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> I got the $10 million, because it was going to be my job on the line, and potentially, my ability to work in industry at a high level, ever again, in the futu

> I got the $10 million, because it was going to be my job on the line, and potentially, my ability to work in industry at a high level, ever again, in the future. I don't get why working hard to meet a deadline but unfortunately missing it would get you blacklisted from the industry?

bitwize 5y ago
Because if he didn't make the deadline, Steve Jobs would get on the horn with any company he applied to and tell them how badly he fucked up, just to spite him. "You'll never work in this town again" was a real threat in Hollywood if you pissed off (or refused to put out for) the wrong producer. Powerful people wield power indiscriminately to discharge fleeting grudges.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > how badly he fucked up I don't think it's 'fucking up' to give something a good go but not quite make it, is it? And why would every company in the industry even listen to a rant from Steve Jobs?
  - bitwize 5y ago
    > I don't think it's 'fucking up' to give something a good go but not quite make it, is it? If the CEO sets a goal for the business, and you 'gave it a good goal' but failed, causing the business to miss its goal, with consequences including lost revenue or lawsuits, in that CEO's eyes you fucked up. The CEO was counting on you to take a letter to Garcia, and though you 'gave it a good go' Garcia never got his letter, so why would that CEO consider you someone to count on again? > And why would every company in the industry even listen to a rant from Steve Jobs? Because he built this industry.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      > If the CEO sets a goal for the business, and you 'gave it a good goal' but failed, causing the business to miss its goal, with consequences including lost revenue or lawsuits, in that CEO's eyes you fucked up. Are you under the impression that for example lawyers are fired every time they lose a case and a company has to pay out?
  - Scramblejams 5y ago
    Not every company would, but the CEOs of the major tech companies that a guy with Terry's impact would have probably liked to work at? I'd buy it. Those guys talked all the time, and I doubt they were gonna let one hire get in the way of a major corporate relationship.
  - fyrabanks 5y ago
    > I don't think it's 'fucking up' to give something a good go but not quite make it, is it? If I understand correctly,in this particular situation, fucking up would cost Apple at least $200M--so it had to be a total success for him.
    - smashed 5y ago
      I'd put the initial fuck-up on Apple marketing, who used the UNIX trademark without license nor compatibily. This was an attempt to repair the damage that had already been done, by passing the UNIX compliance required to become an official, paid, licensee.
      - nikanj 5y ago
        In bigcorps, marketing can freely make false claims, and engineering is on the hook for delivery. You are technically correct that this was a sales fuckup, but the shit storm would 100% be directed towards the “underperforming, delivery-target missing” programmers.
        lwkl 5y ago
        Isn't this a good example of engineering and management working together to make changes over multiple departments? The engineers got time to asses if the project was feasible and what kind of support they need. Management fully supported them and made the other departments play ball and they made allies in other departments that helped them making the changes necessary. They were asked if they could do a job and given the time and ressources to asses the situation. If they had any doubts they could've said no and let the legal department take over.
      - scruffyherder 5y ago
        It's legals mistake. Ads have to be run by them. They should have caught it.
  - acdha 5y ago
    That'd depend on exactly how bad the screwup was but Steve Jobs was notoriously unforgiving if you made a promise and didn't have a good reason for missing it. That might not have been the case here, since they clearly slipped it due to the Intel transition, but if he was in an unforgiving mood or someone else was looking for a scapegoat, remember this example of how closed the community was at the time: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/04/23/what-the-apple-wage-collusion-case-says-about-silicon-valleys-labor-economy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/04/23...
  - coldtea 5y ago
    I think the "Steve Jobs" part is just a random assumption from the parent. More likely he'd have problem being hired at that level simply because he would be associated with a major failed project, Jobs or no Jobs.
    - rasz 5y ago
      https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Switcher.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor... "OK, I've seen enough, " Steve interrupted me. "It's great. Apple is going to bundle it with the Mac. Congratulations." But then he paused, and stared at me for a moment with an incredibly intense gaze, as if he was sizing me up or maybe just trying to scare me. "But I don't want you taking advantage of this situation. I'm not going to allow you to take advantage of Apple." "What do you mean?" I asked him, genuinely puzzled. "There's no way that you could have written that program without confidential information that you learned by working at Apple. You don't have the right to charge whatever you like for it." I started to get angry. "The program is only half finished, and if I don't think you're paying me fairly, I won't be motivated to finish it." Steve gave me another intense stare as he paused for a few seconds. Then he stated a single number, without explanation. "One hundred thousand dollars." "I don't know," I told him, "I think it's probably worth a lot more than that." "Don't argue with me. $100,000 is fair, and you know it." I didn't seem to have any alternative but to capitulate to Steve's price setting, there are better Steve stories on that site, mostly about abuse and psychological manipulation.
      - coldtea 5y ago
        Which proves and is related to the story how?
        rurban 5y ago
        > "I entered Steve's office with a bit of trepidation, because I thought that Switcher was worth at least a quarter of a million dollars to Apple, but I was sure that Steve would never want to pay me that much. But I was also proud of Switcher, and was interested in seeing how Steve would react to it." The previous paragraph
- howinteresting 5y ago
  Between that and his ":)" response to the Google recruiter getting fired because they were unaware of the collusion going on between Apple and Google, he will go down as one of the worst, most abusive tech barons in history.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    I think he has already gone down in tech history, and it wasn't as "one of the worst, most abusive tech barons".
    - howinteresting 5y ago
      Unfortunately so, to the extent that this is true.
    - almostdeadguy 5y ago
      Pretty sure he's widely acknowledged as a guy who was an insufferable prick to work for (or an asshole Dad in the case of his daughter). Plenty of stories of unpleasant interactions with him. My personal favorite of the early Apple stories was the one where Jean-Louis Gassée saw him park his big dumb Mercedes in a disabled parking spot and said "I never realized those spaces were for the emotionally handicapped" [0]. [0]: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Handicapped.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
      - coldtea 5y ago
        >Pretty sure he's widely acknowledged as a guy who was an insufferable prick to work for (or an asshole Dad in the case of his daughter). Plenty of stories of unpleasant interactions with him. Yes, we have anecdotes (plus all the other nice things people said about him, including his daughter in her book and the author of TFA elsewhere in Quora). Those are not what he is remembered about though, but for building one of the biggest companies on Earth (at times, the biggest), plus doing it twice in his 20s and in his 40s, while also building two other companies (one worth billions for its movies, the other sold to his first company for half a billion), plus defining several modern consumer tech markets and/or phenomena. And of course, there are far far worse employers than a demanding jerk (abusers, rapists, racists, thieves, even murderous CEOs and founders) - and with less saving graces and nowhere near the same results.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  It's never been a thing in Silicon Valley. This sounds like someone misunderstanding or inflating the stakes.
  - threeseed 5y ago
    I worked at Apple when Steve Jobs was still there and it definitely sounds odd. I had never heard of project-based profit sharing or being fired and named/shamed for non-delivery. I had personally seen coding mistakes cost tens of millions in lost revenue and the developers were still there and many got promoted. Surely if he was promised $10 million and Apple didn't pay up there would be grounds for a lawsuit. Especially since that stock would be worth so much more today.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
Normally it wouldn’t. But Steve Jobs very publicly threw a camera at someone who crossed him. He had a reputation for long held grudges that fundamentally fractured business relationships (eg IIRC Nvidia being permanently banned from Apple platforms for early announcing something, and similar reaction to integrating ZFS being announced early). Guy was an asshole, but he was an extraordinarily powerful asshole.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  In hindsight I wish I said he was an incredibly effective asshole. Lots of powerful people are assholes. It’s not often they continue to hold much power as a corpse.
  - digisign 5y ago
    Still ten minutes to edit the post.
    - eyelidlessness 5y ago
      Meh, I’d rather walk my pup and eat dinner. If people are curious they’ll find it
- astrange 5y ago
  Nvidia is difficult to work with because they're as prideful (or more) as Apple. ZFS is hard to license commercially because it means having to negotiate with Oracle, who are evil. Well, and there were those desoldering GPUs.
  - jen20 5y ago
    At the time it meant working with Sun not Oracle. Further, it didn’t need licensing - DTrace, under the same CDDL license - ships with macOS to this day.
    - chungy 5y ago

bitwize 5y ago

Because if he didn't make the deadline, Steve Jobs would get on the horn with any company he applied to and tell them how badly he fucked up, just to spite him. "You'll never work in this town again" was a real threat in Hollywood if you pissed off (or refused to put out for) the wrong producer. Powerful people wield power indiscriminately to discharge fleeting grudges.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> how badly he fucked up I don't think it's 'fucking up' to give something a good go but not quite make it, is it? And why would every company in the industry even listen to a rant from Steve Jobs?
- bitwize 5y ago
  > I don't think it's 'fucking up' to give something a good go but not quite make it, is it? If the CEO sets a goal for the business, and you 'gave it a good goal' but failed, causing the business to miss its goal, with consequences including lost revenue or lawsuits, in that CEO's eyes you fucked up. The CEO was counting on you to take a letter to Garcia, and though you 'gave it a good go' Garcia never got his letter, so why would that CEO consider you someone to count on again? > And why would every company in the industry even listen to a rant from Steve Jobs? Because he built this industry.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > If the CEO sets a goal for the business, and you 'gave it a good goal' but failed, causing the business to miss its goal, with consequences including lost revenue or lawsuits, in that CEO's eyes you fucked up. Are you under the impression that for example lawyers are fired every time they lose a case and a company has to pay out?
- Scramblejams 5y ago
  Not every company would, but the CEOs of the major tech companies that a guy with Terry's impact would have probably liked to work at? I'd buy it. Those guys talked all the time, and I doubt they were gonna let one hire get in the way of a major corporate relationship.
- fyrabanks 5y ago
  > I don't think it's 'fucking up' to give something a good go but not quite make it, is it? If I understand correctly,in this particular situation, fucking up would cost Apple at least $200M--so it had to be a total success for him.
  - smashed 5y ago
    I'd put the initial fuck-up on Apple marketing, who used the UNIX trademark without license nor compatibily. This was an attempt to repair the damage that had already been done, by passing the UNIX compliance required to become an official, paid, licensee.
    - nikanj 5y ago
      In bigcorps, marketing can freely make false claims, and engineering is on the hook for delivery. You are technically correct that this was a sales fuckup, but the shit storm would 100% be directed towards the “underperforming, delivery-target missing” programmers.
      - lwkl 5y ago
        Isn't this a good example of engineering and management working together to make changes over multiple departments? The engineers got time to asses if the project was feasible and what kind of support they need. Management fully supported them and made the other departments play ball and they made allies in other departments that helped them making the changes necessary. They were asked if they could do a job and given the time and ressources to asses the situation. If they had any doubts they could've said no and let the legal department take over.
    - scruffyherder 5y ago
      It's legals mistake. Ads have to be run by them. They should have caught it.
- acdha 5y ago
  That'd depend on exactly how bad the screwup was but Steve Jobs was notoriously unforgiving if you made a promise and didn't have a good reason for missing it. That might not have been the case here, since they clearly slipped it due to the Intel transition, but if he was in an unforgiving mood or someone else was looking for a scapegoat, remember this example of how closed the community was at the time: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/04/23/what-the-apple-wage-collusion-case-says-about-silicon-valleys-labor-economy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/04/23...
- coldtea 5y ago
  I think the "Steve Jobs" part is just a random assumption from the parent. More likely he'd have problem being hired at that level simply because he would be associated with a major failed project, Jobs or no Jobs.
  - rasz 5y ago
    https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Switcher.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor... "OK, I've seen enough, " Steve interrupted me. "It's great. Apple is going to bundle it with the Mac. Congratulations." But then he paused, and stared at me for a moment with an incredibly intense gaze, as if he was sizing me up or maybe just trying to scare me. "But I don't want you taking advantage of this situation. I'm not going to allow you to take advantage of Apple." "What do you mean?" I asked him, genuinely puzzled. "There's no way that you could have written that program without confidential information that you learned by working at Apple. You don't have the right to charge whatever you like for it." I started to get angry. "The program is only half finished, and if I don't think you're paying me fairly, I won't be motivated to finish it." Steve gave me another intense stare as he paused for a few seconds. Then he stated a single number, without explanation. "One hundred thousand dollars." "I don't know," I told him, "I think it's probably worth a lot more than that." "Don't argue with me. $100,000 is fair, and you know it." I didn't seem to have any alternative but to capitulate to Steve's price setting, there are better Steve stories on that site, mostly about abuse and psychological manipulation.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      Which proves and is related to the story how?
      - rurban 5y ago
        > "I entered Steve's office with a bit of trepidation, because I thought that Switcher was worth at least a quarter of a million dollars to Apple, but I was sure that Steve would never want to pay me that much. But I was also proud of Switcher, and was interested in seeing how Steve would react to it." The previous paragraph
howinteresting 5y ago
Between that and his ":)" response to the Google recruiter getting fired because they were unaware of the collusion going on between Apple and Google, he will go down as one of the worst, most abusive tech barons in history.
- coldtea 5y ago
  I think he has already gone down in tech history, and it wasn't as "one of the worst, most abusive tech barons".
  - howinteresting 5y ago
    Unfortunately so, to the extent that this is true.
  - almostdeadguy 5y ago
    Pretty sure he's widely acknowledged as a guy who was an insufferable prick to work for (or an asshole Dad in the case of his daughter). Plenty of stories of unpleasant interactions with him. My personal favorite of the early Apple stories was the one where Jean-Louis Gassée saw him park his big dumb Mercedes in a disabled parking spot and said "I never realized those spaces were for the emotionally handicapped" [0]. [0]: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Handicapped.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
    - coldtea 5y ago
      >Pretty sure he's widely acknowledged as a guy who was an insufferable prick to work for (or an asshole Dad in the case of his daughter). Plenty of stories of unpleasant interactions with him. Yes, we have anecdotes (plus all the other nice things people said about him, including his daughter in her book and the author of TFA elsewhere in Quora). Those are not what he is remembered about though, but for building one of the biggest companies on Earth (at times, the biggest), plus doing it twice in his 20s and in his 40s, while also building two other companies (one worth billions for its movies, the other sold to his first company for half a billion), plus defining several modern consumer tech markets and/or phenomena. And of course, there are far far worse employers than a demanding jerk (abusers, rapists, racists, thieves, even murderous CEOs and founders) - and with less saving graces and nowhere near the same results.
KerrAvon 5y ago
It's never been a thing in Silicon Valley. This sounds like someone misunderstanding or inflating the stakes.
- threeseed 5y ago
  I worked at Apple when Steve Jobs was still there and it definitely sounds odd. I had never heard of project-based profit sharing or being fired and named/shamed for non-delivery. I had personally seen coding mistakes cost tens of millions in lost revenue and the developers were still there and many got promoted. Surely if he was promised $10 million and Apple didn't pay up there would be grounds for a lawsuit. Especially since that stock would be worth so much more today.

eyelidlessness 5y ago

Normally it wouldn’t. But Steve Jobs very publicly threw a camera at someone who crossed him. He had a reputation for long held grudges that fundamentally fractured business relationships (eg IIRC Nvidia being permanently banned from Apple platforms for early announcing something, and similar reaction to integrating ZFS being announced early). Guy was an asshole, but he was an extraordinarily powerful asshole.

eyelidlessness 5y ago
In hindsight I wish I said he was an incredibly effective asshole. Lots of powerful people are assholes. It’s not often they continue to hold much power as a corpse.
- digisign 5y ago
  Still ten minutes to edit the post.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Meh, I’d rather walk my pup and eat dinner. If people are curious they’ll find it
astrange 5y ago
Nvidia is difficult to work with because they're as prideful (or more) as Apple. ZFS is hard to license commercially because it means having to negotiate with Oracle, who are evil. Well, and there were those desoldering GPUs.
- jen20 5y ago
  At the time it meant working with Sun not Oracle. Further, it didn’t need licensing - DTrace, under the same CDDL license - ships with macOS to this day.
  - chungy 5y ago