5 ms·
Jobs comes off as quite an obnoxious dude.
by cornholio 8y ago
Jobs comes off as quite an obnoxious dude.
- bgroins 8y agoI love the incessant deification of Steve Jobs, regardless of his mistakes, juvenile behavior, and constant stories about his abuse of his staff. In this story Jobs mistakes the wrong person for John Carmack, becomes deeply offended by a silly t-shirt, screams at his staff and slams his hands the table like a 2 year old. But the author is impressed with Jobs and makes him out to be the hero. At my work we would call this a hostile and abusive work environment, but within the Jobs cult of personality it's a net positive.
- cm2187 8y agoActually I wouldn't be surprised if anyone else at Apple behaving like Jobs would quickly receive a warning from HR if not shown the door.
- e1ven 8y agoFor example, You may note that Scott Forstall doesn't work at Apple anymore.
- rusk 8y ago* Scott Forstall doesn't work at Apple anymore* and neither does software ...
- tambourine_man 8y agoOuch
- ShabbosGoy 8y agoBecause as an employee, you’re basically the ultimate cuck in the eyes of upper management.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mandeepj 8y ago> behaving like Jobs would quickly receive a warning from HR if not shown the door Jobs was constantly called by HR for meetings during late 80's due to his behavior. Source - Steve Jobs book
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- empath75 8y agoYeah, I have interactions with managers all the time where I state my ideas, someone else disagrees and then my boss makes the right call. For some reason that doesn’t sound dramatic without the possibility of someone being yelled at or fired.
- ksk 8y agoThe negatives are over exaggerated, just like the positives. Its ridiculous to reduce someones entire career 20 incidents out of the hundreds of daily interactions over a few decades amounting to > 1million. Ironically, your approach is no different than the persons you're criticizing. You're also basing your opinion on 1% of the dataset, just a different 1%.
- frogpelt 8y agoI don't disagree with your assessment but, right or wrong, Steve Jobs was on another level. Most great leaders have character flaws. Some of them are very obnoxious petty people. See Nick Saban or Michael Jordan. Steve Jobs pushed people to achieve extraordinary things. My guess is they would not have achieved many of those things without his influence and authority. That's what great leaders do. But it's true. If you are a selfish narcissistic jerk people remember that too. Maybe more than what you accomplished.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- AdmiralAsshat 8y agoCompletely. You could have had an identical story without the drama, which seems to have been completely due to Jobs. Had you let Carmack talk to the lead engineer for about fifteen minutes, I'm sure he would've come around entirely for objective reasons, rather than because the boss screamed at him.
- wpietri 8y agoAnd this story leaves unanswered the question of why they compromised on a suboptimal architecture in the first place. In my experience, 95% of the time it's due to some other constraint imposed by an executive. E.g., a made-up ship date. So it's perfectly possible that had the head of graphics gone for what he knew was the ideal solution in the first place, he would have been yelled at by Jobs for that. It wouldn't be the first time that a HiPPO caused a boss to do a 180 and implicitly blame the underlings rather than own up.
- jschwartzi 8y agoThat's actually what happened according to the story. The lead admitted that Carmack was right, and then Jobs got angry at the lead for not making a good technical decision from the outset.
- geezerjay 8y agoWithout knowing what were the requirements and why that decision was made, it isn't possible to infer whether the original design was even the ideal solution to the problem stated by the original requirements (see chesterton's fence). Managers such as steve jobs don't make technical decisions. They specify requirements which then need to be met by the tech guys. This anecdote sounds an awful lot like a manager changing his mind regarding a requirement after he was pointed out a technical consequence.
- MBCook 8y agoWe also know Jobs could turn on a dime. It’s entitely possible he previous shot down the correct way because it would take too long for too small a benefit.
- Nokinside 8y agoIf you read some biographies of influential people, they were often very obnoxious and uncaring assholes in person. When the culture is obsessed with personality cults, there is tendency to to worship them or completely dismiss their achievements. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Mahatma Gandhi, John D. Rockefeller, ...
- olavgg 8y agoDo not forget Jack Tramiel, known for "Jack attacks", "I don't believe in compromising, but winning" and his intense micromanagement where every spending over 1000 USD had to be signed by him and he refused budgets, because they were a "license to steal". What do you think happened when he went on vacation :-)
- icebraining 8y agoExcept maybe in his testimony, I don't remember that from reading about Bill Gates.
- Nokinside 8y agoRead Paul Allen memoirs. Bill Gates was a bully and very unprincipled. When co-founder had a cancer, Gates forced him out to cut his share. He also constantly bullied employees and cursed at them. You can also read a lot about his business practices in general. Totally unethical. Gates has himself admitted himself that he was a bully, so I think we can all agree that he was not a nice CEO.
- Zelphyr 8y agoThis story, to me, highlights Jobs' notorious ability to change his mind when presented with information that pointed to the right way of doing something, even in the face of social pressure to do otherwise. He could've been more diplomatic about it for sure. But so many people of his ilk don't have that capacity that it makes me think its more a facet of that personality type than a character flaw in particular to Jobs.
- philwelch 8y agoThere's a fascinating amount of shamelessness and unwillingness to admit when you're wrong, though, if you're willing to drive people 100% in one direction one day and then completely reverse course the next while making it sound like it was their fault.