3 ms·

I assume that the Cork development team was built up before Jobs took over, which also explains why they were all laid off shortly after the author quit. Jobs p

by rob74 2y ago

I assume that the Cork development team was built up before Jobs took over, which also explains why they were all laid off shortly after the author quit. Jobs probably wanted to have all (significant) software development happening in Cupertino? If he were still around, he would probably hate home office/remote work and join Elon Musk in the "people can have all the home office they want as long as they work 40 hours per week in the office" camp...

leoc 2y ago
One wrinkle here is that Jobs himself was by all accounts the person most responsible for Apple opening a Cork facility in 1980, and for whatever Apple and the Irish government promised each other as part of that deal. There's some indication that Irish governments were unhappy with what they got from it https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/state-papers-macsharry-objected-to-additional-support-for-apple-in-cork-1.3735662 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/state-papers-... but it's hard to be sure exactly what happened there: Apple was probably not in the best shape to carry out ambitious relocation plans for much of the '80s, for one thing. While I don't have boundless love for either Jobs or RTO mandates, and as an Irishman I would very much rather not see Cork getting the dirty end of the stick, I have to defend Jobs' desire for centralisation a bit here. There's considerable evidence that having nearly all the central product and design people within easy reach of SJ stalking around 1 Infinite Loop did in fact work very well for Apple in the second Jobs era. Maybe it was still a wrong decision, despite appearances, but you can hardly say that it was an eccentric one. (And in 2000 the tools for offsite or multi-site collaboration weren't even as not-entirely-great as they are now.) It was other people who brought in the madcap element of trying to hide things from the boss, not Jobs himself.
- jacobr1 2y ago
  All else being equal, for team-based, creative, knowledge work, having everyone collocated is more productive. But not all is equal. You can't necessarily attract the all the talent. It doesn't scale without extremely disciplined organizational and physical space design - working remotely in the office, is the more common norm. Your team is spread over different locations and buildings anyway so you aren't really working locally in practice. Strong communication and collaboration practices are what dominate - so just having people together in one place and expecting osmosis doesn't beat good async tooling and discussion practices (like those from the best OSS projects).
kergonath 2y ago
> Jobs probably wanted to have all (significant) software development happening in Cupertino? Looks like it. There were still people working on iSync, iCal (and presumably software for the first iPhone) in an office in Paris. I think that ended in 2005.
eddieroger 2y ago
In an alternate and very charitable timeline, after being healed of his cancer by top doctors, Jobs grows greatly in love with science and medicine, and faced with the covid pandemic, makes Apple permanently remote work (with office option for those who want it), and donates sums of money to bootstrapping vaccine production for all the world. A boy can dream.

by rob74 2y ago

leoc 2y ago

One wrinkle here is that Jobs himself was by all accounts the person most responsible for Apple opening a Cork facility in 1980, and for whatever Apple and the Irish government promised each other as part of that deal. There's some indication that Irish governments were unhappy with what they got from it https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/state-papers-macsharry-objected-to-additional-support-for-apple-in-cork-1.3735662 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/state-papers-... but it's hard to be sure exactly what happened there: Apple was probably not in the best shape to carry out ambitious relocation plans for much of the '80s, for one thing. While I don't have boundless love for either Jobs or RTO mandates, and as an Irishman I would very much rather not see Cork getting the dirty end of the stick, I have to defend Jobs' desire for centralisation a bit here. There's considerable evidence that having nearly all the central product and design people within easy reach of SJ stalking around 1 Infinite Loop did in fact work very well for Apple in the second Jobs era. Maybe it was still a wrong decision, despite appearances, but you can hardly say that it was an eccentric one. (And in 2000 the tools for offsite or multi-site collaboration weren't even as not-entirely-great as they are now.) It was other people who brought in the madcap element of trying to hide things from the boss, not Jobs himself.

jacobr1 2y ago
All else being equal, for team-based, creative, knowledge work, having everyone collocated is more productive. But not all is equal. You can't necessarily attract the all the talent. It doesn't scale without extremely disciplined organizational and physical space design - working remotely in the office, is the more common norm. Your team is spread over different locations and buildings anyway so you aren't really working locally in practice. Strong communication and collaboration practices are what dominate - so just having people together in one place and expecting osmosis doesn't beat good async tooling and discussion practices (like those from the best OSS projects).

kergonath 2y ago

> Jobs probably wanted to have all (significant) software development happening in Cupertino? Looks like it. There were still people working on iSync, iCal (and presumably software for the first iPhone) in an office in Paris. I think that ended in 2005.

eddieroger 2y ago

In an alternate and very charitable timeline, after being healed of his cancer by top doctors, Jobs grows greatly in love with science and medicine, and faced with the covid pandemic, makes Apple permanently remote work (with office option for those who want it), and donates sums of money to bootstrapping vaccine production for all the world. A boy can dream.