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Icon Ambulance
- joshu 15y agoThis doesn't ring true to me.
- msie 15y agoThis is a first hand account. Are you calling Vic a liar? :-)
- staunch 15y agoWouldn't be surprising if joshu knew him...and it certainly wouldn't be the first time someone exaggerated an anecdote about an interaction with a famous person.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- kubrickslair 15y agoNot commenting about something specific related to this post, but people are always riding coattails, consciously or subconsciously. Karma whoring, link baiting, name dropping- they may sound cruel, but almost all of us do that subconsciously, if not deliberately.
- statictype 15y agoWhat, about the story, feels wrong to you?
- ammmir 15y agogoogle plus has been known to terminate pseudonym accounts, so unless someone hacked into it, it seems to be genuine. a guy like vic is probably well connected, too, so it's quite plausible imho.
- wtallis 15y agoNot only have they been terminating accounts that don't use the owner's real name, they've started a "verified accounts" program, and the linked account has been verified.
- catch23 15y agoThe linked account also has 100k "followers" as well. I doubt a fake Vic account could amass that many considering there aren't that many on G+ yet. So the only other possibilities is that Vic is lying, or someone hacked into Vic's account, neither of which I think are true.
- sgk284 15y agoVic Gundotra is the Senior Vice President of Social at Google. This anecdote is straight from his mouth.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nhashem 15y agoBecause it's Steve Jobs, this is a great anecdote. I'm sure we'll hear dozens of them in the next couple days and weeks, all examples of Jobs' attention to detail and design resulting in superior products and software. Yet imagine your boss calling you on a Sunday and saying, "So I was reviewing the DBA's data model for the new product, and I really don't like how he's called the columns with customers identifiers 'cust_id' instead of 'customer_id.' We use 'customer_id' in all our other tables. It's just wrong and and I'm going to have him fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?" And then you get an e-mail called 'Customer Column Naming Convention Ambulance' five minutes later. I mean... if you got a call like this from anyone else, wouldn't it be absolutely absurd? How did Jobs manage to put his own mark on design decisions like this without totally micro-managing or hit-and-run-managing everything?
- cmelbye 15y agoI think attention to detail in terms of a column name is different than attention to visual design and look and feel of a product.
- tlrobinson 15y agoSteve Jobs doesn't think so. Have you seen the insides of Apple products? They're as beautiful as the outsides of competitors' products.
- Zak 15y agoIn my experience, that's only true of the parts the customer is intended to take apart. The inside of a Mac Pro is beautiful. The inside of a Macbook... not so much.
- enneff 15y agoAre you kidding? You really think there isn't something incredibly beautiful about this? http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Air-13-Inch-Mid-2011-Teardown/6130/1 http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Air-13-Inch-Mid-2011-...
- A-K 15y agoThat penultimate paragraph is certainly a change in tune from Vic's I/O keynote last year... ;)
- johnx123-up 15y agoWhat was that?
- A-K 15y agohttp://www.greenm3.com/gdcblog/2010/5/22/googles-vic-gundotra-labels-apples-steve-jobs-as-quotbig-bro.html http://www.greenm3.com/gdcblog/2010/5/22/googles-vic-gundotr...
- xuki 15y agoYou can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
- aneth 15y agoAssuming the anecdote is accurate, my guess is this was Steve's subtle way of nudging Vic to be more attentive to details. I don't think Steve would call anyone at anytime making a fuss over such a small thing - he would never get any work done. Call someone who's work is starting to slip once on a Sunday to complain about some minutiae, and you are letting them know that you are watching - even if you aren't really watching all the time. I think this is a leadership technique, not the micro-management it appears to be. This also is a way of Steve asserting control and dominance. Making someone scurry over a mis-tinted letter sets the tenor of the relationship. I think it's important not to take the wrong lessons from all these anecdotes. Jobs knows how to get good work out of people by causing them to demand perfection of themselves and to fear producing imperfect products. No CEO has time to exact perfection end to end - their job is to set standards, expectation, and culture. Sometimes ridiculous demonstrations of micro-management are just what someone needs.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- siglesias 15y agoWhich icon is he referring to? Update, via @arnoldkim: Jan 2008, Jobs did MWSF Keynote and introduced Webclips with home screen icons. twitpic.com/6aye3l
- random42 15y agoWhy did it sound like a eulogy to me? :(
- rokhayakebe 15y agoMaybe because Vic said "My prayers are with you" in the end.
- comice 15y agoI think most rational people would have said something like: "Steve, I agree that is an important detail but it does not warrant a phone call to me on Sunday morning. Send me an email. We'll speak tomorrow." The question is, why didn't people say things like that to Steve Jobs? Or do only the ones that prostrated themselves to him ever speak up? (or get the attention when they do?) I want some stories of people telling Jobs to piss off.
- eropple 15y agoBecause at the level at which Gundotra and Jobs work(ed), you work weekends for important stuff. Branding quality is important stuff for a senior Google employee and providing an aesthetically appealing user experience is important stuff for the CEO of Apple.
- RyanMcGreal 15y ago> I want some stories of people telling Jobs to piss off. Well, the Apple board of directors told him to piss off in 1985. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/07/john-sculley-on-why-he-fi_n_602590.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/07/john-sculley-on-why...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- raldi 15y agoWell, it was less than a week before the MacWorld keynote, where the logo would be shown on a giant screen in front of a huge audience.
- veidr 15y agoSteve Jobs is the exception that proves the rule, "Don't micromanage".
- hootmon 15y agoAll this fanboy crap makes me puke, for the worlds greatest snake oil salesman, who made a career out of stealing the work of others and claiming his precious poser company created it.
- mariusmg 15y agoI would have been impressed if Jobs would have fix it himself...
- georgechen 15y agoJobs did task himself to make / fix icons with the original Macintosh launch. Fairly well documented he had a hand in everything.
- giancarlofrison 15y agowhere is the story?? someone that call on sunday for the icon deserve so much admiration? I don't believe it...
- WalterSear 15y agoI don't get it either. At first I thought this, and the other 'Steve Jobs' stories in my reader were some kind of concerted joke.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- huhtenberg 15y ago> I'm sorry I didn't answer your call earlier. I was in religious services... Is that what he literally said? "In religious services"? I find it really hard to believe. It is more fitting of a blog post that has been adopted to the format of "The Jobs Tales". Gender-neutral, religion-agnostic, PG-13.
- mweimer 15y agoSince the author is Indian, he is most likely Hindu. If he said he was attending Hindu temple worship service (or whatever they call it), some readers may have not know what he was talking about. I think it was simpler to phrase it that way.
- abcd_f 15y agoHe was quoting the conversation, and there's only one way to "phrase" a quotation.
- protomyth 15y agoSome people might decide the details of their religion are nobody's business. Some would say they were at "church" or "temple" or "religious service". I have heard folks in the midwest say "they went to a religious service". I don't see how it is "Gender-neutral, religion-agnostic, PG-13".
- ary 15y agoSudden love for Gundotra's favorite authoritarian? Sounds more like a sigh of relief. Vic Gundotra at Google I/O 2010: "if Google did not act we faced a Draconian future, a future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice"
- philwelch 15y agoI don't know how relevant this is, but you can respect your opponents, and retirement is the best time to do so. As a child, I was a religious fan of the Seattle Sonics. I knew virtually the entire roster by name, face, and number. And I watched them in the playoffs the year they made the finals against the Bulls. I hated Michael Jordan. Maybe that's a strong word, but I wanted nothing more than to see him and the Bulls beaten, especially by the Sonics. Despite some excellent play by Seattle, the Bulls won again, and again the next year against Utah. When Jordan retired, I respected him. I wanted to see him beaten in the late prime of his championship winning career but he never let it happen. Not even my Sonics could beat him, but losing to Jordan's Bulls meant almost as much as beating a lesser team in the Finals. It's not a perfect analogy, but it's easy to see many of Apple's competitors and rivals taking a moment to acknowledge and respect the man.
- Kavan 15y agoI have just blogged about this article at FounderandFriends.com. Here is the text from it. Steve Jobs, is someone I admire hugely. Yes, he has numerous personality floors but his obsession to follow his heart in all things in his life is extremely admirable. Watching his Stanford Commencement speech too many times in a job I didn’t enjoy led me to quit as a Derivatives Trader and sent me on my current path, back to the startup world I left many years ago. He has literally changed my life. Steve’s obsession has led him to become a product perfectionist. And is why Apple is now the second most valuable company in the world. Almost every product that comes from Apple is spectacularly awesome. And Vic’s post illustrates the depths of Steve’s obsession. I have heard similar stories about Jack Dorsey at Square, tweaking spacing on receipts because he felt they were not beautiful enough. In Vic’s post the comments are full of ‘the devil is in the details’ quotes of admiration for Jobs’ obsession. But the question for us is, ‘Should we as startup entrepreneurs have the same obsession with the details of our products?’. My answer is that, unfortunately, we can’t. And I really mean it when I say unfortunately. I am a perfectionist myself in a lot of ways. When I do something I pour my heart and soul into it. I want it to be the best I can make it. I become obsessed and it is constantly in my mind. I go to bed and wakeup thinking about it. My girlfriend recently pointed out that 70% of our conversation is about SayMama. All the SayMama animations, transitions and buttons movements, design, logo and user flows have all been laboriously thought through and refined. The amount of energy myself and the team have spent on details has been immense. The problem is that we misplaced our passion. We are currently pivoting the business, or rather accelerating it to where we wanted it to be in a year or so from now. This means that we will be putting most of our energy into a new product. All the details we crafted in saymama.com don’t matter. Obsession is not the problem, the problem is where we focus the obsession. For us startups, the obsession should be placed in finding product/market fit and gaining traction. And in finding our product champions who will help spread the word. A higher level of abstraction of obsession. Not the details but the broader product. Obsession with the details of a logo are only gifted to those who have viable product that serves a users need. Those like Steve and Jack who already have a viable business. Personally I can’t wait for this day, but until then all my energy will go into defining where SayMama and our subsequent product fit into the world of real time video communications. We are still guided by the same compass, ‘to take real world human interaction and replicate it online’. But the obsession is not on the product details. It is on creating something that solves users’ problems in a way that no one else does.