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Oh wow I really enjoyed this read. Thank you so much for sharing. Bless the Apple librarians for saving history. > “Who uses all of this?” asked Steve. > Moni

Oh wow I really enjoyed this read. Thank you so much for sharing. Bless the Apple librarians for saving history. > “Who uses all of this?” asked Steve. > Monica answered, “The engineers use this to do research.” > Steve’s response: “They should know all that already.” Sounds like Jobs alright.

AceJohnny2 4y ago
Christ, what an asshole.
1letterunixname 4y ago
"Should know this stuff already" - wow, SJ, the arrogance. SMH. When people act like they know it alls, they act like SJ, and rest assured: they, contrary to popular believe, do not know it all. In general, fire the KITAs because they need to be assholes who make everyone around them miserable. Infinite talent or not, morale of the team "superorganism" is more important.
musicale 4y ago
Jobs may have saved Apple, but this is heartbreaking and seems very short-sighted. Did he really want to discourage Apple staff from learning new things that might help them in their work? It also looks like it was a nice work and study space. I'm pretty sure Woz would have understood the benefits of having a library as well as company historical archives. Certainly with the zillions of dollars that Apple currently has, it should be able to afford a library. A sad aftereffect is that Apple's modern history is probably not particularly well-documented or curated.
- brianpan 4y ago
  In 1997, the company was at its lowest point. 70% of the products were cancelled, 3000 jobs were cut. Running a library was certainly an untenable luxury. If Jobs was short-sighted it was because Apple was literally weeks away from bankruptcy.
  - musicale 4y ago
    Jobs and Apple were certainly in severe cost cutting mode (and cutting in general - even profitable parts that Jobs thought diluted Apple's focus) but closing the library probably wasn't needed to save Apple. Librarians were a drop in Apple's cost bucket (vs. useless middle managers who survived Jobs, hundreds of millions in restructuring costs, the $75M repurchase of Power Computing's macOS license, etc.) and the productivity and morale benefit from the library was likely greater than its cost. A glib Jobsian "they should know all that already" was also simply wrong. In any case, a few years later Apple could easily afford it, but it was gone forever.

AceJohnny2 4y ago

Christ, what an asshole.

1letterunixname 4y ago

"Should know this stuff already" - wow, SJ, the arrogance. SMH. When people act like they know it alls, they act like SJ, and rest assured: they, contrary to popular believe, do not know it all. In general, fire the KITAs because they need to be assholes who make everyone around them miserable. Infinite talent or not, morale of the team "superorganism" is more important.

musicale 4y ago

Jobs may have saved Apple, but this is heartbreaking and seems very short-sighted. Did he really want to discourage Apple staff from learning new things that might help them in their work? It also looks like it was a nice work and study space. I'm pretty sure Woz would have understood the benefits of having a library as well as company historical archives. Certainly with the zillions of dollars that Apple currently has, it should be able to afford a library. A sad aftereffect is that Apple's modern history is probably not particularly well-documented or curated.

brianpan 4y ago
In 1997, the company was at its lowest point. 70% of the products were cancelled, 3000 jobs were cut. Running a library was certainly an untenable luxury. If Jobs was short-sighted it was because Apple was literally weeks away from bankruptcy.
- musicale 4y ago
  Jobs and Apple were certainly in severe cost cutting mode (and cutting in general - even profitable parts that Jobs thought diluted Apple's focus) but closing the library probably wasn't needed to save Apple. Librarians were a drop in Apple's cost bucket (vs. useless middle managers who survived Jobs, hundreds of millions in restructuring costs, the $75M repurchase of Power Computing's macOS license, etc.) and the productivity and morale benefit from the library was likely greater than its cost. A glib Jobsian "they should know all that already" was also simply wrong. In any case, a few years later Apple could easily afford it, but it was gone forever.