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"Don't argue with me. $100,000 is fair, and you know it."
- owyn 16y agoThat's a great story. I'm not sure how many people can say they got a hard sell like that from both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs for one piece of software...
- mcantor 16y agoI feel like there should be an award for that. I feel accomplished when I manage to get car dealerships to compete over me, much less CEOs worth scrillions of dollars.
- ericb 16y agoI feel like he really dropped the ball on negotiating the sale. It seems like he didn't make any counters, and didn't use their competing interest to reap a higher price. I was expecting at least a cease and desist or lawsuit would be involved.
- jmtame 16y agorule number one: never negotiate in person (especially if you're inexperienced)
- staunch 16y agoSteve Jobs should not follow this rule.
- philwelch 16y agoRule number two: Avoid negotiating directly with Steve Jobs.
- Vivtek 16y agoThat should be rule number one, actually.
- ajju 16y agoI am not sure about that. If you are a golfer and you have an opportunity to play with Tiger Woods, would you let it go? The mitigating factor is that you may be betting your life on it, still, I wouldn't avoid it just because it's Jobs. Maybe I am too cavalier.
- amackera 16y agoHow do you do it? Email? Telephone? I'm legitimately interested, my negotiation skills are weak.
- duck 16y ago
- statictype 16y agoWhat he really wanted was for this to be bundled with the Mac. So that probably clouded his ability to negotiate a better deal. There's no logic in the assertion that because he worked at Apple and had insider knowledge, that Apple should have to pay less for it.
- alexyim 16y agoThat isn't the assertion though. The assertion is that he shouldn't be able to charge whatever he wants.
- statictype 16y agoWell, true. But I think that's still a ridiculous assertion though.
- Gormo 16y agoI would have said. "Ok, 30% of the product relies on insider knowledge. You can have that for free. How much is the remaining 70% worth to you?" Apple wasn't paying for the same insider knowledge of their platform's functionality that they already had; they were paying for the additional work that created new functionality. I don't see any reason why he shouldn't have asked for as much as he thought the product was worth.
- 10ren 16y agoOh man you reckon that's poor negotiation skills, wait til you check out this guy http://www.nucalc.com/Story/ http://www.nucalc.com/Story/ EDIT found a video of Ron telling the story in person http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7497796873809571567# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7497796873809571567...
- johnaspden 16y agoRon appears to have got what he wanted, starting from a very bad position!
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago"Sadly, Microsoft has effective building security". That says it all, about corporate mentality.
- estel 16y agoJust watched that, can't believe I'd never seen it before. Awesome!
- powrtoch 16y agoAgreed. "Don't argue" seems like a really powerful negotiation technique if you've got the charisma/intensity to actually pull it off.
- JacobAldridge 16y agoProbably my favourite 'Folklore' story (though I've by no means read them all) - I especially like the extra $50K kicker when Switcher was sold, something Jobs "swore they would never do".
- 10ren 16y agoWith inflation, that's only doubled: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%24100%2C000+1984+%3D http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%24100%2C000+1984+%3D
- jrockway 16y agoNot a bad deal for sitting in your house for a few months working on something that you enjoy.
- brown 16y agoOr a really crappy deal compared to how much value Bill Gates and Steve Jobs got out of it.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- johnaspden 16y agoAnd thus, benefits from trade.
- hammmatt 16y agoBenefits from trade are a good notion. However, some trades are completely unfair. Example, Native Americans trading the island of Manhattan for a few dollars of beads. Even though it is great business. It is immoral to me to lie about the value of a product. Just as it would be immoral to lie about it's functions. However, I can easily empathize with people who try to get the best deal for themselves/their company.
- ArturSoler 16y agoNative Americans sold Manhattan for $24 in 1626. It may seem a low amount, but invested at an annual 6% that would be over $125 billion today.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- rodh257 16y ago"Well, I think you are. How long do you think it will take to do this project? A month or two? I think a really good programmer like you could get it done in less than two months." In my limited experience negotiating on fees for programming or selling software I've heard this line a few times. "You seem like a really good programmer, that program probably would have only taken you say 2 days, times that by an average hourly rate and thats the rate I'm willing to pay for the program and all source code". Always a sign for me that things aren't going to go well.
- anamax 16y ago> In my limited experience negotiating on fees for programming or selling software I've heard this line a few times. "You seem like a really good programmer, that program probably would have only taken you say 2 days, times that by an average hourly rate and thats the rate I'm willing to pay for the program and all source code". Bzzt - "really good programmers" aren't paid an "average hourly rate" - they're paid an absurdly high hourly rate. You've got to be willing to walk away, to call their bluff to find another programmer to do what you did for less. And when they come back, the price is higher because you both know that they don't have as many options as they thought that they had before. (Alternatively, they've admitted that the options that they were using to beat you down don't exist.)
- dedward 16y agoYeah.... the guy who made that rediculous statement failed miserably.... no idea how to run a software company at all. I could tell when he came out of this superyacht moored out in the ocean and camped out next to us reading a book in the shade while we were grabbing some sun on a nice little tropical island. (Didn't bother to bother him - as tempting as it was - I figured he should be able to enjoy the peace and quiet and beautify of the place just like everyone else without being hassled)
- mkramlich 16y agogreat story. great insight into Jobs and Gates too, giving a glimpse of both in action in the same era, and dealing with the same issue.
- mkramlich 16y agoWhen it got to the part where Andy was talking to Jobs and Jobs was trying to close a deal to buy Switcher, I could almost hear the click of Steve's Reality Distortion Field turning on. Also pictured him doing the hand-waving motion Kenobi did in Star Wars when doing the Jedi mind trick on stormtroopers. "These are not the droids you're looking for. One hundred thousand credits. The Jedi will not be taken advantage of. This little one is not worth your trouble."
- mbenjaminsmith 16y agoI always thought the Jobsian reality distortion field was more inspirational. It turns on and engineers start thinking along the lines of, "Yeah, I guess we can pack a mobo into a single square inch." What he described sounded like vanilla intimidation. I could feel the guy squirming in his seat.
- hebejebelus 16y agoMan, for some reason a mobo in a single square inch sounds like a great idea. Must… resist… RDF…
- mikeknoop 16y agoDid anyone else think the story would end with the key combination being changed to "Ctrl+alt+delete"?
- neandorman 16y agoI was thinking command-option-escape (force quit on Mac).
- mikeknoop 16y agoWell, Microsoft was the comapny who he was talking about force-quit shortcut with, so I assumed the former.
- statictype 16y agoWhen he started on about the key combinations at the end, I was convinced he was about to give us the origin of Ctrl-Alt-Del.
- mikeknoop 16y agoI had the exact same comment (see farther down). I went on a quick hunt and turned up this as the actual origins: http://www.reviewjournal.com/cgi-bin/printable.cgi?/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-03-Mon-2001/business/16876535.html http://www.reviewjournal.com/cgi-bin/printable.cgi?/lvrj_hom...
- zimbu668 16y agoA more humorous take on it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zADyh0JQh8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zADyh0JQh8
- quickpost 16y agoI thought it was going to be the origin of Force Quit on a Mac, but perhaps that already existed at the time.
- Vivtek 16y agoDamn, look at this: "... including a simple UI for selecting applications and 'Switcher Documents' for remembering sets of related applications." I wish the concept of switcher documents had survived in the greater ecology - that would have been sweet.
- noonespecial 16y agoBoth Jobs and Gates tried to snare him with the same fallacy. It was easy for him to do because he was very good/had insider knowledge so he shouldn't be paid that much for it. Wrong. What really mattered was how much it was worth to Microsoft or Apple and especially that it was worth a good bit to both. Picture Scotty asking if that's worth somthin' t'ye or shd'aye just punch up clear?
- danilocampos 16y agoIt's a tough one, though. It sounds like an important thing to Andy was getting more of his work onto a bunch of Macs, where it could make the most impact. Which meant getting it bundled. Which meant making Steve happy. Imagine Andy's horror, for example, if Steve had someone else build the Apple-blessed switcher instead and it worked but lacked the elegance and care of the Hertzfeld version. Steve ended up having something Andy wanted, too. I gotta believe Jobs is a tough enough negotiator under the best of circumstances. Imagine when he's got you by your idealism.
- jimbokun 16y agoThe only possible leverage he could have had would have been to try to get Gates and Jobs into a bidding war. But that only works if Microsoft sees it as a competitive advantage to have the switcher for their apps but no one else's. And, like you said, Andy already admitted he wanted it on all Macs, which blew any chance at leverage he had.
- ErrantX 16y agoIt's hard to say, because we weren't there. But I would have just said, then and there, "bullshit, I'll talk to Bill" and walked out the office - 10$ says he wouldn't have made it to the exit :)
- dedward 16y agoTimes were different back then. The market was nothing whatsoever like it is today. The context of this was for applications microsoft was writing for the mac, not for operating system development... and the fact that he had insider knowledge could have been used against him. And $100,000 was a decent amount of money at the time.
- vinhboy 16y agoWow, just wow. I am amazed by two things 1) How much a jerk both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are and 2) How young the engineers were that started all this...
- shin_lao 16y agoThey're not jerks, they're putting the interest of their companies first.
- jacquesm 16y agoThey could do so without being jerks though, and yes, I think they both come off as jerks. I can think of several ways in which they could have achieved the same thing without being jerks.
- shin_lao 16y agoLet's not rewrite history. A skilled engineer Andy was obviously a very poor salesman, a trait both Bill and Steve saw immediately. They took advantage of the situation for the benefit of the company and although wording might be harsh, what they did was fair. It was up to Andy to haggle. Bill wrote a unneeded "thank you" letter to Andy. Doesn't look like what a jerk does. And he eventually got $ 150,000 for his work. That's a fair amount of money, isn't it?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 16y ago> They took advantage of the situation Contradicts the rest of what you wrote... The strongest point against that I can see is the fact that he saw it somewhere else first.
- shin_lao 16y agoI don't understand what you mean. Do you mean they should have been "nice" to him? If yes, why? They were doing business, not having a cocktail party.
- andreyf 16y agoI wonder if he'd gone with the single-heap-for-all-apps idea, whether or not it would have encouraged program interoperability?
- jacquesm 16y agoIt probably would have led to programs crashing other programs by heap corruption though. More separation is better.
- febeling 16y agoThis is what the Switcher looked like: http://school.anhb.uwa.edu.au/personalpages/kwessen/web/stories/EarlyMacStories.html#multitasking http://school.anhb.uwa.edu.au/personalpages/kwessen/web/stor...
- andreyf 16y agoIf this isn't inspiring to "predict the future by inventing it", I don't know what is.
- 10ren 16y agoThis story inspired me tonight: reading about how he didn't know if it would work or not, and how he fixed bugs as they arose is true hacking style. And it's definitely a way to get things done. So that's what I did tonight, and made a ton of progress; just hounding down and stomping on bugs mercilessly. Why wasn't I doing that already? I'd been reading too much Dijkstra, that the "competent" programmer can show whether his code will work or not. It's definitely possible to do it that way, but it's (very sadly) too high a standard for me to reach in reasonable time (or maybe at all), for more than toy problems. Dijkstra used this approach to write a multitasking operating system. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that.
- jacquesm 16y ago> the guy wrote a multitasking operating system with this approach. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that. You'd be surprised at how doable that is if you actually tried. It's the same as every other problem in programming: break it down in to two pieces, figure out which one is the easier, if it is trivial solve it, otherwise recurse. You'd need an overall sketch of the architecture before you began but once you have that worked out it's 'just programming' to get you to the finish line. The hardest part to get right is security, especially if you go multi-user, but since you just specify 'multitasking operating system' that one is somewhat limited in scope. (such thinking probably gave us windows ;) )...
- 10ren 16y agoThanks, I appreciate the support, but my opps, you caught my initial phrasing before I clarified to disambiguate: I didn't mean to write an operating system; but to write one in Dijkstra's way (ie by showing - proving - that it works before you write it). ugghh I shudder just saying it.
- jacquesm 16y agoAh, ok, now I get it :) That was more than just a little bit ambiguous, I completely fell for it.
- jacquesm 16y ago> ""But I don't want you taking advantage of this situation. I'm not going to allow you to take advantage of Apple." > "What do you mean?" I asked him, genuinely puzzled. > "There's no way that you could have written that program without confidential information that you learned by working at Apple. You don't have the right to charge whatever you like for it."" Wow... that makes me think a whole lot less of Steve Jobs. That information should have been public knowledge anyway, to try to claim a stake in something that someone wrote just because you don't document your stuff is really low.
- DrJokepu 16y agoIt's a common practice that parts of systems that cannot be guaranteed to not change in upcoming releases are undocumented, and rightly so.
- jacquesm 16y agoThat's true, but that is not a reason to see that as giving you a stake in someone else's efforts. I think that's a low thing to do.
- cubicle67 16y agoJobs also offered, 2.5 times what Gates did
- confuzatron 16y agoInteresting to see the different approaches taken by Gates and Jobs. Gates: flattery, Jobs: implied threats.
- taylorwc 16y agoThe conversation with Bill Gates in his office reads like something out of an Ayn Rand novel. This is awesome.
- shirtless_coder 16y agoWell, 100k is better than 40k
- hammmatt 16y agoIt seemed like he had an incredible product he could have sold for more in my opinion. For contractual projects wouldn't it make sense to know the value of what is going to be produced (more or less) and then negotiate the percentage of it. Is there anything akin to an agent for a programmer in this situation? In all seriousness, it might not be a bad idea for a business. Assuming that you can add value to the talent by increasing contractual payoffs, and/or your organization could develop a reputation for excellence and potentially be sought out to find talent for certain jobs. I'm picturing a mixture of a consultant, and a technical programming. Any thoughts?
- dedward 16y agoKeep in mind what the market looked like at the time - it was nothing whatsoever like today. The field was so new there were no ground rules. It was the wild west. Either party could have also paid him nothing, hired someone else to do it, and been done with it.
- chopsueyar 16y agoExcellent story. Anyone remember DESQview for DOS? I really liked how his development cycles are spaced with mini-vacations. Also, a nice look at the young Gates and Jobs. ...and he's a hardware hacker, too! Good stuff.