8 ms·
Let's just be frank: If Jobs was in charge, everyone that remotely touched that app would pulled into a room, berated and told how fucking dumb they are, and to
by laichzeit0 9y ago
Let's just be frank: If Jobs was in charge, everyone that remotely touched that app would pulled into a room, berated and told how fucking dumb they are, and told to pack their shit and find another job. Remember, he was obsessive about the first calculator app and hand-tuned it to his liking, so it's not hyperbole to suggest that he would be fucking livvid. [1]
Asshole, but perfection requires assholes. Apple is regressing. Their products are too expensive to tolerate regression.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/macintosh-calculator-2011-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/macintosh-calculator-2011-10
- rodgerd 9y agoOr he might berate the users, like he did with the antenna.
- CodeWriter23 9y agoSteve left Forstall in place to fill that role. Guess he made the wrong people cry. Maybe he’ll make a grand return someday.
- teddyh 9y agoThat link is an incomplete version of the the original story here: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Calculator_Construction_Set.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
- ship_it 9y ago> perfection requires assholes? Wait, wat? How?
- justinjlynn 9y agoDude, it's Apple. Hold your tongue. ;)
- justinjlynn 9y agoDoes nobody have a sense of humour or the ability to literally hold their tongue and say Apple?
- zecg 9y agoTo get the shit out, I presume.
- minusSeven 9y agoIts a miss on qa end. so if the qa in my company is good they are assholes ?
- eps 9y agoTo enforce critical assessment of one's work with people who are not inclined to do that on their own.
- silviot 9y agoTIL some people think berating your employees when they do a mistake is a good way to run a company. WOW! It's just so wrong at so many levels, I don't even know where to start. I'll leave a link to this video: https://www.ted.com/talks/brian_goldman_doctors_make_mistakes_can_we_talk_about_that https://www.ted.com/talks/brian_goldman_doctors_make_mistake...
- golergka 9y agoI don't think Job's way was a good way, but it's certainly better than whatever the hell they are doing now.
- romanovcode 9y agoI don't think firing people is berating.
- solatic 9y agoGrandparent isn't trying to condone the practice of berating employees but to demonstrate how Apple under Steve Jobs would've been much more likely to catch these kinds of screwups before production and much less likely to tolerate them once they occurred. The means of correction are less important than the standard of quality which was effectively enforced.
- EpicEng 9y agoI don't think that's what he's saying, but c'mon; it's a pretty dumb mistake. QA should be hauled in as well.
- gaastonsr 9y agoHe is not condoning it just mentioning how under Jobs this would have been a big deal.
- drawnwren 9y agoSo against we have Brian Goldman, MD. And for, we have Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and pretty much every other tech/entrepreneur darling of the 20th century. I'm pretty sure the results speak for themselves here.
- Daycrawler 9y agoIf Jobs was in charge this wouldn't have happened
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mkagenius 9y agoIf Jobs was in charge, he would still be living and people are worried about calculator.
- ballooney 9y agoAntenna-gate (the iPhone antenna not working well enough if you held the phone) happened while Jobs was in charge.
- coldtea 9y agoNot the best example. Lots of bugs and issues happened under Jobs, but this was the usual press BS. The iPhone 4 went on to sell 50 millions of devices or so with that antenna and nobody in the real world had much of an issue with it.
- mulletbum 9y agoSeems you are cutting and pasting, but Apple gave away free bumpers with the 4, so yes, it was an issue.
- misnome 9y agoYou also seem to be repeating your reply. And the bumpers aren't proof of anything except perhaps marketing; they could have just decided that the cost of giving everybody free bumpers was cheaper than any brand damage they might otherwise have sustained.
- coldtea 9y ago>Seems you are cutting and pasting You wanted a totally original rephrase for a response to the exact same topic on a different subthread? >Apple gave away free bumpers with the 4, so yes, it was an issue Which few really used in the wild, so no, it wasn't.
- jaredklewis 9y agoAre you a programmer? If so, is not getting yelled at what motivates you to write good software?
- cocktailpeanuts 9y agoI am a programmer. And if I shipped a crap like this, I would agree that I deserve to be yelled at. But the problem is probably not at developer level, it's higher ups who don't care about quality control, which permeate downwards.
- jaredklewis 9y agoYou didn’t answer the question, but I’ll go ahead and suggest that you are motivated to create good software, not by a fear of being yelled at, but rather something else. Maybe you think the product you are making is of actual value, and are proud of it. Maybe you want to impress your boss with the quality so you can get a raise. Maybe you don’t want to be fired. In any case, I would be shocked if there was anyone, anywhere that thought: “you know, I would have put in the effort, but I knew even if I screwed up, no one would verbally abuse me, so why bother?” Just my opinion, but I would reckon no software has ever been made better by verbal abuse. Jobs succeeded in spite of it, not because of it. Going on a tirade is something egomaniacs do when they can’t control their temper, not an effective motivational strategy.
- logfromblammo 9y agoIf I'm at the sort of job where I get yelled at for doing my job as I saw fit, I will be motivated in the future to find a better manager. But then again, I'd never block user input to play an unnecessary animation on my own initiative, so I must have been doing that because my manager told me to do it, or because I wasn't given enough time to do the job properly. So if I got yelled at in that situation, I'd wait to see if I was fired, and quit if I was not. Management by loud, abrasive, dominance-displaying histrionics is not something I can work with, ever. Every company gets one freebie, where I go above and beyond the call of duty to make the kind of software that I am proud to stand behind. If that effort is not rewarded or recognized, and explicitly encouraged to continue, I fall back into line and do exactly as I am told thenceforth--no more, no less. I won't offer my opinion unless it is requested, and I won't go looking for extra things to do to improve the code base. If that freebie is actually punished or reprimanded, I start looking for other jobs. What I have found is that few companies are interested in doing anything well, or even technically correct. They desire extremely consistent mediocrity. They don't want a hand-crafted hamburger made from fresh-ground chuck and crisp, juicy vegetables; they want a McDonald's hamburger with exactly two pickle slices and one pinch of minced onion. Anyone that yells at a grill cook for making a gourmet burger instead of the McDonald's standard probably shouldn't be hiring trained chefs and assigning them to the grill. But worse, anyone that yells at their grill cook because they put a third pickle slice on the burger--an extra pickle that was asked for, or even demanded--probably should not be in charge of anything, much less a bunch of grill cooks. Fear of getting yelled at is actually fear of having to navigate the awful interview process all over again, while pretending to care about my current job long enough for an offer to come in. I avoid doing my work badly mostly because I don't want to be a person who does bad work. If I ever do bad work, it's because I was told to do it that way--or maybe yelled at to do it that way--and I hate every shortcut and kludge, even as I am typing them into existence. At that point, I am already mentally out the door, only sticking around until that paycheck can be replaced by a check from somewhere else. Yelling is bad management, and bad management motivates me to leave.
- suckerburg 9y agoDidn't the iphone 4 antenna issue happen under Jobs? With him claiming you're holding the phone wrong or something like that.
- coldtea 9y agoYou mean the iPhone 4 antenna non-issue? Lots of bugs and issues happened under Jobs, but this was the usual press BS. The iPhone 4 went on to sell 50 millions of devices or so with that antenna and nobody in the real world had much of an issue with it.
- alpaca128 9y agoA relative's phone calls got disconnected very regularly until she covered the antenna with tape. If nobody in the real world had any issues with it nobody would have discovered it in the first place.
- coldtea 9y ago>If nobody in the real world had any issues with it nobody would have discovered it in the first place. If only media worked that way and never discovered problems where they don't exist or are totally marginal... By the same logic, if nobody listened any difference with $1000 "hi-fi cables" they wouldn't be buying them...
- FreezerburnV 9y agoNo it definitely existed. I got a 4, and it was not uncommon to go from a perfectly fine phone call, to a dropped phone call until I got a case.
- sixothree 9y agoAnd it was such a perfect phone to use without case.
- mulletbum 9y agoConsidering they gave away free bumpers, I have to disagree.
- coldtea 9y ago>Let's just be frank: If Jobs was in charge, everyone that remotely touched that app would pulled into a room, berated and told how fucking dumb they are, and told to pack their shit and find another job. Let's just be frank: there were TONS of BS issues like that under Jobs all the time, regardless of whether he was obsessive about this or that particular app.
- whipoodle 9y agoSteve Jobs died in 2011. Let it go.