4 ms·

I disagree with the lie-to-your-face characterization. Steve Jobs was always telling the truth as he saw it at the time. He was just uncommonly good at making y

I disagree with the lie-to-your-face characterization. Steve Jobs was always telling the truth as he saw it at the time. He was just uncommonly good at making you believe it. Henry Ford also wasn’t lying at any point, and was not a Steve Jobs figure either. He was widely loved (prior to his anti-semitic statements, to be fair) by the common folk for telling it like he saw it. IBM, I’m not sure what this refers to. The Watsons were salesmen, but were not widely considered dishonest, certainly not Jr. Tesla, yes, Musk is full of shit at all points. People don’t seem to love him for it.

mikelevins 4y ago
"Steve Jobs was always telling the truth as he saw it at the time." I doubt it. I'll offer two stories about it. When Steve recruited me to work for NeXT, he spent an hour or two with me in a conference room, working on persuading me. The experience was fascinating. One thing Michael Fassbender's portrayal in the film "Steve Jobs" missed was the hard, piercing quality of his gaze when he was pitching. People like to talk about "laser focus"; Steve's gaze is the best example of that I've ever seen in a real, person-to-person encounter. His eyes were hard, vigilant, analytical. He noticed everything. He tried a series of pitches to get me on board. Now, I did end up going to work for NeXT for a while, but I wasn't buying any of Steve's pitches that day. He detected my skepticism really quickly each time. He would start a pitch with all the passion and conviction you would expect if you've ever seen one of his keynote speeches or interviews, like his whole being was invested in the pitch. He would immediately detect that it wasn't working, and he'd just drop it, like it had never mattered. He'd move on to another pitch, something totally different, and he'd be just as committed and passionate as in the previous one--until he detected that it wasn't selling me. It was like he was flipping channels, looking for anything that would work. The second story is from a couple years later, after Steve returned to Apple and took over again. I was back at Apple, too. Steve held a town hall meeting for the whole company to introduce the new candy-colored iMac (which was basically just the old iMac in new candy-colored clothing). I attended with a good friend who was working on the system software. Steve came out in full pitch mode, selling Apple's new product to its employees. My impression of his pitch was that it sure was a good thing that he went into selling products and not into politics. Before that, I had always been sort of baffled by the ability of history's great demogogues to move huge crowds to behavior that in retrospect was clearly ill-advised. Steve's internal pitch for the iMac was a sort of "Oooohhhhhh...now I get it" moment for me. He was just extremely good at reading a crowd's reactions, saying what it wanted to hear, moving it to the reactions he wanted it to have. Walking out after the pitch, my friend was shaking his head, saying, "I believed him. I knew it was all lies. I mean, some of that stuff is my work, and yet I believed him." My sense is that Steve's objective was always selling his vision. He preferred to tell the truth to accomplish it, but if the truth wasn't working, he was perfectly happy to change channels to anything else that would do the job.
- WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
  " He would immediately detect that it wasn't working, and he'd just drop it, like it had never mattered. " I've seen something similar. I worked with a sales guy that always seemed like he was 100% invested in what he was saying(selling?). As soon as someone called him out on what he was saying he would drop it all. Similar to dropping a box of bricks. He went from 100 to 0 and move on. His acting and ability to read people were amazing.
WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
Believe me, and I knew/know, none of them. If they sold, they lied. How can you sell a bunch of people a lot of imaginary pie-in-the-sky BS without lying? It's rule number one to get financing and to get people to jump in with out looking and risk their time and effort. For many of these companies the "Dream" came true but founders had no way of knowing that when they made their pitch. I recently read about Jobs. People that worked with him LOVED him but they also knew he was full of it sometimes. It's a talent. I wish I had it.

mikelevins 4y ago

"Steve Jobs was always telling the truth as he saw it at the time." I doubt it. I'll offer two stories about it. When Steve recruited me to work for NeXT, he spent an hour or two with me in a conference room, working on persuading me. The experience was fascinating. One thing Michael Fassbender's portrayal in the film "Steve Jobs" missed was the hard, piercing quality of his gaze when he was pitching. People like to talk about "laser focus"; Steve's gaze is the best example of that I've ever seen in a real, person-to-person encounter. His eyes were hard, vigilant, analytical. He noticed everything. He tried a series of pitches to get me on board. Now, I did end up going to work for NeXT for a while, but I wasn't buying any of Steve's pitches that day. He detected my skepticism really quickly each time. He would start a pitch with all the passion and conviction you would expect if you've ever seen one of his keynote speeches or interviews, like his whole being was invested in the pitch. He would immediately detect that it wasn't working, and he'd just drop it, like it had never mattered. He'd move on to another pitch, something totally different, and he'd be just as committed and passionate as in the previous one--until he detected that it wasn't selling me. It was like he was flipping channels, looking for anything that would work. The second story is from a couple years later, after Steve returned to Apple and took over again. I was back at Apple, too. Steve held a town hall meeting for the whole company to introduce the new candy-colored iMac (which was basically just the old iMac in new candy-colored clothing). I attended with a good friend who was working on the system software. Steve came out in full pitch mode, selling Apple's new product to its employees. My impression of his pitch was that it sure was a good thing that he went into selling products and not into politics. Before that, I had always been sort of baffled by the ability of history's great demogogues to move huge crowds to behavior that in retrospect was clearly ill-advised. Steve's internal pitch for the iMac was a sort of "Oooohhhhhh...now I get it" moment for me. He was just extremely good at reading a crowd's reactions, saying what it wanted to hear, moving it to the reactions he wanted it to have. Walking out after the pitch, my friend was shaking his head, saying, "I believed him. I knew it was all lies. I mean, some of that stuff is my work, and yet I believed him." My sense is that Steve's objective was always selling his vision. He preferred to tell the truth to accomplish it, but if the truth wasn't working, he was perfectly happy to change channels to anything else that would do the job.

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
" He would immediately detect that it wasn't working, and he'd just drop it, like it had never mattered. " I've seen something similar. I worked with a sales guy that always seemed like he was 100% invested in what he was saying(selling?). As soon as someone called him out on what he was saying he would drop it all. Similar to dropping a box of bricks. He went from 100 to 0 and move on. His acting and ability to read people were amazing.

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago

Believe me, and I knew/know, none of them. If they sold, they lied. How can you sell a bunch of people a lot of imaginary pie-in-the-sky BS without lying? It's rule number one to get financing and to get people to jump in with out looking and risk their time and effort. For many of these companies the "Dream" came true but founders had no way of knowing that when they made their pitch. I recently read about Jobs. People that worked with him LOVED him but they also knew he was full of it sometimes. It's a talent. I wish I had it.