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> Holy, evidence Batman! Leadership 101: When your title is "Chief Design Officer", the design buck stops with you. When your company releases an updated design

> Holy, evidence Batman! Leadership 101: When your title is "Chief Design Officer", the design buck stops with you. When your company releases an updated design to an existing product, you had some kind of say in that design. Period. Even if your "say" was just that you were aware of it, and didn't veto it. This is just shifting goalposts because you got called out. You didn't word your comment as "these things happened on Ive's watch" you consistently word your comment like Ives was personally pushing for something. It's a common refrain on HN and it's never backed with proof. And speaking of your first comment: > Ive is gone and every one of those decisions has been reversed or at least significantly amended. This is no accident. ... you realize that this is a new generation of MBP landing on the exact same cadence they've come out on in the last few decades? So it makes perfect sense to have drastic changes land now regardless of who's in charge? Not mention the fact it hasn't even been two full years since Ives left. And the fact the HDMI port was coming back leaked at the start of the year. So unless you seriously think Apple designs a laptop in the course of a single year, it's highly unlikely he had no input on the current machine.

Dylan16807 5y ago
> You didn't word your comment as "these things happened on Ive's watch" you consistently word your comment like Ives was personally pushing for something. This is not a meaningful difference when he's in charge and it's a flagship product.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  I knew this would be the response, and it's utter nonsense. But definitely extra points for trying to act like it being a flagship is why maybe this is an exception. - Flagship product or not, people do not say "Sundar Pichai recently made an unliked change to YouTube" despite his Director role People do not say "Kevin Scott's new Windows version is being disliked" despite him being MS's CTO > these things happened on Ive's watch Is a factual statement > Ives was personally pushing for X. Is gossip that HNs tell themselves to feel better. Or is Johnny Ives magically a special case because people don't like him? I mean seriously, if you think being a leader means you are personally pushing for every single solution as opposed to personally accepting every solution... and that you always have the exact same level of personal love for everything that you allow, you've never lead anything with any sort of scale. Being a leader is about compromise, not turning every project into a 1:1 reflection of what your preferred choices would have been.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    You're naming people that are managing entire companies. The person in charge of design, for a company that has a handful of physical products, is a completely different situation. It's reasonable to blame them for top level product design decisions. What happens in that specific realm is what they want. The top priority of their job is those few dozen decisions. The opposite of a CEO that's overseeing ten thousand different things. Be a little less stuck on the word 'pushing'. The fact is, when it's one of the main things you're in charge of choosing, and you allow a decision and then stand by it for a long time, you are now pushing it. Also, wait, you're the one that inserted the word 'pushing' into the conversation! If you're upset with that wording, you're upset at a strawman.
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      Kevin Scott is a CTO. He's in charge of top level product technical decisions The top priority of his job is those few dozen decisions. Be a little less stuck on the word "Director". The fact is, when you're one of the main people in charge of allowing decisions, it's not the same as personally championing them. - > Also, wait, you're the one that inserted the word 'pushing' into the conversation! If you're upset with that wording, you're upset at a strawman. You know you can just read the comment I referred to right if you've already forgotten right? The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the width for a worse user experience with a higher production cost and less reliability. Does that sound like personally assigning blame to Johnny Ive for something? It'd be one thing if it said Ive's team or something, but it's the common refrain parroted on this site - If John manages Joe and Joe deletes a database in prod, do you say "John's subordinate deleted a database in prod" or do you say "John deleted a database in prod". You see how there's a difference there even though both acknowledge that John has a part in what happened? It's not that complicated to see the difference if you've ever interacted with any sort of situation where the buck actually stopped with leadership, but I guess that's not universal.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        > Kevin Scott is a CTO. He's in charge of top level product technical decisions Then it's probably fair to blame him for some high-level decisions. But technical decisions go well beyond design, and microsoft has so many products, so it's harder to say how much you can point at him. > The top priority of his job is those few dozen decisions. I honestly have no idea which few dozen you mean. Across all of microsoft? I could list a bunch for "apple product design", like the way airpods fit, the decision to have no holes in airtags, the keyboard and touch bar choices in macbooks, etc. Maybe the start menu location? You could probably blame him for the choice of xbox models too. I'm not singling out Apple in saying that executives should be considered responsible for certain high-level decisions. > Be a little less stuck on the word "Director". I'm stuck on the word "design". He's the design guy. > The fact is, when you're one of the main people in charge of allowing decisions, it's not the same as personally championing them. If it's one of the top few most important decisions under your job purview, the difference is so minor as to not matter outside the company. > Does that sound like personally assigning blame to Johnny Ive for something? It'd be one thing if it said Ive's team or something, but it's the common refrain parroted on this site Assigning him blame is not the same as saying he 'pushed' it. The buck stops here for design. He gets the blame because he strongly approved it and he could have easily spent entire days on the decision because that's the core of his job, and spending enough time on the decision is also his job. > If John manages Joe and Joe deletes a database in prod, do you say "John's subordinate deleted a database in prod" or do you say "John deleted a database in prod". John decided to delete a database in prod. Ive decided to go with this keyboard. Assuming the delete wasn't accidental, because the keyboard definitely wasn't accidental! If it was an accident this analogy isn't relevant.

Dylan16807 5y ago

> You didn't word your comment as "these things happened on Ive's watch" you consistently word your comment like Ives was personally pushing for something. This is not a meaningful difference when he's in charge and it's a flagship product.

BoorishBears 5y ago
I knew this would be the response, and it's utter nonsense. But definitely extra points for trying to act like it being a flagship is why maybe this is an exception. - Flagship product or not, people do not say "Sundar Pichai recently made an unliked change to YouTube" despite his Director role People do not say "Kevin Scott's new Windows version is being disliked" despite him being MS's CTO > these things happened on Ive's watch Is a factual statement > Ives was personally pushing for X. Is gossip that HNs tell themselves to feel better. Or is Johnny Ives magically a special case because people don't like him? I mean seriously, if you think being a leader means you are personally pushing for every single solution as opposed to personally accepting every solution... and that you always have the exact same level of personal love for everything that you allow, you've never lead anything with any sort of scale. Being a leader is about compromise, not turning every project into a 1:1 reflection of what your preferred choices would have been.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  You're naming people that are managing entire companies. The person in charge of design, for a company that has a handful of physical products, is a completely different situation. It's reasonable to blame them for top level product design decisions. What happens in that specific realm is what they want. The top priority of their job is those few dozen decisions. The opposite of a CEO that's overseeing ten thousand different things. Be a little less stuck on the word 'pushing'. The fact is, when it's one of the main things you're in charge of choosing, and you allow a decision and then stand by it for a long time, you are now pushing it. Also, wait, you're the one that inserted the word 'pushing' into the conversation! If you're upset with that wording, you're upset at a strawman.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    Kevin Scott is a CTO. He's in charge of top level product technical decisions The top priority of his job is those few dozen decisions. Be a little less stuck on the word "Director". The fact is, when you're one of the main people in charge of allowing decisions, it's not the same as personally championing them. - > Also, wait, you're the one that inserted the word 'pushing' into the conversation! If you're upset with that wording, you're upset at a strawman. You know you can just read the comment I referred to right if you've already forgotten right? The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the width for a worse user experience with a higher production cost and less reliability. Does that sound like personally assigning blame to Johnny Ive for something? It'd be one thing if it said Ive's team or something, but it's the common refrain parroted on this site - If John manages Joe and Joe deletes a database in prod, do you say "John's subordinate deleted a database in prod" or do you say "John deleted a database in prod". You see how there's a difference there even though both acknowledge that John has a part in what happened? It's not that complicated to see the difference if you've ever interacted with any sort of situation where the buck actually stopped with leadership, but I guess that's not universal.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      > Kevin Scott is a CTO. He's in charge of top level product technical decisions Then it's probably fair to blame him for some high-level decisions. But technical decisions go well beyond design, and microsoft has so many products, so it's harder to say how much you can point at him. > The top priority of his job is those few dozen decisions. I honestly have no idea which few dozen you mean. Across all of microsoft? I could list a bunch for "apple product design", like the way airpods fit, the decision to have no holes in airtags, the keyboard and touch bar choices in macbooks, etc. Maybe the start menu location? You could probably blame him for the choice of xbox models too. I'm not singling out Apple in saying that executives should be considered responsible for certain high-level decisions. > Be a little less stuck on the word "Director". I'm stuck on the word "design". He's the design guy. > The fact is, when you're one of the main people in charge of allowing decisions, it's not the same as personally championing them. If it's one of the top few most important decisions under your job purview, the difference is so minor as to not matter outside the company. > Does that sound like personally assigning blame to Johnny Ive for something? It'd be one thing if it said Ive's team or something, but it's the common refrain parroted on this site Assigning him blame is not the same as saying he 'pushed' it. The buck stops here for design. He gets the blame because he strongly approved it and he could have easily spent entire days on the decision because that's the core of his job, and spending enough time on the decision is also his job. > If John manages Joe and Joe deletes a database in prod, do you say "John's subordinate deleted a database in prod" or do you say "John deleted a database in prod". John decided to delete a database in prod. Ive decided to go with this keyboard. Assuming the delete wasn't accidental, because the keyboard definitely wasn't accidental! If it was an accident this analogy isn't relevant.