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This spells out in black and white that Jobs was a pretty shameless crook. We already knew this based on Apple and its peers getting caught colluding to wage fi

This spells out in black and white that Jobs was a pretty shameless crook. We already knew this based on Apple and its peers getting caught colluding to wage fix, and the settlement that came from this, but this is a great reminder. I really feel like Jobs gets too much credit. He was smart, but he also rode on the shoulders of multiple giants in his career, and he got lucky several times. The cult of Jobs was convinced that Apple would go downhill in his absence, but the company has quantifiably done wildly better since Cook took over.

yapyap 2y ago
I agree on the premise of Jobs being overrated, Apple was the classic right spot right time company and that is not to say he was not a good leader in that situation but that _is_ to say that Apple could just as well have succeeded under a different leader with different antics.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mrcwinn 2y ago
  It sure takes an awful lot of hard work to be in the right place at the right time. Foolish, both of you. Vision matters and Jobs had one. If it were all just meaningless fate, really there’s no reason to get out of bed or even comment on HN.
- ericd 2y ago
  Who would it have succeeded as well with? Because they tried hiring a few CEOs, and far from succeeding, they were very nearly bankrupt. After bringing him back, they worked their way to being the most valuable public company. He's one of the clearest examples of the value of a good CEO.
  - mullingitover 2y ago
    We remember the comeback, but we forget that he was kicked out of the company because he nearly ran it into the ground when he was in charge the first time. You can't put all the blame on the CEOs who followed him for failing to clean up the mess he created in the first place any more than you can give him all the credit for the company's performance long after he departed. Furthermore, he was only brought back with a turnaround plan that was created up in no small part by his financial backers, and the C-suite he arrived with included Tim Cook. I'm convinced Cook's housecleaning on their supply chain and product lines was what actually saved the company. They might've delayed bankruptcy with a hit like the iMac, but only for a short while.
    - jen20 2y ago
      > the C-suite he arrived with included Tim Cook. Untrue - Cook was hired from HP in March of 1998. Jobs was interim CEO of Apple from February of 1997.
      - mullingitover 2y ago
        I stand corrected. Still, he was on the turnaround team very early on.
        ericd 2y ago
        Yeah, my understanding is that that was one of the most impactful things Jobs did, aggressively clean house and recruit/promote a good leadership team. And they trimmed the product offerings, killed off the clone program, and a bunch of other stuff to improve their focus.
greenthrow 2y ago
We are now in the midst of a multi-year, industry wide wage fixing effort. I hope people speak with as much fervor about the CEOs currently trying to suppress wages as they do about Jobs.
- paganel 2y ago
  I'm not from SV, but are you talking about the companies from down there? And if yes, I suppose it includes some of the FAANGs.
- mullingitover 2y ago
  This difference this time is that they learned their lesson. Not the lesson of not engaging in corrupt business practices, but not to get caught: there's likely a Signal group chat they use with burner phones. Arguably the best piece of evidence against Jobs mental acuity was the fact that he just openly engaging in a criminal conspiracy using the company's email servers.
theshackleford 2y ago
> The cult of Jobs was convinced that Apple would go downhill in his absence This claim is about as useful as saying "All HN users think X."
breadwinner 2y ago
> the company has quantifiably done wildly better since Cook took over How much of that is because the company moved along the winning trajectory already set by Steve Jobs?
paulpauper 2y ago
who hasn't ridden on shoulders of giants but the company has quantifiably done wildly better since Cook took over. due to all the stuff mr. jobs had done.
Nevermark 2y ago
I feel like there is a strong tendency to average out people’s contributions. Your comment is on the milder scale, so this is only tangentially a response to you. — With highly related choices, it can make sense to add & cancel moral choices. Good & bad behavior are like positives & negatives. But life and incidents are not simple sums. Relations between choices & their outcomes are highly nonlinear. They can have thresholds, be multiplicative, exponential, roots or logarithmic relations. Choices & their outcomes rarely simply add or cancel. Jobs was an incredibly prolific innovator whose personal characteristics often translated to important advances in the quality of computing, independent of the general industry’s shared march of compounding quantity/efficiency of computing. No amount of moral lapses not on that scale cancel any of that. At the same time, his positive contributions, no matter how large, don’t cancel out his poor behaviors. Like a polynomial, or more complicated algebraic or calculus expressions, it takes several “numbers” to characterize human being’s contributions. — The worst cases of overly reductive thinking happen in politics. The prevalence of judging people and peoples’ behaviors as simply net positive or negative, and their opponents as simply the other sign is endemic. The result creates hard high-contrast divisions in ideologies & loyalties that don’t reflect reality much at all. But over reduction also appears to be a common reflex when judging innovators.
heresie-dabord 2y ago
> shameless crook Over a decade after his death, there is plenty of observable, egregious shamelessness and brigandry in the world. Jobs was a successful player in a big, bruising corporate world. Jobs was ruthless in business and cruel in some personal relationships. But he had skills and talent too. Apple wouldn't exist today without his leadership through a critical juncture. He was also a driving force for usability in products. Notice how no one seems to promote usability anymore. (We do however pay lip-service to sustainability.) I never liked the cult of idolatry that developed around the person. Comedian Bill Burr offers the best excoriation of that phenemonon. [0] "New phone can't fit the old charger? This is your hero?!" [0] _ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I
- mullingitover 2y ago
  > Notice how no one seems to promote usability anymore. The million UX designers in the world right now: "What?"

yapyap 2y ago

I agree on the premise of Jobs being overrated, Apple was the classic right spot right time company and that is not to say he was not a good leader in that situation but that _is_ to say that Apple could just as well have succeeded under a different leader with different antics.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mrcwinn 2y ago
It sure takes an awful lot of hard work to be in the right place at the right time. Foolish, both of you. Vision matters and Jobs had one. If it were all just meaningless fate, really there’s no reason to get out of bed or even comment on HN.
ericd 2y ago
Who would it have succeeded as well with? Because they tried hiring a few CEOs, and far from succeeding, they were very nearly bankrupt. After bringing him back, they worked their way to being the most valuable public company. He's one of the clearest examples of the value of a good CEO.
- mullingitover 2y ago
  We remember the comeback, but we forget that he was kicked out of the company because he nearly ran it into the ground when he was in charge the first time. You can't put all the blame on the CEOs who followed him for failing to clean up the mess he created in the first place any more than you can give him all the credit for the company's performance long after he departed. Furthermore, he was only brought back with a turnaround plan that was created up in no small part by his financial backers, and the C-suite he arrived with included Tim Cook. I'm convinced Cook's housecleaning on their supply chain and product lines was what actually saved the company. They might've delayed bankruptcy with a hit like the iMac, but only for a short while.
  - jen20 2y ago
    > the C-suite he arrived with included Tim Cook. Untrue - Cook was hired from HP in March of 1998. Jobs was interim CEO of Apple from February of 1997.
    - mullingitover 2y ago
      I stand corrected. Still, he was on the turnaround team very early on.
      - ericd 2y ago
        Yeah, my understanding is that that was one of the most impactful things Jobs did, aggressively clean house and recruit/promote a good leadership team. And they trimmed the product offerings, killed off the clone program, and a bunch of other stuff to improve their focus.

greenthrow 2y ago

We are now in the midst of a multi-year, industry wide wage fixing effort. I hope people speak with as much fervor about the CEOs currently trying to suppress wages as they do about Jobs.

paganel 2y ago
I'm not from SV, but are you talking about the companies from down there? And if yes, I suppose it includes some of the FAANGs.
mullingitover 2y ago
This difference this time is that they learned their lesson. Not the lesson of not engaging in corrupt business practices, but not to get caught: there's likely a Signal group chat they use with burner phones. Arguably the best piece of evidence against Jobs mental acuity was the fact that he just openly engaging in a criminal conspiracy using the company's email servers.

theshackleford 2y ago

> The cult of Jobs was convinced that Apple would go downhill in his absence This claim is about as useful as saying "All HN users think X."

breadwinner 2y ago

> the company has quantifiably done wildly better since Cook took over How much of that is because the company moved along the winning trajectory already set by Steve Jobs?

paulpauper 2y ago

who hasn't ridden on shoulders of giants but the company has quantifiably done wildly better since Cook took over. due to all the stuff mr. jobs had done.

Nevermark 2y ago

I feel like there is a strong tendency to average out people’s contributions. Your comment is on the milder scale, so this is only tangentially a response to you. — With highly related choices, it can make sense to add & cancel moral choices. Good & bad behavior are like positives & negatives. But life and incidents are not simple sums. Relations between choices & their outcomes are highly nonlinear. They can have thresholds, be multiplicative, exponential, roots or logarithmic relations. Choices & their outcomes rarely simply add or cancel. Jobs was an incredibly prolific innovator whose personal characteristics often translated to important advances in the quality of computing, independent of the general industry’s shared march of compounding quantity/efficiency of computing. No amount of moral lapses not on that scale cancel any of that. At the same time, his positive contributions, no matter how large, don’t cancel out his poor behaviors. Like a polynomial, or more complicated algebraic or calculus expressions, it takes several “numbers” to characterize human being’s contributions. — The worst cases of overly reductive thinking happen in politics. The prevalence of judging people and peoples’ behaviors as simply net positive or negative, and their opponents as simply the other sign is endemic. The result creates hard high-contrast divisions in ideologies & loyalties that don’t reflect reality much at all. But over reduction also appears to be a common reflex when judging innovators.

heresie-dabord 2y ago

> shameless crook Over a decade after his death, there is plenty of observable, egregious shamelessness and brigandry in the world. Jobs was a successful player in a big, bruising corporate world. Jobs was ruthless in business and cruel in some personal relationships. But he had skills and talent too. Apple wouldn't exist today without his leadership through a critical juncture. He was also a driving force for usability in products. Notice how no one seems to promote usability anymore. (We do however pay lip-service to sustainability.) I never liked the cult of idolatry that developed around the person. Comedian Bill Burr offers the best excoriation of that phenemonon. [0] "New phone can't fit the old charger? This is your hero?!" [0] _ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I

mullingitover 2y ago
> Notice how no one seems to promote usability anymore. The million UX designers in the world right now: "What?"