That you argue the drugs led to, or were the reason for his success is preposterous.
Steve Jobs' "mix of asshole and genius he got absolutely perfect" you say? Well, I'm glad you've found your idol, but the person who actually worked with him, and saw his methods first hand, doesn't see things through the same rose-colored glasses.
[+] [-] abalone|13 years ago|reply
If it really was Steve Jobs's "fault that the MobileMe launch went so poorly" because of "the system that he created," and her team was really as "completely kick-ass" as she says it was, then why has Apple had so much success with so many projects run exactly the same way?
The problem with MobileMe was the engineering management, not the system.
If anything this shows how vulnerable the Apple "system" is to the quality of the people they hire, and why they spend so much effort trying to hire and hold on to A-grade people. That just doesn't jive with the tired lore of Jobs being an asshole all the time. They wouldn't be able to hold on to folks like they have.
[+] [-] tomelders|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yoda_sl|13 years ago|reply
This is why the VP of MobileMe was let go soon after: he came from Microsoft/Starbucks, and did surround himself with various ex-microsoft folks.
If you know folks at Apple that were in that group at the time, you will find out that the failure did happen at the VP/Director level that didn't want to listen to the project managers / engineering leads / QA leads.
[+] [-] homosaur|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JDGM|13 years ago|reply
"Now, regardless of whether no one in the inner sanctum of dudes-that-Steve-listened-to-at-the-time told him all the things we told our bosses, or who-up-the-chain-of-command was not brave enough to suggest we do something not-Apple-like — this was the system that Steve created. He made himself so fearful and terrible that an entire group of amazing, talented, hard working people, ended up getting screamed at wrongfully. It was his fault that the MobileMe launch went so poorly, not ours."
Even if that's not even remotely true (I wouldn't know), I find it a good lesson that a boss could be so terrifying that no-one wants to be honest with them and this flows down the hierarchy to the point of dysfunction. I've heard of it before, but I like the clarity of explanation this nth time around.
[+] [-] zalzane|13 years ago|reply
I want to believe that this has only been a recent development and that he used to be an easier person to deal with in apple's early days, because to be quite frank the only way I could see such an individual being so successful with the attitude he had was if he was just riding the coattails of other forces in the company.
Hopefully someone can enlighten me as to how this kind of person could lead a successful company when everyone fears him and doesn't question anything he says.
[+] [-] a_p|13 years ago|reply
Steve is known for having a great sense of design, but it seems that he only had taste in choosing among the good designs of others. Just look at the yacht he designed without Jonathan Ive's collaboration. [4]
Many of you may say that I'm missing the point; that his ability to convince others of what was important and his "vision" is what made him great. My contention is that he appropriated other people's original ideas, and other people implemented his modifications. I'll admit that directing such efforts is not an easy thing to do, and most breakthroughs are improvements upon others' ideas. But it is very rare for the original creators to be alive and ignored while the modifier is celebrated with maudlin elegies.
EDIT: The media's treatment of his death, President Obama's statement that he was a great "inventor", etc. was not his fault. But I think that when the deaths of people like Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy in the same month as Steve are ignored, then the world is suffering from a serious case of myopia. Ignoring Dennis and John while celebrating Steve is like fawning over the interior decorator with praise about the warmth of a house while ignoring the carpenter and contractor.
Perhaps I should add that I am being critical of Steve because of an abundance of articles that did not focus on what he actually contributed, or criticized only his behavior towards others. Steve did seem to be able to hire, attract, or motivate as many talented engineers as he did drive away. This is a very hard thing for a CEO to do, and he deserves a large amount of credit for doing this. The talent that he helped attract and the products they create are responsible for Apple's stock price rise and continued profitability since his death.
[‡] http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html (see definition of "hacker")
[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/01/146206585/ste...
[2] http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
[3] http://www.freetype.org/patents.html
[4] http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/21/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-yac...
[+] [-] aresant|13 years ago|reply
Ok, computer user then.
Steve Jobs built Apple 1.0 that popularized desktop computing & publishing.
Then on the side he bought a failing business, and turned it into the company that's become the future of entertainment with Pixar.
In between he founded NeXt where he demonstrated his understanding that integrated hardware design and supply-chain-management was going to be essential to the next generation of computing, and hired amazing people to help him realize this vision when back at Apple.
With these experiences upon his return to Apple, he bet on mobile and consumer products and turned a failing computer hardware maker into the world's most valuable company - out pacing even EXXON that's entire business is pumping liquid gold out of the ground.
He authored or co-authored 323 patents at Apple alone.
So I strongly disagree that he was not an "inventor", a "hacker", or undeserving of the media's attention and analysis.
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/ste...
[+] [-] gavanwoolery|13 years ago|reply
I do not like to speak ill of the dead, but I also do not like to sugar-coat things.
Steve Jobs was mentally ill. A lot of people don't like to say that, but that is what he was. I cannot diagnose his exact condition, but he shared many traits of the common sociopath -- all except that he was never very charming, generally speaking. [0] Steve clawed his way to the top, and turned himself into a god, when all of his talents were really nothing more than hiring the right people (Steve would have been an absolute nobody if he had never met Wozniak (or a man of similar talent) to flush out his ideas) -- in fact he probably would have turned out to be a homeless person (if you had met him at Atari, you would have thought so). Steve was a bag of ideas -- ideas that were not original but, to his blessing, very consistent. And as most of us agree, ideas are only worth the quality of their execution. A lot of people look up to Steve for this reason - he was a non-engineer who came to rule the tech world. If he could do it, so could they.
I have no real agenda against Jobs, and I would definitely say that his life was filled with interesting accomplishments (even if the only accomplishment was only swindling the world to pay 2x as much for his products). But this is one man I would never place on a pedestal, because he is not a model human being.
The only heros I have know humility. Steve Jobs, even in the face of death, never learned that.
[0] http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html
[+] [-] rayiner|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|13 years ago|reply
This is total and utter BS. I know how audio quality works. I've got a CS degree, have take information theory and DSP classes, have even written audio plugin code (VST/AU), and have worked with DAWs and samplers for nearly two decades.
Still, I like vinyl better.
What you said has nothing at all to do with "audio quality" and how it works. It only has to do with audio _fidelity_, at best. Quality and fidelity is not the same thing. And fidelity and human preference towards a sound source is not the same thing either. For example, people prefer (and enjoy more) colored sound over more neutral reproduction all the time.
Not to mention vinyl is also about the cultural experience (connection with the cottage era of the music industry, large cover art, etc), the tactile feel, and even the patina and fragility of the medium (which can even include the crackle). Consumption of art, any art, is not at all about perfect reproduction.
>But I think that when the deaths of people like Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy in the same month as Steve are ignored, then the world is suffering from a serious case of myopia
Steve Job's work was important to the economy and the consumers at large in a manifest way (ie. building the company with the largest quarterly earnings of all time, for one).
Ritchie's work, no so much and in a much more roundabout way. And McCarthy's work was even more marginal. Those two are important for computer science, and the programming industry, but not for the economy, market, culture etc at large.
>Many of you may say that I'm missing the point; that his ability to convince others of what was important and his "vision" is what made him great. My contention is that he appropriated other people's original ideas, and other people implemented his modifications.
That's the very role of a good CEO.
You probably mistook him to be something like Tesla?
[+] [-] melling|13 years ago|reply
Now, I could go on debating what I thought he was but that would be pointless. Steve changed the world, with whatever combination of qualities and abilities that he had.
You know what doesn't accomplish anything? Debating on Hacker News if it's better to be like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, Steve's design ability, which of the ideas from Apple were his, why he listened to music on vinyl, etc.
If you can't understand why Steve Jobs was a household name and Dennis Richie wasn't, well, sorry... I guess you don't understand life. There really isn't any use in whining about it though. In 200 years, most of us will probably be forgotten, including Steve.
[+] [-] michaelpinto|13 years ago|reply
Also the "logic" that if you listen to vinyl records makes one ignorant about audio quality is silly. And honestly you can can like Steve Jobs and still appreciate someone like Dennis Ritchie.
[+] [-] gurkendoktor|13 years ago|reply
Steve Jobs was a media figure who was present up to the end of his life, whereas Dennie Ritchie has invented something extremely important decades ago and then kept a low profile. The respective amount of media coverage has nothing to do with who was objectively the more important human, only postings like yours claim to know the answer to this, and I think it's rather tasteless.
[+] [-] gilgoomesh|13 years ago|reply
This was undoubtedly his best strength. It's a heck of a strength to have as a CEO, though.
[+] [-] webwielder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chacham15|13 years ago|reply
Lol, i've tried explaining this to soooo many people. (But to be fair, there are other reasons to listen to vinyl other than just 'quality'.)
[+] [-] jawngee|13 years ago|reply
Philippe Starck designed the yacht.
[+] [-] jjuliano|13 years ago|reply
Obviously you are ignorant of the difference between an analog music and digital music, many people still prefer vacuum-tube amplifier than solid-states amplifier because of the music quality it produces.
People listened to Vinyls because of their distinct sound it makes, for people who are as old as Steve Jobs and Neil Young, the experience listening to Vinyls is nostalgic.
[+] [-] cheeseprocedure|13 years ago|reply
Your article [2] mentions mastering issues. In many cases, the master for the vinyl edition of an album differs significantly from that of the CD or digital release; for example, the vinyl edition may feature less compression, preserving dynamic range.
http://www.soundmattersblog.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-...
[+] [-] ozataman|13 years ago|reply
No organization/endeavor/enterprise rises to tremendous success without an extraordinary leader at its helm, yet many failures have had armies of smart engineers/builders/managers on their staff. There are underlying reasons for that but I'm of the opinion, of late, that absorbing them from a book or commentary is rather hard for most people - you need to actually experience/witness the right set of circumstances to really appreciate the true nature of what transpires behind success at the top tier.
[+] [-] glaurent|13 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
he knew that coding isn't measured by the number of lines you write, and that providing a good environment to developers is absolutely essential. I don't know too many managers or CEOs who really grasp that.
[+] [-] toasterlovin|13 years ago|reply
So what? Ideas aren't very special in and of themselves. I have lots of ideas every day that end up having no impact on the world, because I don't do anything about them.
Also, I think you underestimate the importance of editing. There is a reason writers have editors, bands have producers, actors have directors, and so on.
[+] [-] dottrap|13 years ago|reply
http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Deta...
[+] [-] jwheeler79|13 years ago|reply
"it seems that he only had taste in choosing among the good designs of others"
That's all it was--a matter of taste, and his was the very, very best. He had an order of magnitude capability in expressing his taste into product visions that he forced into the world, sure on the backs of others, but nonetheless.
[+] [-] aneth4|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briandear|13 years ago|reply
Secondly, the house metaphor about ignoring the carpenter and contractor is silly. Comparing Jobs to an interior designer is complete ignorance -- Jobs didn't "decorate" technology -- he saw what technology could potentially accomplish and pushed his teams to execute that vision. He wasn't arranging digital throw pillows -- he was reinventing how people interact and use their "houses."
That contractor and carpenter build what the designer/architect create. Contractors and carpenters, while certainly skilled tradesmen, are merely inputs to a system. Inputs are generally interchangeable. There are very, very few contruction projects that require one specific carpenter's skills. I can find thousands of carpenters (and hackers) who can built competently. But it's rare that you find a hacker (or anyone) that has the vision, and executive ability to create something like Apple, Google or Microsoft, just as a carpenter might be able to build a Frank Lloyd Wright home from a blueprint, most carpenters wouldn't be able to concieve of that final product, having never seen it before. Who can name the carpenter of a Frank Lloyd Wright home? Who cares? The person living in the house certainly doesn't care about the individual inputs -- they care about the finished product. The ability to take disparate inputs and create something magical, amazing, useful and functional.
Dennis Ritchie, while certainly the father or pretty much most of what we do on computers, doesn't matter to the general public. People love to also suggest that Elon Musk of Tesla as a visionary as well, but without Michael Faraday, electric motor technology might not have developed as it has.
Genius always stands on the shoulders of greatness, but let's also remember that simply inventing some technology or another doesn't make one a "genius" or even a groundbreaking figure -- it's the application of that technology into a form that benefits society. Theories of flight don't matter a bit until someone like the Wright Brothers actually build the damned thing.
The C Language or electric motors didn't matter one bit to the world (aside from academics) until some follow-on "genius" actually does something with it.
Steve Jobs, while maybe not a hacker under the definition used amongst a select group of disgruntled HN-snobs, did something bigger than simply "hacking" -- he turned a group of inputs (highly talented to be sure) into products and companies that changed the world.
[+] [-] bambax|13 years ago|reply
Which is exactly what people do!
[+] [-] babesh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjuliano|13 years ago|reply
History was clear, Apple had delivered so many great products when Steve was their CEO, period. Even if Steve was not a hacker.
Do you mean if a person is not a hacker, he has not the right or he could not deliver great products or is not fitted to produce any products at all?
>>> He knew almost nothing about computer languages, computer architecture,
ditto
[+] [-] jdietrich|13 years ago|reply
* The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law. The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society. * The leader is not accountable to any authorities. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished. The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion. Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group. The group is preoccupied with making money. The most loyal members (the "true believers") feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.
Jobs was a cult leader, a pathological narcissist who would do anything to shape the world in his image. By some billion-to-one fluke, Jobs was right about nearly everything. His impeccable taste was the driving force of an entire industry for several decades. You can't emulate an outlier like that, any more than eating chicken nuggets will turn you into Usain Bolt.
[+] [-] robterrell|13 years ago|reply
The people who failed your are (a) your direct reports and (b) you yourself. Figure out how the correct information didn't get to you, or how you ignored it, and fix that problem.
There's zero chance a roomful of individual contributors all got it wrong at the same time -- the only way they all got it wrong was that they lacked the proper leadership.
[+] [-] crusso|13 years ago|reply
Steve was wearing his usual black turtle neck and blue jeans. He was kind of leaning forward and I noticed that I could see his underwear since he wasn't wearing a belt. I seriously pondered, "I REALLY SHOULD GIVE JOBS A WEDGIE". Sure, he'd be pissed. Sure, my contract would be cut short. But I would be THE guy who gave Steve Jobs a wedgie. I chickened out and didn't do squat. Missed my chance for greatness.
[+] [-] visualR|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SkittlesNTwix|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxheadroom513|13 years ago|reply
We have to stop enabling these sociopaths and vote with our feet (immediately) when this stuff happens.
[+] [-] johnrob|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onemorepassword|13 years ago|reply
It's about utter failure of middle management, and how they can totally fuck both sides of the company.
The lesson here is not "don't be an asshole" (although you shouldn't), it's "don't hire ass-kissing assholes".
[+] [-] webwright|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|13 years ago|reply
It should also be noted that Jobs should be given credit for dragging a reluctant Woz into the spotlight..their estrangement is to me one of the most bizarre and saddest mysteries about Apple.
[+] [-] CarlTheAwesome|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Uncompetative|13 years ago|reply
I am me.
Also, all the criticism in this thread that he wasn't a great engineer and Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy should have been given more coverage in the press the month he died is naive to say the least. They were both older. He still had much to do and was the boss of the world's biggest corporation. A bunch of Hackers on Hacker News won't reckon much on Steve Job's contribution to their field, but then he never was a hacker! He was a visionary who appreciated minimalistic design even if this meant that Apple products did fewer things. He made tech popular for the general consumer by simplifying it to just the essentials and burying all of the complexities.
Hackers like to have every choice to exploit. That is why they like PCs and increasingly the Linux OSes. Everyone else that actually wants to get on an accomplish some creative work just ponies up the money for an Apple and what extra they pay out on hardware they tend to save on software - MS Office > iWork.
Choosing which minimal set features to include in a product is harder than just lumping everything in, but the interface is far less cluttered and intrusive with less stuff to learn and therefore easier to use - which may not matter to Hackers like you, but is undoubtedly a factor in Apple's continued success.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Zimahl|13 years ago|reply
Knight built his empire quite differently than Jobs. While it's not great being a developer at Nike, the company's atmosphere is somewhat laid back. Things still get done and they make a lot of money doing it.
[+] [-] lectrick|13 years ago|reply
Oh crap, she's already biased. That product was a shit-show from the get-go. It doesn't matter how devoted the employees were, the reliability and apparent technical excellence of the product was lacking and that speaks to "poor programmers". You can be the most devoted employee around, but if you simply can't do your job well, that's nobody's fault. iCloud, by comparison, works pretty great.