5 ms·

Steve Jobs and John Carmack are very similar people in a lot of ways. They're both from lower-class backgrounds, incredibly smart, had serious personality prob

Steve Jobs and John Carmack are very similar people in a lot of ways. They're both from lower-class backgrounds, incredibly smart, had serious personality problems as children that could have landed them in prison as adults. They're both entirely "self-made" and spent their entire lives with (almost) singular focus, to the point of becoming the best in the world at what they chose to work on. My impression is that John Carmack has avoided being CEO during his career because he knows it would involve him becoming more like Steve Jobs than he wants to be. Could John Carmack have made an even bigger positive impact in the world if he had gone in Steve Jobs' direction? How much would he have had to change as a person? I suspect a lot of people would come think of him as an "asshole" if he chose to get his hands dirty with the work of a CEO. Maybe the world would be even richer than it is now but at some cost to John Carmack and (perhaps) others. In any case, they're both beautiful examples of the greatness and weakness of the partially-evolved primate we call Human.

epicureanideal 8y ago
Citation needed on Steve being lower class. Lower compared to what? Based on the little I know about how he grew up, it seems he was more middle class than lower, and also happened to grow up in the best place to grow up to rise with the computer industry. Middle class kids in Iowa don't live 20 minutes from Stanford, for example. So, I'd say "middle class with unusually good opportunities". I'm really not trying to say he didn't accomplish a lot, because he did, but let's not pretend he was seriously disadvantaged. Carmack seems to have more claim to being disadvantaged, although I have no idea if he is interested in making such a claim. According to some articles I just read he was arrested while trying to steal his first computer, and spent a year in juvenile prison, which generally doesn't happen to affluent people.
- gowld 8y ago
  https://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/John-Carmack-Answers https://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/John-Carma... John Carmack Answers: """ ... stereotypical geek aspects to my life growing up - phreaking, hacking (nobody called it "cracking" back then), rockets, bombs, and thermite (sometimes in not-so-smart combinations), sci-fi, comic books, D&D, arcades, etc. I was sort of an amoral little jerk when I was young. I was arrogant about being smarter than other people, but unhappy that I wasn't able to spend all my time doing what I wanted. I spent a year in a juvenile home for a first offence[1] after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly. """ [1] Per wikipedia, the offense was: burning through a window, grand theft of computers, and then presenting as autistic to the psychiatric evaluator. From my outsider view, I get the impression that Carmack "grew up" into a relative well-adjusted adult with respect for other humans, but Steve Jobs never did.
- adventured 8y ago
  > Citation needed on Steve being lower class. Lower compared to what? They very clearly struggled when it came to money. Somewhere between lower and middle, is most likely. Based on the available history, Paul & Clara Jobs pushed their meagre finances to the limit to try to give Steve better opportunities, including moving to Los Altos because Steve was being tormented where they had been living. "Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24th, 1955. Schieble gave her baby up to Paul and Clara Jobs, a working-class couple in San Francisco. Paul, a high school dropout who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, made his living as a debt collector, a repo man and a machinist. Clara worked as a payroll clerk at Varian Associates, one of the first high-tech companies in Silicon Valley." "When Jobs was three, Paul moved the family from San Francisco to Mountain View, an unsophisticated town of tract houses and apricot orchards just south of Palo Alto." "Paul tried fixing up old cars and dabbling in real estate, but money always seemed to elude him. In the fourth grade, Steve's teacher, Imogene Hill, asked the class, "What is it in this universe that you don't understand?" When it came to Steve's turn to answer, his reply was heartbreaking: 'I don't understand why all of a sudden we're so broke.'" https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-steve-jobs-nobody-knew-20111027 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-steve-jobs-nob...
gameswithgo 8y ago
> serious personality problems as children Man a lot of people have serious problems if that is the bar for serious! Which, yeah ok we do.
batty_alex 8y ago
This comment seriously makes me question what you think lower-class is or is like. The comment comes off as tone-deaf. Neither of them are "self-made", they both had crazy access to electronics that hardly anyone else did at the time. They both did amazing things but, you're hand-waving away their real history for some "bootstrap-y" American success story. Also, John Carmack WAS an asshole at id. Read Masters Of Doom sometime when you get a chance, loads of hubris and broken friendships in there.
- ovao 8y ago
  Jobs built his empire out of his garage. Is that not how the quintessential self-made success story usually starts?
- staunch 8y ago
  1. Being lower-class in America means things like your parents are not well educated, they don't have any significant amount of savings, you attend public school, you aren't prepped for college, your parents can't pay for college, your parents can't support you as an adult, etc. They're not middle-class, and not upper-class, so they're lower-class. 2. Bill Gates parents were very upper-class, he attended expensive private school, was pushed into Harvard, and he had exclusive access to brand new computers that almost no children did at the time. Jobs/Carmack had no access similar to computers at private school. 3. I've read Masters of Doom and don't think any reasonable person would describe him as "an asshole" at all. Defining someone by their flaws says more about the definer than the defined.
outworlder 8y ago
I have come to the realization that, if you are a CEO, you'll have to be an asshole to some people. Maybe not all people all the time, but just enough that you'll accumulate bad 'quotes' over time. You are, after all, supposed to steer a company. Not all people will be aboard, you don't have all the time in the world to reason with them, even if you would like to.
- staunch 8y ago
  It might be even worse than seeming like an asshole sometimes, it might actually make you anti-social the way being a VC or police officer does for most people. It could be that having thousands of negative interactions with people tends to damage your personality in some ways. People who actively choose not to be CEO, like John Carmack, probably sense this effect and want to avoid it. Some people might be better than others at coping with this. Steve Jobs might've been really good at this, or really bad, it's difficult to determine.
  - outworlder 8y ago
    I had not considered that, it makes sense. The brain does tend to take shortcuts whenever possible.

epicureanideal 8y ago

Citation needed on Steve being lower class. Lower compared to what? Based on the little I know about how he grew up, it seems he was more middle class than lower, and also happened to grow up in the best place to grow up to rise with the computer industry. Middle class kids in Iowa don't live 20 minutes from Stanford, for example. So, I'd say "middle class with unusually good opportunities". I'm really not trying to say he didn't accomplish a lot, because he did, but let's not pretend he was seriously disadvantaged. Carmack seems to have more claim to being disadvantaged, although I have no idea if he is interested in making such a claim. According to some articles I just read he was arrested while trying to steal his first computer, and spent a year in juvenile prison, which generally doesn't happen to affluent people.

gowld 8y ago
https://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/John-Carmack-Answers https://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/John-Carma... John Carmack Answers: """ ... stereotypical geek aspects to my life growing up - phreaking, hacking (nobody called it "cracking" back then), rockets, bombs, and thermite (sometimes in not-so-smart combinations), sci-fi, comic books, D&D, arcades, etc. I was sort of an amoral little jerk when I was young. I was arrogant about being smarter than other people, but unhappy that I wasn't able to spend all my time doing what I wanted. I spent a year in a juvenile home for a first offence[1] after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly. """ [1] Per wikipedia, the offense was: burning through a window, grand theft of computers, and then presenting as autistic to the psychiatric evaluator. From my outsider view, I get the impression that Carmack "grew up" into a relative well-adjusted adult with respect for other humans, but Steve Jobs never did.
adventured 8y ago
> Citation needed on Steve being lower class. Lower compared to what? They very clearly struggled when it came to money. Somewhere between lower and middle, is most likely. Based on the available history, Paul & Clara Jobs pushed their meagre finances to the limit to try to give Steve better opportunities, including moving to Los Altos because Steve was being tormented where they had been living. "Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24th, 1955. Schieble gave her baby up to Paul and Clara Jobs, a working-class couple in San Francisco. Paul, a high school dropout who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, made his living as a debt collector, a repo man and a machinist. Clara worked as a payroll clerk at Varian Associates, one of the first high-tech companies in Silicon Valley." "When Jobs was three, Paul moved the family from San Francisco to Mountain View, an unsophisticated town of tract houses and apricot orchards just south of Palo Alto." "Paul tried fixing up old cars and dabbling in real estate, but money always seemed to elude him. In the fourth grade, Steve's teacher, Imogene Hill, asked the class, "What is it in this universe that you don't understand?" When it came to Steve's turn to answer, his reply was heartbreaking: 'I don't understand why all of a sudden we're so broke.'" https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-steve-jobs-nobody-knew-20111027 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-steve-jobs-nob...

gameswithgo 8y ago

> serious personality problems as children Man a lot of people have serious problems if that is the bar for serious! Which, yeah ok we do.

batty_alex 8y ago

This comment seriously makes me question what you think lower-class is or is like. The comment comes off as tone-deaf. Neither of them are "self-made", they both had crazy access to electronics that hardly anyone else did at the time. They both did amazing things but, you're hand-waving away their real history for some "bootstrap-y" American success story. Also, John Carmack WAS an asshole at id. Read Masters Of Doom sometime when you get a chance, loads of hubris and broken friendships in there.

ovao 8y ago
Jobs built his empire out of his garage. Is that not how the quintessential self-made success story usually starts?
staunch 8y ago
1. Being lower-class in America means things like your parents are not well educated, they don't have any significant amount of savings, you attend public school, you aren't prepped for college, your parents can't pay for college, your parents can't support you as an adult, etc. They're not middle-class, and not upper-class, so they're lower-class. 2. Bill Gates parents were very upper-class, he attended expensive private school, was pushed into Harvard, and he had exclusive access to brand new computers that almost no children did at the time. Jobs/Carmack had no access similar to computers at private school. 3. I've read Masters of Doom and don't think any reasonable person would describe him as "an asshole" at all. Defining someone by their flaws says more about the definer than the defined.

outworlder 8y ago

I have come to the realization that, if you are a CEO, you'll have to be an asshole to some people. Maybe not all people all the time, but just enough that you'll accumulate bad 'quotes' over time. You are, after all, supposed to steer a company. Not all people will be aboard, you don't have all the time in the world to reason with them, even if you would like to.

staunch 8y ago
It might be even worse than seeming like an asshole sometimes, it might actually make you anti-social the way being a VC or police officer does for most people. It could be that having thousands of negative interactions with people tends to damage your personality in some ways. People who actively choose not to be CEO, like John Carmack, probably sense this effect and want to avoid it. Some people might be better than others at coping with this. Steve Jobs might've been really good at this, or really bad, it's difficult to determine.
- outworlder 8y ago
  I had not considered that, it makes sense. The brain does tend to take shortcuts whenever possible.