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Anyone else annoyed by how deferential the author seems to be towards Jobs? Like surely after knowing him for a bit you'd get over that.

by qntty 8y ago

maxxxxx 8y ago
That seems to be the case with a lot of super charismatic leaders. Somehow these people can instill an extreme level of loyalty in people they meet. I don't want to compare Jobs to Hitler but when you read accounts from people who worked with Hitler they also had this sense of loyalty they couldn't overcome even while knowing that something was going wrong. Reagan may be another case.
- r00fus 8y ago
  Did you ever meet Jobs? Maybe he was just really really good. He comes off that way in most of his interviews/keynotes. Good, laser-focused, demanding.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I think he was very good. But from whatever I have read he was also a big jerk and could be very cruel to people.
    - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
      there are also cruel jerks who are incompetent idiots.
    - sjwright 8y ago
      I haven't read anything that suggests that Steve was cruel or a jerk for the sake of it.
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        I read his biography, and in it he came off like a jerk. Not a cruel person. But yes, a jerk. I liked Steve Jobs a lot more before I read his bio.
        sjwright 8y ago
        The Isaacson bio was a joke. Made countless basic factual errors. Wouldn't trust it on anything.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        He told Wozniak that they had made $500 on a sale but in reality it was 5000 and he kept the rest. He refused to recognize his daughter for along time. He refused to give stock options to a lot of very early employees. Wozniak then made a up for it. He was a jerk. Especially the story about his daughter is plain evil. At some point you have to take responsibility for your actions.
        pinewurst 8y ago
        His daughter recently published a memoir portraying Steve and his wife as creepy in the extreme. There's a number of excerpts out there as well. https://www.amazon.com/Small-Fry-Lisa-Brennan-Jobs/dp/0802128238/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544220283&sr=1-3&keywords=lisa+brennan-jobs https://www.amazon.com/Small-Fry-Lisa-Brennan-Jobs/dp/080212...
    - rchaud 8y ago
      Because the majority of the coverage about him has been praiseworthy, given his business success. Now that he's dead, criticism of him will come off as axe-grinding and bitter.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        I think it's good show all facets of famous people, especially their dark sides. There is a tendency to glorify them and then think they are great people in all areas. Most times they aren't.
- simonh 8y ago
  Is it really impossible that someone is so good that they have earned and deserve that kind of loyalty?
andrepd 8y ago
Absolutely. You see the same thing with Musk as well. Someone aptly compared the level of fervorous awe some air-quotes "visionary" leaders inspire, with evangelical mega-pastors.
fossuser 8y ago
I've seen this kind of strange behavior elsewhere with less famous people who are in charge of companies. People who don't regularly interact with them seem to act strange around them (which isn't that surprising if they're not seen that often and they're in charge), but the weirder thing to me is that all the supporting staff around the leader also acts strangely and seems to make it worse. It reminds me of the story when Carmack had a demo and one of Jobs' support staff said they couldn't use it because "he doesn't like blood". When Jobs heard it was Carmack he said it was fine. Something about it feels weird.
- derefr 8y ago
  > When Jobs heard it was Carmack he said it was fine. That seems less like the kind of "aura of reverence" you're talking about, and more like a respect for another creative person who makes carefully-considered choices (and perhaps a knowledge that most people in the audience for the demo know the artist and also respect them.) Even if you don't agree with someone's tastes, if those tastes are a coherent part of a polished work, and you value the work itself, then you'll tend to let your aesthetic disagreement slide. For a different concrete example: when the average movie director puts a weird sex thing in their movie, it sticks out in a way that makes you wonder whether they have a fetish and wanted to indulge it—and that breaks the verisimilitude of the work, lessening its impact. If, on the other hand, a director like David Lynch puts a weird sex thing in their movie, it's usually a critical element that fits the tone of the work, and doesn't break verisimilitude at all. It doesn't really matter whether David Lynch likes a given weird sex thing; it would still be a part of the work even if he didn't, because it belongs there. Blood belongs in Carmack's games, in a way that means you'll tend to appreciate the bloodiness for its contribution to the overall tone of the game, even if you don't like blood.
  - fossuser 8y ago
    Yeah that makes sense to me - my comment was more about how the support staff acted like "oh we can't do that - he wouldn't like that" when it turned out to be totally fine when interacting with him directly. I'm not sure if that's a thing with Jobs and people being afraid of him, but I've seen similar stuff where people around the person act like they're delicate or everything requires special consideration when interacting with the leader.
sjwright 8y ago
It would only annoy me if the author was being untruthful or disingenuous. Unless you have reason to suspect otherwise, I'll assume the author's personal recollection of his experiences as sincere. Or to be more blunt, he knew Steve personally and you didn't. Just because you have never met someone who garnered that kind of reaction from you doesn't mean such people don't exist.
- qntty 8y ago
  It's not a matter of the experience itself, it's a matter of how you make sense of it. I don't doubt that the author felt as though he had to act a certain way around Jobs, but the way that he writes about it sounds like he was dealing with a king or something. Re-read this part of the post: "When demoing something to Steve, you had to pace yourself. If Steve said, “Stop,” you fucking stopped. Hands down and waited. And you didn’t jiggle the cursor while he was looking at the screen. Certain death. If he wanted to drive the demo machine then, by God, you let him drive. And if your software crashed, you didn’t make excuses. You just made damn sure that particular scenario didn’t happen again. Ever." > Or to be more blunt, he knew Steve personally and you didn't. Just because you have never met someone who garnered that kind of reaction from you doesn't mean such people don't exist. I claim that no one (that I've known for a long time) would ever make me feel this way because I make a point to "kill my idols" as they say. The author of this post didn't do that and that's what I find annoying.
  - sjwright 8y ago
    Just because you have never met someone who garnered that kind of reaction from you doesn't mean such people don't exist.

Anyone else annoyed by how deferential the author seems to be towards Jobs? Like surely after knowing him for a bit you'd get over that.

by qntty 8y ago

Anyone else annoyed by how deferential the author seems to be towards Jobs? Like surely after knowing him for a bit you'd get over that.

maxxxxx 8y ago

That seems to be the case with a lot of super charismatic leaders. Somehow these people can instill an extreme level of loyalty in people they meet. I don't want to compare Jobs to Hitler but when you read accounts from people who worked with Hitler they also had this sense of loyalty they couldn't overcome even while knowing that something was going wrong. Reagan may be another case.

r00fus 8y ago
Did you ever meet Jobs? Maybe he was just really really good. He comes off that way in most of his interviews/keynotes. Good, laser-focused, demanding.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I think he was very good. But from whatever I have read he was also a big jerk and could be very cruel to people.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    there are also cruel jerks who are incompetent idiots.
  - sjwright 8y ago
    I haven't read anything that suggests that Steve was cruel or a jerk for the sake of it.
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      I read his biography, and in it he came off like a jerk. Not a cruel person. But yes, a jerk. I liked Steve Jobs a lot more before I read his bio.
      - sjwright 8y ago
        The Isaacson bio was a joke. Made countless basic factual errors. Wouldn't trust it on anything.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      He told Wozniak that they had made $500 on a sale but in reality it was 5000 and he kept the rest. He refused to recognize his daughter for along time. He refused to give stock options to a lot of very early employees. Wozniak then made a up for it. He was a jerk. Especially the story about his daughter is plain evil. At some point you have to take responsibility for your actions.
      - pinewurst 8y ago
        His daughter recently published a memoir portraying Steve and his wife as creepy in the extreme. There's a number of excerpts out there as well. https://www.amazon.com/Small-Fry-Lisa-Brennan-Jobs/dp/0802128238/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544220283&sr=1-3&keywords=lisa+brennan-jobs https://www.amazon.com/Small-Fry-Lisa-Brennan-Jobs/dp/080212...
  - rchaud 8y ago
    Because the majority of the coverage about him has been praiseworthy, given his business success. Now that he's dead, criticism of him will come off as axe-grinding and bitter.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      I think it's good show all facets of famous people, especially their dark sides. There is a tendency to glorify them and then think they are great people in all areas. Most times they aren't.
simonh 8y ago
Is it really impossible that someone is so good that they have earned and deserve that kind of loyalty?

andrepd 8y ago

Absolutely. You see the same thing with Musk as well. Someone aptly compared the level of fervorous awe some air-quotes "visionary" leaders inspire, with evangelical mega-pastors.

fossuser 8y ago

I've seen this kind of strange behavior elsewhere with less famous people who are in charge of companies. People who don't regularly interact with them seem to act strange around them (which isn't that surprising if they're not seen that often and they're in charge), but the weirder thing to me is that all the supporting staff around the leader also acts strangely and seems to make it worse. It reminds me of the story when Carmack had a demo and one of Jobs' support staff said they couldn't use it because "he doesn't like blood". When Jobs heard it was Carmack he said it was fine. Something about it feels weird.

derefr 8y ago
> When Jobs heard it was Carmack he said it was fine. That seems less like the kind of "aura of reverence" you're talking about, and more like a respect for another creative person who makes carefully-considered choices (and perhaps a knowledge that most people in the audience for the demo know the artist and also respect them.) Even if you don't agree with someone's tastes, if those tastes are a coherent part of a polished work, and you value the work itself, then you'll tend to let your aesthetic disagreement slide. For a different concrete example: when the average movie director puts a weird sex thing in their movie, it sticks out in a way that makes you wonder whether they have a fetish and wanted to indulge it—and that breaks the verisimilitude of the work, lessening its impact. If, on the other hand, a director like David Lynch puts a weird sex thing in their movie, it's usually a critical element that fits the tone of the work, and doesn't break verisimilitude at all. It doesn't really matter whether David Lynch likes a given weird sex thing; it would still be a part of the work even if he didn't, because it belongs there. Blood belongs in Carmack's games, in a way that means you'll tend to appreciate the bloodiness for its contribution to the overall tone of the game, even if you don't like blood.
- fossuser 8y ago
  Yeah that makes sense to me - my comment was more about how the support staff acted like "oh we can't do that - he wouldn't like that" when it turned out to be totally fine when interacting with him directly. I'm not sure if that's a thing with Jobs and people being afraid of him, but I've seen similar stuff where people around the person act like they're delicate or everything requires special consideration when interacting with the leader.

sjwright 8y ago

It would only annoy me if the author was being untruthful or disingenuous. Unless you have reason to suspect otherwise, I'll assume the author's personal recollection of his experiences as sincere. Or to be more blunt, he knew Steve personally and you didn't. Just because you have never met someone who garnered that kind of reaction from you doesn't mean such people don't exist.

qntty 8y ago
It's not a matter of the experience itself, it's a matter of how you make sense of it. I don't doubt that the author felt as though he had to act a certain way around Jobs, but the way that he writes about it sounds like he was dealing with a king or something. Re-read this part of the post: "When demoing something to Steve, you had to pace yourself. If Steve said, “Stop,” you fucking stopped. Hands down and waited. And you didn’t jiggle the cursor while he was looking at the screen. Certain death. If he wanted to drive the demo machine then, by God, you let him drive. And if your software crashed, you didn’t make excuses. You just made damn sure that particular scenario didn’t happen again. Ever." > Or to be more blunt, he knew Steve personally and you didn't. Just because you have never met someone who garnered that kind of reaction from you doesn't mean such people don't exist. I claim that no one (that I've known for a long time) would ever make me feel this way because I make a point to "kill my idols" as they say. The author of this post didn't do that and that's what I find annoying.
- sjwright 8y ago
  Just because you have never met someone who garnered that kind of reaction from you doesn't mean such people don't exist.