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I don’t think you need to like the people you listed (I, for example, hate Musk). But you seem to have no curiosity around understanding the value non-technical

I don’t think you need to like the people you listed (I, for example, hate Musk). But you seem to have no curiosity around understanding the value non-technical people can bring to a project or company or innovation. You need both to do something great. And there’s thousands of Woz’s out there whose names we don’t know because they never met their Jobs.

lacrimacida 3y ago
But even all Wozzes out there who met their Jobs are still relegated to just Wozzes, all credit being vaccumed up by their respective Jobs. Not saying that their Jobs don’t deserve any the credit, i’m just pointing out the unfair pattern of how all the credit is being vaccumed up. One clearly needs the other but it doesn’t look like a two way street at all.
- adventured 3y ago
  It's not unfair in the case of Jobs & Woz. Wozniak represented a few years of Apple's earliest history. His contribution was similar to Paul Allen's contribution to Microsoft. Extraordinarily important in the first few years, and that was the end of that. The reality is, people broadly like Woz, and particularly among the HN crowd Steve Jobs is disliked; that's the explanation, it's purely emotional; so they want to give Woz more credit than he deserves. There's an obsession with trying to discredit people like Jobs (and their contributions), particularly among the hacker news crowd. Fundamentally it's because most hackers don't understand leadership, marketing, sales, etc. In this thread you'll see people claim Elon Musk is non-technical. That's bordering on belligerent. A person would have to have avoided the dozens of YouTube interviews where he demonstrates his technical understanding to an elaborate degree. Musk is as technical as Bill Gates was in his post coding days at Microsoft (which spanned the bulk of his time at Microsoft) and I've never seen anyone on HN claim Gates as being non-technical. How it works is simple: I dislike this person, therefore I shall tear them down; I'm unable to be objective about the subject, so I shall be emotional and irrational instead.
  - darkwraithcov 3y ago
    What makes you think Musk is technical? I’ve seen tons of interviews and podcasts. He’s not as stupid as he comes across on Twitter, but he absolutely is not an engineer and couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. He has an above average understanding of tech, but whenever seriously pressed —- rare because the media is absolutely terrified of pressing him and losing access —- he demonstrates a rudimentary understanding of the tech behind his businesses akin to an enthusiastic fan . He comes across as a guy who really wants to seem deep and cerebral, but his takes are pretty surface level compared to other tech CEOs. He couldn’t even give a high level explanation of Twitter’s “crazy” tech stack without having a meltdown.
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      You should read his biography. The idea Musk isn't technical will seem absurd after that.
      - darkwraithcov 3y ago
        He’s as technical as a middle manager with an MBA at a tech company might be, but barely impressive otherwise. Compare that to someone like Zuckerberg, who I cannot stand, it’s laughable in comparison. He doesn’t have any advanced degrees and hasn’t designed anything without help from actual, world class engineers and devs. No doubt he knows PR and hires really talented people. He went to school for business, and his physics degree is total BS, also you realize that official biographies are sanctioned by the subject and are made to paint him as an adult, his business acumen, etc in the best possible light?
    - tim333 3y ago
      >couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag He sold a game he programed at age 12, and wrote at least the initial code for zip2 which Compaq acquired for $307 million.
      - fakedang 3y ago
        Exactly. People here think knowing how to code is spinning up 5 k8s clusters and running an ELK stack from scratch, when in reality, it can be much less. Musk was an intermediate level coder from his time, which, mind you, was a time where terms like Agile, code hygiene, etc, were non-existent. Most code critics of Musk today criticize his poor coding skills due to him unable to migrate his skills from that era to today. But as CEO, he doesn't need to do that. I'm sure he understands the code on a shallow level, which is fine for his role.
dbingham 3y ago
The issue is that if you ask the average person on the street who the leadership behind Apple was, they would name Jobs, not Woz. I'm not sure, but I think the financial compensation also carried that discrepancy. And that's a really common case. It is absolutely true that you need both technical and non-technical people to make a business work. There are lots of jobs to be done, hats to be worn, and they are all valuable - many are necessary. The issue is that our society and economy massively overvalues two roles in particular: those who bring the capital and those who carry the title executive. It's not that those roles don't contribute, they do. But they currently get the vast majority of the generated wealth, credit, and recognition (which then translates into more opportunities to access more capital and thus into an exponential feedback loop).
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > who the leadership behind Apple was, they would name Jobs, not Woz Woz was critical to early Apple. He was not involved in its modern iteration. Also, plenty of important and influential people are unknown in the popular imagination.
  - dbingham 3y ago
    Yeah, I should have added a line clarifying that I'm unsure about the exact case of Apple, but even so, Jobs definitely had collaborators on the modern iteration who - again - do not get appropriate credit or financial compensation. The point is that this is a general problem that falls out of the structure of our economy and business enterprises. And it's one that's fixable with a little societal refactoring (changing the laws around business structures and how they're formed).

lacrimacida 3y ago

But even all Wozzes out there who met their Jobs are still relegated to just Wozzes, all credit being vaccumed up by their respective Jobs. Not saying that their Jobs don’t deserve any the credit, i’m just pointing out the unfair pattern of how all the credit is being vaccumed up. One clearly needs the other but it doesn’t look like a two way street at all.

adventured 3y ago
It's not unfair in the case of Jobs & Woz. Wozniak represented a few years of Apple's earliest history. His contribution was similar to Paul Allen's contribution to Microsoft. Extraordinarily important in the first few years, and that was the end of that. The reality is, people broadly like Woz, and particularly among the HN crowd Steve Jobs is disliked; that's the explanation, it's purely emotional; so they want to give Woz more credit than he deserves. There's an obsession with trying to discredit people like Jobs (and their contributions), particularly among the hacker news crowd. Fundamentally it's because most hackers don't understand leadership, marketing, sales, etc. In this thread you'll see people claim Elon Musk is non-technical. That's bordering on belligerent. A person would have to have avoided the dozens of YouTube interviews where he demonstrates his technical understanding to an elaborate degree. Musk is as technical as Bill Gates was in his post coding days at Microsoft (which spanned the bulk of his time at Microsoft) and I've never seen anyone on HN claim Gates as being non-technical. How it works is simple: I dislike this person, therefore I shall tear them down; I'm unable to be objective about the subject, so I shall be emotional and irrational instead.
- darkwraithcov 3y ago
  What makes you think Musk is technical? I’ve seen tons of interviews and podcasts. He’s not as stupid as he comes across on Twitter, but he absolutely is not an engineer and couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. He has an above average understanding of tech, but whenever seriously pressed —- rare because the media is absolutely terrified of pressing him and losing access —- he demonstrates a rudimentary understanding of the tech behind his businesses akin to an enthusiastic fan . He comes across as a guy who really wants to seem deep and cerebral, but his takes are pretty surface level compared to other tech CEOs. He couldn’t even give a high level explanation of Twitter’s “crazy” tech stack without having a meltdown.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    You should read his biography. The idea Musk isn't technical will seem absurd after that.
    - darkwraithcov 3y ago
      He’s as technical as a middle manager with an MBA at a tech company might be, but barely impressive otherwise. Compare that to someone like Zuckerberg, who I cannot stand, it’s laughable in comparison. He doesn’t have any advanced degrees and hasn’t designed anything without help from actual, world class engineers and devs. No doubt he knows PR and hires really talented people. He went to school for business, and his physics degree is total BS, also you realize that official biographies are sanctioned by the subject and are made to paint him as an adult, his business acumen, etc in the best possible light?
  - tim333 3y ago
    >couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag He sold a game he programed at age 12, and wrote at least the initial code for zip2 which Compaq acquired for $307 million.
    - fakedang 3y ago
      Exactly. People here think knowing how to code is spinning up 5 k8s clusters and running an ELK stack from scratch, when in reality, it can be much less. Musk was an intermediate level coder from his time, which, mind you, was a time where terms like Agile, code hygiene, etc, were non-existent. Most code critics of Musk today criticize his poor coding skills due to him unable to migrate his skills from that era to today. But as CEO, he doesn't need to do that. I'm sure he understands the code on a shallow level, which is fine for his role.

dbingham 3y ago

The issue is that if you ask the average person on the street who the leadership behind Apple was, they would name Jobs, not Woz. I'm not sure, but I think the financial compensation also carried that discrepancy. And that's a really common case. It is absolutely true that you need both technical and non-technical people to make a business work. There are lots of jobs to be done, hats to be worn, and they are all valuable - many are necessary. The issue is that our society and economy massively overvalues two roles in particular: those who bring the capital and those who carry the title executive. It's not that those roles don't contribute, they do. But they currently get the vast majority of the generated wealth, credit, and recognition (which then translates into more opportunities to access more capital and thus into an exponential feedback loop).

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> who the leadership behind Apple was, they would name Jobs, not Woz Woz was critical to early Apple. He was not involved in its modern iteration. Also, plenty of important and influential people are unknown in the popular imagination.
- dbingham 3y ago
  Yeah, I should have added a line clarifying that I'm unsure about the exact case of Apple, but even so, Jobs definitely had collaborators on the modern iteration who - again - do not get appropriate credit or financial compensation. The point is that this is a general problem that falls out of the structure of our economy and business enterprises. And it's one that's fixable with a little societal refactoring (changing the laws around business structures and how they're formed).