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Apple’s Employee No. 0 (2008)
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoRedditors are all up in arms over this, doing everything they can to downplay Jobs' role in Apple's success, going as far as to say "apoptosis had the final laugh". To play Devil's Advocate - if giving someone a special number on their employee badge makes them happy, let them have it. I'm sure they had much bigger problems to solve than which employee number they should each have.
- shippintoboston 3y agoI think as an isolated incident it wouldn’t be a big deal, but Jobs’ general behavior towards his employees and specifically Wozniak justifies some of the resentment people feel toward him.
- AnotherGoodName 3y agoWoz doesn't seem to harbor any resentment so it feels weird to have more emotion to this than the person who's meant to be impacted by it.
- hotstickyballs 3y agoIt’s justified to feel indignant when observing injustice.
- objektif 3y agoWell only thing he can say is I did not like his personality. His skills as a CEO is ... I mean come on.
- Longlius 3y agoThis is one of the things that always got me. People always seem to act like Woz is just too nice to be outraged on his own behalf or something, and we need to do it for him. Woz is a smart guy and a definite people person. He likely knew what kind of guy Steve Jobs was and probably just made peace with it. We compromise on people we know doing far shittier things to us than Jobs did to Woz, and yet we can't fathom how someone like Woz can accept that Jobs is Jobs and deal with it.
- elromulous 3y agoI don't think that's the issue here. I think it's what message it sends. And also it's further confirmation of Jobs's narcissism.
- objektif 3y agoThe guy made Apple what it is. The most impactful technology company in the history of humanity. You can call him whatever you like and I will cut him a slack. Most people miss the point. Yes great companies are created by not just the founders but all of its employees. Everyone contributes to a certain extend. But it is really the founders who steer the ship in the right direction. Without Jobs last 10 years would certainly be very very different. Think about a world where your only choices were Windows or a crappy Android phone.
- realusername 3y agoIt reads like PR, you bought too much into their powerpoint presentations. No, the tech world wouldn't be very different without Apple in it, I can certainly imagine a similar tech world without Apple. Also I'm using Android and I don't see how it's supposed to be crappy, the iPhone was the worst phone I ever owned and I'm glad it broke down by itself, to each their own.
- objektif 3y agoI would rather be a paid shill for Apple than use an Android phone very easy choice :) Jokes aside if you do not see how Apple is far superior in quality of their products in consumer electronics there is not much to discuss.
- realusername 3y agoIt's just opinions, to each their own. I used an iPhone for a year to prevent ewaste of my wife so I know what I'm talking about when I say it's the worst phone I ever owned, I'm not talking randomly, I used it. Now it's stuck in a software error loop where you can't install or update apps and that was the final nail in the coffin, I was too lazy to reformat it.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoIt's easy to say, Apple was entirely Woz and Steve Jobs was just a freeloader. That's a nice story, but managing talent is difficult as being a good engineer does not mean you are a good entrepreneur, or are good at business. Case in point: Why doesn't literally any CPU engineer at Intel, or airline engineer at Boeing, or hardware engineer at Apple, start their own company? Sure, sometimes it happens, but it only happens once or twice a decade for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of really, really smart people. And none of those companies so far have become industry titans that challenged their original company.
- hedgehog 3y agoThe story is complicated, sure, but those are three of the most complex and capital intensive businesses anywhere. Being "good at business" is not enough to enter a mature business with such high start-up costs, strong scale and network effects, etc.
- gist 3y ago> Apple was entirely Woz Literally the most absurd statement. Woz wasn't even involved in anything Apple did later which led to the huge size they are now and the existing product line. Doesn't even matter if the iphone (or imac) was Job's idea or not. He was the driving force that made that happen
- vxNsr 3y agoThat’s that person’s point.
- monocasa 3y ago> Case in point: Why doesn't literally any CPU engineer at Intel, or airline engineer at Boeing, or hardware engineer at Apple, start their own company? Sure, sometimes it happens, but it only happens once or twice a decade for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of really, really smart people. And none of those companies so far have become industry titans that challenged their original company. The CPU industry is rife with engineers leaving and starting their own successful company. Intel itself was started when Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce (an engineer and a physicist) left Fairchild Semiconductor as part of the "Traitorous Eight". Federico Faggin and Ralph Ungermann (both engineers) left Intel to form Zilog. Chuck Peddle left Motorola and formed MOS Technology and create the 6502. CPU design in fact is one of those fields that almost requires real world experience somewhere before you can really innovate in the field. There's just too many tradeoffs to be balanced. Why haven't we seen that recently? I think it's the leftovers of the 80s, with financiers being unwilling to commit capital to engineer heavy executive teams in capital intensive fields like CPU production anymore. Talking with financiers, there's almost this infantilizing group think that engineers can't be trusted with money and MBAs are required to hold the purse strings. The same thought process that decided that hospitals shouldn't be run by doctors anymore and that universities shouldn't be run by professors anymore, leading to the rise of the administration class and incredible amounts of unfortunate externalities from those decisions. I think that's why we're starting to see a renaissance in CPU design. The tail end of Moore's law is democratizing access to high end CPU design, allowing individuals (albeit with relatively high net worth from previous CPU design) like Jim Keller to put their money where their mouth is and work with a small team of very good engineers to create companies without involving much in the way of traditional VC.
- PraetorianGourd 3y agoAt the same time, it does speak to an almost childish obsession with recognition and being seen by the outside as the "most genius". I think the extreme vanity demonstrated by Mr. Jobs was both a huge factor in his success but also the thing, in some ways, held him back. "Held him back" is of course relative. He had more success than almost anyone in the modern technological era, but could he have had even more? Who knows. But I also don't understand why Reddit commenters, or anyone, would care so much as to be "up in arms" over this or any anecdote about corporate gamesmanship.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoWell, imagine if he didn't build this persona. Would he have succeeded in getting investments for NeXT? Would employees have worked for NeXT inspired by him? Would Apple have ever bought NeXT? We don't know.
- ok123456 3y agoPeople can get investments without showing signs of dark triad.
- stanmancan 3y agoClassic armchair critic
- mattl 3y agoHe was 22 at the time, so childish doesn't seem unreasonable.
- PraetorianGourd 3y agoI did not mean it was not reasonable, but it was still childish. The more important point is that many anecdotes exist (with the low trust that we should have all in anecdotes) pointing to him never growing out of that.
- trustingtrust 3y agoIt’s like a football (soccer) team. Yes the players are playing and scoring goals. But a great coach (SAF) is just as important as a great team. Without him, the same team doesn’t perform the same.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoWhat is SAF?
- dylan604 3y agoSir Alex Ferugson. One of the greatest managers for one of the worst clubs.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoThis is just one thing of many. A more unexcusable asshole behavior is him using Woz's help to design the Atari board for brickbreaker, lying about the payout then pocketing the vast majority of it. It shows the kind of guy he is. People blow off asshole behavior in executives all the time by claiming that anything is excusable because it serves the higher goal of the company, but there's no higher goal when it's just extra cash for yourself, it's just pure greed, or perhaps expressing a hidden resentment that someone else did something great and you needed their help.
- jimmywetnips 3y agoAbsolutely. I remember reading some biography about him that my dad bought me when I was in high school. I was like, shit finally I'll figure out what made this guy so great. You come out the other end only thinking, wow. What a fucking asshole. A talented asshole, but an absolute piece of work
- simonh 3y agoDude was 19 at the time. People change, I know I have.
- Retric 3y agoSure, except he got worse.
- simonh 3y agoIve seen and read multiple interviews with people he worked on later in his career, and that doesn't seem to be their experience.
- saghm 3y agoSure, but there's obviously a spectrum to how people act due to a lack of maturity and wisdom, and it's not obvious to me that Jobs fell into the normal range of immature behavior rather than being much more conceited and selfish than average. It's also not like he didn't have plenty of time to recognize his mistakes and try to make amends and act differently going forward, and it doesn't really seem like he ever grew in that regard.
- croes 3y agoDon't forget such a person became the boss of someone.
- gist 3y agoAnyone who doesn't recognize what Jobs did for Apple doesn't understand business. The better mousetrap does not have consumers beat a path to your door. (Technology? See Sony Betamax vs. default VCR). Wozniak on the other hand is way overblown in capabilities. It's 100% true that Jobs needed a Wozniak. But there were many that could have filled that role. Jobs was truly unique and while he had for sure people who helped him realize the dream (and of course luck and timing ... that he was able to motivate and berate with his reality distortion field etc) no question he was the unique driving force behind Apple (when they started and when he returned after being forced out).
- objektif 3y agoOne million percent.
- echelon 3y agoI'm sorry, but this man got critical UI/UX paradigms right twice (iPod, iPhone) and used that position of strength to inflict his controlling views upon the entire computing industry. I want to be in the universe where this didn't happen. Where there are six major types of smartphone. Where Google Android isn't the most open things can be. Where your smartphone provider isn't your email provider, isn't your photo bucket, isn't your banking, isn't your movie film entertainment provider. Where you can install what you want and easily switch devices. Where no company is too big. Smartphones aren't computers in the Jobs universe. They're branded platforms wholly and totally owned by the company that makes them. The 1990 - 2010 era was the best time we had in computing. The web was so open and everyone used it for everything. After Jobs showed what level of top-down control was legally possible, everyone has been chasing the "App Store" model and the "Platform" model and the "Walled Garden" model. Zoomers don't know how awesome RSS and bittorrent were. How you could use any program to consume content and ingest it, schedule it, remix it. There were programs where you could create your own TV channels. Your own news streams. You could run it on all of your devices. Now everything is super locked down, product manager-ed to a single customer experience, and rented to you. Meanwhile, Google is trying to DRM what's left of the web. Things are looking incredibly bleak. Jobs put us on this path of not having devices and data streams open. But now you can choose one of three premium experiences.
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- teddyh 3y ago“All right, you can be crummy Universe A.”
- Paul-Craft 3y agoGotta say, I did not expect a Futurama quote to be the top comment on a front page story on HN. Well played!
- topato 3y agohttps://comb.io/zJvmaq https://comb.io/zJvmaq Gotta say, that's some pretty good real-life-to-quote abstraction. Fits nearly perfectly, but not in the way one would normally think.
- mf2hd 3y agoSo who was number 2?
- Paul-Craft 3y agoThe third man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Wayne#Apple_(1976%E2%80%931977) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Wayne#Apple_(1976%E2%80... Meet the Pete Best of Apple.
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- gumby 3y agoIn my first company, when we set up payroll we had to assign employee numbers. Since I was setting it up I wanted to be employee #0 to see what would happen. The payroll company was smarter: the numbers had to start with 1, which was much less interesting.
- KerrAvon 3y agoI thought we understood that Cringely's work is riddled with hearsay. Don't put too much stock in this.
- WalterBright 3y agoI've read it in other histories, like Return to the Little Kingdom.
- eesmith 3y agoIt's also hard to claim the account in "Return to the Little Kingdom" at https://archive.org/details/returntolittleki0000mori_u2z0/page/206/mode/2up?q=number https://archive.org/details/returntolittleki0000mori_u2z0/pa... is derived from that in "Accidental Empires" at https://archive.org/details/1996-accidental-empires/page/185/mode/2up?q=%22employee+number%22 https://archive.org/details/1996-accidental-empires/page/185... . RttLK says: > Since, in Scott’s mind, the computer gave birth to the business he assigned Wozniak number one, Jobs number two, Markkula number three, Fernandez number four, Holt number five, and Wigginton number six, reserved number seven for himself, and gave Espinosa number eight. AE says: > The badges included a name and an individual employee number, the latter based on the order in which workers joined the company. Steve Wozniak was declared employee number 1, Steve Jobs was number 2, and so on. The former has more details and different intention for the initial numbering.
- jonathankoren 3y agoThis is official Apple history. They even tell you this story during onboarding.
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- madrox 3y ago"If you ain't first, you're last." - Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby I'm not surprised to find out Steve Jobs had Ricky Bobby energy
- easton 3y agoReminds me of that story someone (Forstall?) told about Steve at the apple cafeteria. He would go there every day for lunch and they had some program where they’d take your lunch out of your paycheck. Steve started laughing about it one day and when asked what was so funny, he said that his salary was only $1 a year so he had no idea who was paying for his lunch.
- birdyrooster 3y agoThis, and many other real anecdotes, are featured in the motion picture, "Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)"
- LeonM 3y agoIt's a great movie, and I honestly like it more than the various Steve Jobs movies that came out after his death. Also, I think the employee #0 is also discussed in Wozniak's biography 'iWoz', which is a great read, can recommend!
- kmoser 3y agoOk, but what happens when Woz then assigns himself employee number -1? Jobs should have foreseen that and assigned himself employee number Woz-1.