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You’re going to have to give up nights and weekends probably for a couple years as we make this product. The excerpt doesn't give a strong rationale for why pe

by Joeri 9y ago

You’re going to have to give up nights and weekends probably for a couple years as we make this product. The excerpt doesn't give a strong rationale for why people had to give up nights and weekends. It wasn't to protect apple from bankrupcy, because thanks to the ipod and imac apple was already a profitable business. It wasn't because phones were a threat to the ipod, because carriers had the phone market locked up so tight that you couldn't do a decent mp3 player on a phone. The ROKR was ample evidence for that. It wasn't because competitors were on the horizon, because all phones at the time were terrible, and would have remained so without the iphone. As far as I can tell from the article, the pressure cooker was created deliberately, by having competing teams and top-down imposed deadlines, but it still doesn't explain why it was necessary to do things like that. Was it all due to Steve's personality? If that's the case, how is modern-day apple? Is the autonomous car project still this crazy pressure cooker, or can people go home over the weekend to spend time with their families?

t4h9drg 9y ago
Apple needed to fulfill its deal with Cingular in a timely matter: http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone?currentPage=all http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_... "And what would AT&T think? After a year and a half of secret meetings, Jobs had finally negotiated terms with the wireless division of the telecom giant (Cingular at the time) to be the iPhone's carrier. In return for five years of exclusivity, roughly 10 percent of iPhone sales in AT&T stores, and a thin slice of Apple's iTunes revenue, AT&T had granted Jobs unprecedented power. He had cajoled AT&T into spending millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to create a new feature, so-called visual voicemail, and to reinvent the time-consuming in-store sign-up process. He'd also wrangled a unique revenue-sharing arrangement, garnering roughly $10 a month from every iPhone customer's AT&T bill. On top of all that, Apple retained complete control over the design, manufacturing, and marketing of the iPhone. Jobs had done the unthinkable: squeezed a good deal out of one of the largest players in the entrenched wireless industry. Now, the least he could do was meet his deadlines."
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  That, and the hardware relevancy, seem like plausible reasons: but why limit yourself to only the rock-star engineers willing to work in secret and for extreme hours? It doesn't seem like they had competency, competitive, or budget constraints that would have prevented them from using more engineers, more openness, or, again, more engineers on the project.
  - justinator 9y ago
    Great products are made by small teams. Adding a large amount of people to a small team does not guarantee that the product will ship faster - many times, the opposite is true.
95014_refugee 9y ago
There was a pretty fixed window in which the hardware was going to be relevant, and an enormous amount of work to be done to get a useful product out in that window. It's also worth being ... cautious about this account. Many of the competing / complementary perspectives aren't represented, often because they are still working there.
- kjksf 9y ago
  Fixed how? First, it wasn't about the hardware. Other companies (Nokia, HTC, Samsung, Motorola) were doing competitive hardware. It was all about the software and Apple was so far ahead of everyone else, that if they took 1 year more to ship, they would still be far ahead of everyone else. As history shows, the only credible competition was from Microsoft and Android. RIM/Nokia/Samsung/HTC/Motorola (all significant players) couldn't replicate iOS no matter how much time they would take. First iPhone was released on June 2007 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone) Windows Phone was released on Nov 2010, 3 years later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone). First Android was released on September 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history) and took a long time to achieve design quality parity with iOS. Apple had plenty lead time.
  - Teever 9y ago
    "It was all about the software and Apple was so far ahead of everyone else, that if they took 1 year more to ship, they would still be far ahead of everyone else." How did they know that for certain?
    - cakedoggie 9y ago
      Easy, they can just travel forward in time to now and have the benefit of hindsight.
  - Joeri 9y ago
    Not only that. The android which was going to happen before the iphone was a very different beast. It was closer in spirit to WinCE and BB than to iOS. WP7 also happened only because of the android and iphone competition. I think it's reasonable to say that smartphone OS's would have remained terrible for a long time without the iphone leading the way.
accountyaccount 9y ago
I feel like some people romanticize working long hours and weekends as some sort of 'elite workhard' class, even though they could have done the same work during normal working hours.
- spike021 9y ago
  I think some of these people also get into work late, like somewhere between 10:30am and 12pm (if not later, maybe?). If you can afford to sleep in that late most likely you don't mind covering that time at night instead.
  - accountyaccount 9y ago
    Likely, but I've worked with a lot of people who will do that and also turn around and give you shit for leaving at 5.
Animats 9y ago
I know someone who worked on the original iPhone. He was a quiet, Midwestern guy, and didn't like being yelled at by Jobs. He stayed until the product shipped, then quit Apple.
- kjksf 9y ago
  The ironic thing is that everyone at Apple benefited greatly from iPhone success (stratospheric rise of stack price made everyone's stock options worth a lot). A good strategy would be to be an Apple employee working on a project that receives less scrutiny and pressure and stay for a few years after iPhone launch, to get most of the benefit of the rising stock price without the crappy work environment.
cakedoggie 9y ago
You can't guarantee that someone else will not come out with something in the mean time. There is quite clearly a time limit to which this would have been amazing. And even at the time, many people ridiculed the iphone.
noonespecial 9y ago
>You’re going to have to give up nights and weekends probably for a couple years as we make this product. The right response is always "Ok boss, but you're gonna have to give up 30% more money to my salary".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

by Joeri 9y ago

t4h9drg 9y ago

Apple needed to fulfill its deal with Cingular in a timely matter: http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone?currentPage=all http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_... "And what would AT&T think? After a year and a half of secret meetings, Jobs had finally negotiated terms with the wireless division of the telecom giant (Cingular at the time) to be the iPhone's carrier. In return for five years of exclusivity, roughly 10 percent of iPhone sales in AT&T stores, and a thin slice of Apple's iTunes revenue, AT&T had granted Jobs unprecedented power. He had cajoled AT&T into spending millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to create a new feature, so-called visual voicemail, and to reinvent the time-consuming in-store sign-up process. He'd also wrangled a unique revenue-sharing arrangement, garnering roughly $10 a month from every iPhone customer's AT&T bill. On top of all that, Apple retained complete control over the design, manufacturing, and marketing of the iPhone. Jobs had done the unthinkable: squeezed a good deal out of one of the largest players in the entrenched wireless industry. Now, the least he could do was meet his deadlines."

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
That, and the hardware relevancy, seem like plausible reasons: but why limit yourself to only the rock-star engineers willing to work in secret and for extreme hours? It doesn't seem like they had competency, competitive, or budget constraints that would have prevented them from using more engineers, more openness, or, again, more engineers on the project.
- justinator 9y ago
  Great products are made by small teams. Adding a large amount of people to a small team does not guarantee that the product will ship faster - many times, the opposite is true.

95014_refugee 9y ago

There was a pretty fixed window in which the hardware was going to be relevant, and an enormous amount of work to be done to get a useful product out in that window. It's also worth being ... cautious about this account. Many of the competing / complementary perspectives aren't represented, often because they are still working there.

kjksf 9y ago
Fixed how? First, it wasn't about the hardware. Other companies (Nokia, HTC, Samsung, Motorola) were doing competitive hardware. It was all about the software and Apple was so far ahead of everyone else, that if they took 1 year more to ship, they would still be far ahead of everyone else. As history shows, the only credible competition was from Microsoft and Android. RIM/Nokia/Samsung/HTC/Motorola (all significant players) couldn't replicate iOS no matter how much time they would take. First iPhone was released on June 2007 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone) Windows Phone was released on Nov 2010, 3 years later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone). First Android was released on September 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history) and took a long time to achieve design quality parity with iOS. Apple had plenty lead time.
- Teever 9y ago
  "It was all about the software and Apple was so far ahead of everyone else, that if they took 1 year more to ship, they would still be far ahead of everyone else." How did they know that for certain?
  - cakedoggie 9y ago
    Easy, they can just travel forward in time to now and have the benefit of hindsight.
- Joeri 9y ago
  Not only that. The android which was going to happen before the iphone was a very different beast. It was closer in spirit to WinCE and BB than to iOS. WP7 also happened only because of the android and iphone competition. I think it's reasonable to say that smartphone OS's would have remained terrible for a long time without the iphone leading the way.

accountyaccount 9y ago

I feel like some people romanticize working long hours and weekends as some sort of 'elite workhard' class, even though they could have done the same work during normal working hours.

spike021 9y ago
I think some of these people also get into work late, like somewhere between 10:30am and 12pm (if not later, maybe?). If you can afford to sleep in that late most likely you don't mind covering that time at night instead.
- accountyaccount 9y ago
  Likely, but I've worked with a lot of people who will do that and also turn around and give you shit for leaving at 5.

Animats 9y ago

I know someone who worked on the original iPhone. He was a quiet, Midwestern guy, and didn't like being yelled at by Jobs. He stayed until the product shipped, then quit Apple.

kjksf 9y ago
The ironic thing is that everyone at Apple benefited greatly from iPhone success (stratospheric rise of stack price made everyone's stock options worth a lot). A good strategy would be to be an Apple employee working on a project that receives less scrutiny and pressure and stay for a few years after iPhone launch, to get most of the benefit of the rising stock price without the crappy work environment.

cakedoggie 9y ago

You can't guarantee that someone else will not come out with something in the mean time. There is quite clearly a time limit to which this would have been amazing. And even at the time, many people ridiculed the iphone.

noonespecial 9y ago

>You’re going to have to give up nights and weekends probably for a couple years as we make this product. The right response is always "Ok boss, but you're gonna have to give up 30% more money to my salary".

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]