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Why Steve Jobs Couldn’t Find a Job Today
- flocial 15y agoThis title twists the quote. It's asking the reader a rhetorical question whether they would hire Steve Jobs but immediately lists Bezos and other innovative founders. I don't think Steve could get a decent job even when he was young nor did he seek one.
- ghiculescu 15y agoExactly. The answer to their question is as much "no" now as it was 20 years ago.
- rockarage 15y agoA mondern day steve jobs would be a cofounder he wont spend his time looking for one of these jobs the article mentions.
- _delirium 15y agoI dunno, I'm not sure VCs would be too keen to fund someone with the characteristics of the 1970s Jobs. Quasi-homeless, just returned from a "spiritual enlightenment" trip to India and now dresses in traditional Indian costume, experiments with LSD...
- prawn 15y agoYou can be a cofounder with all those attributes, regardless of VC. You could also create something so compelling that VCs would overlook any concerns like that when it got to that stage of needing further investment.
- moe 15y agoFor example a mobile photo sharing app.
- meric 15y agoIt's not as easy for startups to create vertically integrated hardware devices these days.
- threejay 15y agoIt's a bit naive to think that it was ever particularly easy.
- meric 15y agoIt's hard to imagine Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs working on a custom made device in a garage and selling hundreds of them to a local electronics store today, though.
- georgieporgie 15y agoWhat about making a custom device in a garage and selling them over the Internet?
- jmitcheson 15y agoThey would probably get sued. By Apple ;)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ontoillogical 15y agoJeri Ellsworth was doing something pretty similar in 2004 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV
- e1ven 15y agoThe time was right for the Personal Computer revolution in 1977. In 1997, it was the Internet revolution. In 2007, it was the Social revolution. There's always opportunity, you just need to find what is now worldchanging, which would be difficult, expensive, or plain impossible before.
- cwp 15y agoMeh, that was the time. Today, the equivalent would be quasi-homeless, just got back from a "blogging" trip backpacking through Thailand, wears board shorts and flip flops, experiments with Provigil.
- amirmc 15y agoA glaring point that the article seems to forget is that Bezos, Jobs, et. al., are founder CEOs. Not one of the individuals mentioned was a hire. I think that's an important distinction, especially with respect to the author's points on creativity. "... remember that when Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, ... Let’s just say he didn’t have the benefit of the doubt. What he did have: the founder’s courage to innovate despite the doubters" from: http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos/ http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos/ Edit to add quote
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- hammock 15y agoI think that's the point of the article- companies aren't hiring people who want to rock the boat, you have to find a way to do it yourself.
- gcb 15y agojobs was a founder ceo. then he left with a load of money, wasted it all in next, and came back as a bought ceo. with the ball and chain vesting agreements and all probably.
- acslater00 15y agoIf Steve Jobs applied for your job by submitting his resume and waiting for you to invite him in for an interview, he literally wouldn't be Steve Jobs in any meaningful way. He would just be a guy named Steve who didn't finish college and seems to maybe want a job. So the whole premise is nonsense. The better question is, "if Steve Jobs knocked on your door at 2am and jumped into a long speech about how your industry is begging to be disrupted, and how he is simply so manically focused on creating an incredible product in this space that he can't sleep and he'd probably work for free if that's what it came to" would you hire him? I think most hiring managers would take a chance on that guy.
- bartonfink 15y agoActually, I'd probably threaten to call the cops. Passion or not, 2 am isn't the best time to make unannounced house calls.
- marshray 15y agoNo, Jobs would have co-opted the cops and they would have raided you. http://gizmodo.com/5524843/police-seize-jason-chens-computers http://gizmodo.com/5524843/police-seize-jason-chens-computer...
- jhancock 15y agoThere are many people in the world with the passion, drive, and brilliance of Mr. Jobs. You will never know most of their names. Most hiring managers and investors will dismiss them.
- kstenerud 15y agoA better question is: If Steve Jobs started talking to you about a revolutionary idea that was going to change the world, what would you do? Chances are, you'd nod your head, smile, and go about your day. And then, a few years later, you'll hear about this super successful company run by some guy called Steve Jobs, and you'll be kicking yourself for not getting in on the ground floor of his operation. Except that you couldn't recognize that kind of success early unless you had experience investing in that kind of person. And you'd only hear about his smashing success, not the long hard road fraught with peril and failure that he travelled in order to arrive where he is today. Nothing comes for free.
- uladzislau 15y agoThe question really translates to: why companies are not taking risks today? The bigger risks are - the larger would be the profits from exploiting the risks. Creativity and innovation are huge risks but you you need to take them if you want to be successful today. "me too" strategy won't take you far. Apple is the best example for this point. Remember Steve Jobs announcing "year of copycats"?
- aridiculous 15y agoOne explanation could be that most people find that the pain of losing a set amount of money is greater in magnitude than the joy of making that same amount of money. Also, it's simply political. When you have shareholders who all hold different beliefs and levels of risk-aversion, things get messy.
- Roritharr 15y agoYou won't get Apple rich with a "me too" attitude, but if you perfect your "me too" methods, you can become extremely wealthy. Lookup the german Samwer brothers for example...
- knieveltech 15y ago"And it’s not clear America would benefit even if it tried maintaining these lower-skilled jobs." Myopic on many levels. A week in an industrial fabrication shop would change the author's tune regarding skill levels required for modern manufacturing jobs.
- jbooth 15y agoHe's not talking about that, he's talking about sewing buttons on things for 5 bucks a day.
- aridiculous 15y agoIt's really quite simple, and in a sense I don't think big companies are behaving irrationally: It's really hard to judge the potential of odd, creative people. There's a million people running around who talk like Steve Jobs did decades ago. Think about all the idea-people and 'mavens' you know. Granted, I think the entire hiring system isn't even close to optimized and could be greatly improved.
- jonnathanson 15y agoTrue. I think it's more of a two-way street than the article lets on. Think back to all of the most quirky, creative, interesting, boat-rocking people you've worked with or met. It's not a universal rule that these folks aren't very good at the "people" side of the equation...but a lot of them aren't. Furthermore, a lot of them have a marked distaste for toeing the party line. They derive more energy from challening assumptions than from accepting them. Or from reinventing the wheel, instead of using the wheel they've got on hand. They get bored or disgruntled very quickly if they're not being stimulated or challenged. These traits might make for good startup founders, but they don't often correlate with corporate success. Especially at large, traditional, non-tech corporations. In such companies, politics rules the day. Your skill as a politician -- your ability to navigate the waters, network with the right people, kiss the right ass, and sell internally -- is what gets you ahead. Your inability to do so will prevent you from climbing as quickly, or as far, as the savvier operators. Companies say they want more creative leaders, but all incentives are set up to reward politicians. At the same time, a lot of "creative" folks opt out of the game in the first place -- either through ineptitude at it, or through an avowed distaste for it. It's unfortunate, but it's true in many, many, many cases. If there's any grand, karmic justice in the whole equation, it's that -- in theory, at least -- the more forward-thinking and "creative" companies will win out in the marketplace. Those companies that choose to be ruled by innovation, by results, and not by politics should outperform the companies that choose not to recognize (or even to suppress) their innovative thinkers. It's not as cut-and-dried as this, of course, but that's what those of us disheartened by these articles should hope for in the long run.
- pnathan 15y ago
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- daimyoyo 15y agoWhat I find ironic is that in order to work for Apple today, you need a spotless academic record since gradeschool. I doubt very much that Apple would hire a Reed College dropout today.
- rdouble 15y agoThat is not true. Apple is not like Google or Goldman Sachs. They do not ask for your GPA or care where you went to school. edit: hate to be down-vote curious, but I would be interested to hear if someone has been rejected from Apple for having a poor GPA. I've interviewed with Apple and nobody asked about my degree or GPA. It was the most on-topic job interview I've ever had. No weird brainteasers or annoying FizzBuzz questions. Just questions directly relevant to the position I was interviewing for. I have a handful of friends who work there who never finished college or have degrees in something irrelevant, like philosophy. Guys like Mike Matas and Mike Lee did not have degrees. The head of iTunes did not go to college at all.
- orangecat 15y agoApple is not like Google or Goldman Sachs. They do not ask for your GPA or care where you went to school. By that definition, Google is not like Google.
- rdouble 15y agoHas Google stopped asking for GPAs?
- calloc 15y agoNot since I last interviewed.
- orangecat 15y agoThere's a space for it on the application, but neither the recruiter nor interviewers appeared to care about my formal education at all. I don't know how much of a factor it plays in the decision process, but the idea that Google only pays attention to candidates with CS degrees from top-tier universities is false.
- sid6376 15y agoIt's funny how the points stated in this article will be so true for a Microsoft hiring manager. No disrespect intended. Disclaimer: I was an MS employee till last month.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- yuhong 15y agoThe problem starts with how Boards of Directors (and management teams) select – incorrectly, it appears – our business leaders... And as it happens, recently there has been debate about successors to Steve Jobs.