17 ms·

You are not Steve Jobs

616 points by OafTobark 14y ago

calinet6 14y ago
tl;dr: "And that's a damn good thing."
- arbuge 14y ago
  A bit extreme. No doubt he had many warts, but few would disagree that his net contribution to society was enormously positive.
  - andrewljohnson 14y ago
    A great many people seem to think we'd have been better off without Steve actually. They will tell you Steve/Apple set back the free software movement, and brought dictatorship to the world of software, when the web used to rule with anarchic democracy. They would tell you he sells closed devices that neuter people's creativity, and that the devices are hard to hack or dispose of. I think he was a brilliant artist who made technology less imposing.
    - vor_ 14y ago
      I think a great many other people--mainstream customers who don't read websites like Hacker News--would argue that they don't care about the free software movement or hacking devices. They think people using the term "dictatorship" in reference to computer software are extremists. They just want Shit That Works.
  - pekk 14y ago
    He made money by selling things. Good for him, but that doesn't make him a Saint.
  - olegbl 14y ago
    I guess I'm one of the few. While he headed a company that spearheaded internal innovation, it also stifled external innovation. He was also a jerk, as well documented.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - calinet6 14y ago
    How much of it was Steve Jobs, and how much of it was Apple's company. Surely he had a huge influence on the company, but there were a lot of people who did.
  - obviouslygreen 14y ago
    I definitely don't agree with this. Jobs' contribution to a whole lot of wallets, most of them already fat, was extremely positive. His role in many contributions to the advancement of technology was also significant. "Society" is something he did not contribute much at all to. Workers' rights, work environments, corporate culture, none of these things benefited from Jobs at all; his contributions to them were largely negative.
- jonursenbach 14y ago
  Can we stop with the tl;dr's?
  - calinet6 14y ago
    Heaven forbid we explain things succinctly. Might as well just not put titles on things either, amiright?
johnrob 14y ago
Maybe the title should be "You don't want to be Steve Jobs" instead of "You are not Steve Jobs".
keiferski 14y ago
There are equal amounts of "Steve was awesome" and "Steve was an ass" stories. Conclusion? He was a human being, just like the rest of us.
- jarcoal 14y ago
  Exactly right. The best thing we can do is learn what made him great and what made him not great. I really treasure the man because he had a lot of both. Just more to learn from.
- mtct 14y ago
  He was an awesome ass.
- tsurantino 14y ago
  I don't know about you but that seems to be an over-simplification. You can find some pretty strong trends from these stories and, while I'm not quick to derive value judgment, Steve did exhibit a distinct personality. It's not an accident that stories like this are, in some sense, predictable.
  - rmrfrmrf 14y ago
    Any information you consume about a human being is going to be an over-simplification. What's really important is making sure that you're staying critical of the sources of this information. I also think that you're missing the broader implication of your parent post: Steve didn't wake up every morning with the intent of embodying some kind of persona -- he just was. Sure, he may have done well to have some training by an HR expert on how to communicate more effectively, but he was just managing a company the way that 1) he knew how and 2) in a way that brought Apple success. What I admire about Steve's Apple is that it was able to maintain a very clear vision and point of view despite growing exponentially. Look at huge corporations like IBM, HP, Microsoft, etc. What are there goals? Go to IBM's website and try to piece together a vision out of 80000 disparate research projects. HP makes...computers? printers? calculators? fax machines? cameras? Microsoft is a maker of operating systems, but are infamous for their spaghetti-style auxiliary product lines (throw it on the wall and see what sticks). These are three well-respected companies, and I don't know what the hell any of the 3 are about. Apple, by contrast? They're about delivering sleek computing products that are accessible and easy to use. Ask anyone on the street what Apple's mission is and they'd be able to give you some variation on good-looking products that are easy to use.
immy 14y ago
Very ego-less of Steve to have put so much trust in the chain of command.
zalzane 14y ago
Absolutely everything I have read about Steve Jobs paints him as a narcissistic asshole who is impossible to work with. How is it that he was so successful and how did apple become the behemoth it is today if the man at the wheel was so insufferable? I want to believe that this has only been a recent development and that he used to be an easier person to deal with in apple's early days, because to be quite frank the only way I could see such an individual being so successful with the attitude he had was if he was just riding the coattails of other forces in the company. Hopefully someone can enlighten me as to how this kind of person could lead a successful company when everyone fears him and doesn't question anything he says.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  You can read about some Steve Jobs anecdotes during the original Macintosh era at folklore.org http://folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&characters=Steve%20Jobs&detail=medium http://folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&cha...
- calinet6 14y ago
  Perhaps because the things he said were right, and he wasn't afraid to say them. Other than that, I don't think being an asshole is a good strategy in general.
  - dave809 14y ago
    In OP's anecdote he wasn't right
- bitops 14y ago
  > How is it that he was so successful and how did Apple become the behemoth it is today if the man at the wheel was so insufferable? Strangely, it was partially because he was so insufferable that Apple became as successful as it is today. Steve Jobs was notorious for being in-your-face brutal about the quality of work being done simply not being good enough. Crying, screaming, throwing tantrums - all these histrionics went hand-in-hand with that. What's interesting about this is that Steve had two things that most people lack: (1) vision in spades. And more importantly, very good vision. (2) an ability to push people beyond their limits by berating them, but then having really amazing work come out of that process. Steve Jobs was awe-inspiring because he could dress people down and grill them on details that most other people either didn't notice or would gloss over. If you read many of the books about Steve Jobs, there's a common refrain said by many of those who worked under him. "I'd never work for him again, but he pushed me to do things I never knew I was capable of." [EDIT: forgot to add] The reason Steve was able to get away with all this negative behavior is that it produced amazing results. But for most people, being so belligerent and nasty without having an amazing vision to back it up will not get you very far. And, for the most part, such people are completely egomaniacal. (Steve was too, he just happened to be right a lot).
maxheadroom513 14y ago
Thank you for writing this. Substitute Steve Jobs -> Tony Fadell and Apple -> Nest Labs and you've got almost the experience I had. We have to stop enabling these sociopaths and vote with our feet (immediately) when this stuff happens.
- calinet6 14y ago
  Agreed, Sociopaths might have extreme qualities which might enable extreme outcomes, but that doesn't mean we need to enable them. It is overwhelmingly unhealthy and negative for anyone connected to them. Been there.
- GuiA 14y ago
  Interesting. I interviewed at Nest and was on the way to getting an offer, but in the end ended up doing something completely different. Do you have any writings about Fadell?
JDGM 14y ago
I didn't think I was going to like this from the opening paragraph but she quickly won me over. My take away is "You are not Steve Jobs. You are not a massive arsehole!" - pretty much in agreement with calinet6. However, actually it's a lot richer than that. I love this paragraph in particular: "Now, regardless of whether no one in the inner sanctum of dudes-that-Steve-listened-to-at-the-time told him all the things we told our bosses, or who-up-the-chain-of-command was not brave enough to suggest we do something not-Apple-like — this was the system that Steve created. He made himself so fearful and terrible that an entire group of amazing, talented, hard working people, ended up getting screamed at wrongfully. It was his fault that the MobileMe launch went so poorly, not ours." Even if that's not even remotely true (I wouldn't know), I find it a good lesson that a boss could be so terrifying that no-one wants to be honest with them and this flows down the hierarchy to the point of dysfunction. I've heard of it before, but I like the clarity of explanation this nth time around.
- exodust 14y ago
  Agreed. And I think the article is less about "Steve Jobs" and more about the lessons to be learned from high-level project difficulties, and the people on the ground caught up in the line of fire when things don't go to plan. Or, when blame is unleashed unjustly from management, whose plan was flawed in the beginning, or whose chain of command failed to notice the red flags raised along the way. The other article on her blog is also worth a look, and a good reminder about communication in the workplace. "How to handle conflict".... https://medium.com/career-pathing/a713b75ad9bd https://medium.com/career-pathing/a713b75ad9bd
SkittlesNTwix 14y ago
I believe he was successful in spite of his negative qualities, not because of them. What I mean by this is that we shouldn't worship his negative traits and spin them somehow to be positive qualities in a leader, such as some people have done. He was very much a human being. A highly-intelligent man and visionary in the right place at the right time, surrounded by the right people, making a lot of good, and a few poor, choices. Don't try to reverse-engineer his success so as to duplicate it.
l0c0b0x 14y ago
I'm sorry, but you worked at Apple (doesn't matter if it had been only for a week) and you didn't know who it's CEO was? You worked at Apple, and you didn't know who STEVE JOBS was? or had seen a picture/video of him somewhere? That does NOT compute! There are plenty of 'Steve' stories (www.folklore.org) out there. Conclusions vary from person to person as to what kind of person was Steve Jobs, but most people wouldn't taken back the time they worked with him/or Apple. Apple's/his contributions to computer history really outweigh the means it took to get there. Sometimes it just takes a jerk (most-likely insane), human being to push people to achieve extra-ordinary things.
- ritchiea 14y ago
  Absolutely absurd. She clearly knew who Steve Jobs was. She probably just didn't know what Steve Jobs looked like the year she got the job. There are a great number of people who I know by reputation, know by amazing reputation, but I have no idea what they look like. I know who Larry Page is, I have no idea what he looks like. I have a really really vague idea of what Sergey Brin looks like. But really, who cares what they look like?
  - l0c0b0x 14y ago
    She got the job in 2008... My point is, if you were to get a job at xyz company, wouldn't one of your initial moves be to find out who the major players were at your new job were/looked-like? What the environment/culture is? Some research would have suggested that she might expect this kind of behavior from a certain individual? I don't have to number the many reasons WHY you would want to do some research, or care to. Why is that absurd?
    - wpietri 14y ago
      Knowing somebody's bio photo may not help you when they cut in front of you in the lunch line. Recognition cues there are very different. Also, recognition is a lot about context. When you see him in a black turtleneck on stage, you're primed. I was once visiting a pal Google and ran across Eric Schmidt. Turns out his office was right next to a development team. I could have easily picked him out of a set of photos, but I wasn't expecting him to walk out of a small office in a random part of the building. It wasn't until he was walking away that I said, "Wait a minute. Was that..." And that was seeing his face, rather than the back of his head.
danilocampos 14y ago
I'm often frustrated at folks who take the wrong lesson from Steve Jobs. As this piece describes, they look at the dude and take away that they should be jerks because that's how things get done. And that's a terrible lesson. In my read, as a guy who's been following Apple since he was a kid, there's one principal lesson for leaders and entrepreneurs: If you care about making exactly what you want, make sure you're the boss. That's it. You can define the agenda, you can get the right people, you can motivate them according to your style. You get to win all the design arguments. You get to slip the deadlines for quality. You can definitely be a jerk in that context, but you don't have to.
- monksy 14y ago
  I would argue that there are plenty of better, and less publicised, examples of people who are passionate about their work than Steve Jobs.
  - jonnathanson 14y ago
    Steve Jobs is such a striking example because he was highly unusual in the business world, and especially in the tech business, and because he succeeded on such a massive scale. He was basically an artist. I don't mean that as a fawning compliment; I mean that as a description of his personality: for better and for worse. He was driven by a relentless aesthetic vision, he worked himself up into near-manic episodes, he was emotionally labile, and he was perfectionistic. These are qualities you usually find in the arts. I've worked with and around writers and directors for most of my career, and I've seen "Steve Jobs" in a lot of the more successful ones. Consider the example of Stanley Kubrick, or, more recently, David O. Russell. Now, go watch the infamous David O. Russell temper tantrum video on YouTube. You could just about substitute Steve Jobs for David in that video and believe it.
    - zjmichen 14y ago
      I don't agree with the idea of the "mad artist," an elite diamond-in-the-rough character who cloisters himself away on manic episodes of hyper-creativity, becomes an alcoholic, and emerges with a genius piece of Art. Art is a slog. Artists are the ones with enough endurance to churn out shit day after day, refining the best of what they produce. The best artists are social, because that's where the most ideas flow freely. Most artists I know (writers, musicians, graphic artists) are like this. Perpetuating the myth of the great lone genius is elitist, which is a discriminatory and dangerous ideology.
SurfScore 14y ago
Its a testament to his legacy that these "You are/not like/dislike Steve Jobs" articles keep popping up. Jobs is what you call an EXTREME OUTLIER. People like him come around once every 30 or 40 years. You don't compare outliers to the mean, because they skew everything. Nothing anyone ever writes about what to do or what not to do like Steve Jobs is relevant, because he was so far off from any of the data points we have or probably ever will have to matter. You get people like this in history; ones that seemingly do so much wrong yet change the entire world. I don't know if we'll ever have a concrete explanation for it, but for some reason the bad things ARE part of the reason for their success. Another more common example of this is Jim Morrison (or any really good drug addict musician). Do you have to be a drug addict to be a musician? Of course not. And I seriously doubt they're gonna start dropping acid at Juilliard. But somehow there's a few of them that make it work, and I would argue that if Jim Morrison wasn't a drug addict he wouldn't have been as successful as he was. If Jobs wasn't such an asshole, he wouldn't be Steve Jobs. There's some mix assholishness and genius (that he got absolutely perfect) that creates a legendary figure.
- mturmon 14y ago
  Agree. Pursuing your Morrison analogy: so many artistic and literary figures are similarly hard to characterize. Polarizing their colleagues and fans, causing denunciations, feuds, embarrassment. Difficult to compare to anyone (i.e., outliers, as you say). Think of someone like Norman Mailer, or Gore Vidal. These people are not role models! They don't have to be that way, but it's a lot more likely. After they are gone, asking "were they a good person" is usually not the right question (unless you were close to them). If you know them mainly through their work, the right question is, "do you value their work?" Here's the relevant quote from Auden: Time that with this strange excuse Pardoned Kipling and his views, And will pardon Paul Claudel, Pardons him for writing well.
  - exodust 14y ago
    Since when does taking drugs and going to heaps of parties, writing classic songs, performing in a band, learning and playing instruments, reading and studying literature, singing, having lots of sex, writing poetry, recording albums, and inspiring millions make someone a "bad person". Just in case anyone is unclear, the answer to the question "was Jim Morrison a good person" is YES.
robterrell 14y ago
As a general rule, if you're a CEO and you find yourself assembling a group of people who don't directly report to you, so you can tell/yell them how they failed you... stop yourself. The people who failed your are (a) your direct reports and (b) you yourself. Figure out how the correct information didn't get to you, or how you ignored it, and fix that problem. There's zero chance a roomful of individual contributors all got it wrong at the same time -- the only way they all got it wrong was that they lacked the proper leadership.
danso 14y ago
Lets not forget that it's hard to imagine Steve being successful if he hadn't paired with the equally extraordinary Woz. Yes, Jobs got along just fine without Woz, but only after the Apple ][ gave him enough runway to continue pushing his vision. Jobs was special, but he still made errors that would've tanked lesser companies. It should also be noted that Jobs should be given credit for dragging a reluctant Woz into the spotlight..their estrangement is to me one of the most bizarre and saddest mysteries about Apple.
onemorepassword 14y ago
Most of this article, except the cafeteria anecdote, isn't about Jobs, or about megalomaniac CEO's in general. It's about utter failure of middle management, and how they can totally fuck both sides of the company. The lesson here is not "don't be an asshole" (although you shouldn't), it's "don't hire ass-kissing assholes".
- webwright 14y ago
  Disagree. If you kick middle managers in the stomach every time they tell you something you don't want to hear, they stop being honest with you.
  - rmrfrmrf 14y ago
    In which case they should get fired. That's totally unacceptable behavior. If middle management is more concerned about saving face than delivering honest reports, it's their problem.
bschiett 14y ago
Who the fuck is erin caton? No tech background, yet tech manager
- jrockway 14y ago
  Does it matter? The point is the same whether she's a programmer or not. And she makes it clear in the article that she's a PM, not a SWE.
  - bschiett 14y ago
    It does matter a lot, think about it.
    - consz 14y ago
      Why does it matter so much? There are tons of articles on the front page of HN from no-names.
      - bschiett 14y ago
        Exactly.
        consz 14y ago
        So you agree that it doesn't matter who the author is?
    - aria 14y ago
      Can't argue with logic like that.
- aria 14y ago
  How dare she have an opinion about management? Seriously. I'm glad you're here to police such matters.
- homosaur 14y ago
  Who the fuck are you? Just some dude who didn't write an article.
ricardobeat 14y ago
Many, if not most of Apple's innovations are not Steve's ideas, but from someone working under him. He seems to have learned the wrong lesson. From the outside, the MobileMe fiasco looks like a standard failed software project, where nobody steps up to say the truth and management doesn't understand/care what's going on. How a huge group inside Apple got to that point is anybody's guess (and would probably make for a great lesson in project management).
cromwellian 14y ago
As a counterpoint to the "you must be an asshole to be a successful leader" line of thinking, I put forward Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Sergey, et al. I don't think one can say they haven't helmed a successful company and commanded respect, but they are also not infamous for throwing angry tantrums and yelling at people. Larry's practically so soft spoken you can't hear him sometimes. :)
gnnr 14y ago
Ugh, though instead of through. Proofread
acabal 14y ago
I thought this was going to be about people who took the Steve Jobs route of design: "I know better than you, you'll use my design and like it, or go to hell." People see Jobs' success in design and think they too can be successful by being merciless dictators of their design vision. Unfortunately 99% of people don't have Jobs' talent and they end up messing up their projects. (Gnome 3 and Unity, I'm looking at you, though this terrible phenomenon isn't isolated to those projects.) 37 Signals is also guilty of spreading that mindset, perhaps more so because they aggressively blog and write about it all the time and because they are (or at least were) startup darlings.
- annymsMthd 14y ago
  I've been in this situation before. The my way or the highway attitude is a bad mindset to have when managing engineers. Skilled engineers are free thinkers and will push back on bad design. If someone says they can write something better than your spagetti code you shouldn't yell at them or make them feel inferior. You should allow them to build a system that will be clean and maintainable for the sake of all engineers that have to work on the codebase. Good leaders should know humility and when to admit they are wrong.
- Cardeck1 14y ago
  That's a huge mistake.It means your not a natural and talented CEO or whatever job you aspire to get.A true leader will set a certain path not because he saw it at someone else but because he feels it's the right way.And most importantly what he feels is usually right.That instinct that very few people have, something that cannot be learned. And you know what?I strongly believe that if Steve Jobs would've tried to become a technical guy he would've ruined his talent.Maybe some will not understand what I am saying but I believe it is true.
ScottBurson 14y ago
This puts a really interesting spin on the MobileMe story. I wonder what would have happened if they had yelled back at Steve while he was dressing them down. I also wonder who turned down their request for a more incremental launch. I'm not enough of an Apple-watcher to know what the org chart looked like, but could it have been Scott Forstall?
- yoda_sl 14y ago
  No it was not Scott... Scott was too busy with iPhone launch. The VP in charge was John Martin former Microsoft and Starbucks... he came at .Mac with a bunch of ex-Microsoft and try to run the place most likely like Microsfot, but even worst only trying to show nice UX/UI without caring about performance. Project Managers/Engineers/QA leads did their job and reported to their upper management (Director and then VP John Martin) but they instead decided to silence everyone and kick a bunch of engineers out of the group.
Zimahl 14y ago
The cafeteria anecdote is interesting because I've been in line in a cafeteria with a billionaire (former) CEO - Phil Knight. Very personable (he certainly didn't cut in line) and he seemed comfortable in his Nikes and jeans. Knight built his empire quite differently than Jobs. While it's not great being a developer at Nike, the company's atmosphere is somewhat laid back. Things still get done and they make a lot of money doing it.
- yoda_sl 14y ago
  I have been many times in the Apple cafeteria back when Steve was there, and I never saw him cutting lines as described. I am not saying that it did not happen, but I will not make it a statement that he was always like that neither
  - jfb 14y ago
    I never saw him cut in line, either; he was always in a hurry, and could be short, but I didn't see him pull rank, ever. He did almost run me over once.
yoster 14y ago
This lady would be shell-shocked and would need therapy if she ever went into construction. Not just the "boss", anyone that is not an apprentice will be yelling, cursing, and putting down your work on a regular basis.
- aria 14y ago
  There's no indication that she couldn't endure the silly dress down, just that it was a dick thing to do. Also, lady's been through a ton of shit, including cervical cancer (https://medium.com/lady-business/67303ff64202 https://medium.com/lady-business/67303ff64202). So yeah, I think she could handle a little yelling. I'd do a little research before I put someone down. Guard your ignorance.
  - yoster 14y ago
    So she got a std, went through three procedures to get rid of the cancer, and you think that's a ton of shit? Try telling someone who is going through chemo if three procedures is a ton of shit. GUARD YOUR IGNORANCE.
    - aria 14y ago
      I think the most mature thing to do here is get into a pissing match about whose cancer is worse rather than just agree that it's all probably worse than being yelled at. Let's meet under the bridge to discuss.
m0wfo 14y ago
This somewhat attempts to contradict the Machiavellian insight that "it is better to be feared than loved" but in an ideal world, I'd have to agree.
itsmeok 14y ago
1) How can you be in tech and not know Steve jobs, more so given that you work at apple? 2) Steve was a dick... most of the times, especially when he wanted his way. nothing new. 3) You gripe should be with spineless middle management, not CEOs.
- moron4hire 14y ago
  leadership is always responsible for the failings of the team. Steve Jobs most likely surrounded himself with sycophants.
- aria 14y ago
  Um..Shouldn't Steve had yelled at said middle management or at least sussed it out before yelling at engineers?
- aria 14y ago
  Also, she didn't know what he looked like that particular year. Not who he was. Some people just have incomplete photo shrines.
abalone 14y ago
This reads like sour grapes. If it really was Steve Jobs's "fault that the MobileMe launch went so poorly" because of "the system that he created," and her team was really as "completely kick-ass" as she says it was, then why has Apple had so much success with so many projects run exactly the same way? The problem with MobileMe was the engineering management, not the system. If anything this shows how vulnerable the Apple "system" is to the quality of the people they hire, and why they spend so much effort trying to hire and hold on to A-grade people. That just doesn't jive with the tired lore of Jobs being an asshole all the time. They wouldn't be able to hold on to folks like they have.
- tomelders 14y ago
  I'm not so sure. Apple hires the best and their evaluations of new candidates are rigorous, so I doubt they have idiots running things. We all know there's a lot of the worlds best talent at Apple. But they struggle a lot with the web services they've tried to create. Mobile me, iCloud, game centre, ping, Maps; these have all fallen short of Apples promises. It's a repeating pattern that to me indicates a culture issue inside Apple.
  - abalone 14y ago
    If it was a culture issue it would extend to the successful product teams as well. Those failures point to the people in charge of those groups, not the Apple culture. Unless by Apple culture we mean giving people lots of responsibility and autonomy.. then, yes. But that's also the key to their successes.
    - fancyketchup 14y ago
      Is it possible that a culture which is effective at producing "good" outcomes in one domain is ineffective at producing "good" outcomes in another? Should managers use the same techniques to manage steelworkers as they do software engineers? Edit: steel works -> steelworkers
      - 14y ago
itsmeok 14y ago
1) How can you be in tech and not know Steve jobs, more so given that you work at apple? 2) Steve was a dick... most of the times, especially when he wanted his way. nothing new. 3) You gripe should be with spineless middle management, not CEOs.
tomelders 14y ago
A lot of people want to be like Steve jobs, but have neither the balls to commit the way he did, nor the requisite skills to evaluate like he did. So as has been mentioned elsewhere, there's just a bunch of mediocre assholes out there who would be mediocre ass holes wether or not Jobs had ever existed, only he did, and that validates their shitty behaviour in their own inflated heads.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
lutusp 14y ago
Quote: "Even Steve Jobs wasn't Steve Jobs initially. He only outed himself as a giant jerk after he had a company that could afford to have a huge turnover, and he had a pile of minions that hero-worshiped him no matter what he did." This isn't true. I knew Steve when he and Steve Wozniak were starting Apple, in the late 1970s, and he (Jobs) was always intolerable -- it wasn't something that came out after he acquired power. I couldn't stand working with him, so, even though people at Apple asked me to stay, I wouldn't. (I eventually worked with Apple on various software projects, but not at Apple.) Steve Jobs had the worst interpersonal dynamics of anyone I have ever met. All that proves is that being perpetually rude and having terrible people skills isn't a deal-breaker in corporate America.
- dm8 14y ago
  I'm not questioning your judgement of Steve's personality. But it surprises me that person like Steve can be so successful. Moreover, how did he recruit and manage so many world class developers and designers? Not once. But thrice - Apple, NeXT and Pixar. What made Steve so successful when everyone who has worked with him thinks he was a jerk! I read his stories at - http://folklore.org/ http://folklore.org/ And he looks inspirational as well as jerk. But most of these stories are around creation of Mac. By that time, Apple was quite successful. I'm genuinely curios about how did he manage to recruit first 10 employees if he had terrible inter-personal skills.
  - omegaham 14y ago
    Have a good enough idea and a vision of how you can accomplish it, and you can find those 10 people regardless of how mean you are. After you succeed, you'll have thousands of people chomping at the bit to be associated with you, even if you're an asshole. Success makes everything okay, just like failure makes nothing okay.
    - lutusp 14y ago
      > Have a good enough idea and a vision of how you can accomplish it, and you can find those 10 people regardless of how mean you are. Steve Jobs didn't have the ideas. The ideas came from others -- Xerox PARC, Steve Wozniak, Jef Raskin, others, and to a lesser extent, me. But he did know how to sell other people's ideas and get people passionate about them. Promotion was his talent. He was the Willy Loman of the late 20th century.
a_p 14y ago
Steve Jobs was not a "hacker". [‡] He knew almost nothing about computer languages, computer architecture, and according to Neil Young, he listened to vinyl records at home [1] — which shows that he was ignorant of how audio quality works (see [2]). Steve did not contribute any original ideas or any important technological innovations. He claimed during his Stanford commencement speech that if Macintosh had not included eye pleasing typography, then computers would never have had typographically pleasing typefaces (because "Microsoft just copied Apple); this is ludicrous. In fact, Apple's software patents for digital typography added unnecessary difficulties. [3] Many people are unhappy about Apple culture of paranoia, litigation, and features that restrict user's freedoms that Steve created. Steve is known for having a great sense of design, but it seems that he only had taste in choosing among the good designs of others. Just look at the yacht he designed without Jonathan Ive's collaboration. [4] Many of you may say that I'm missing the point; that his ability to convince others of what was important and his "vision" is what made him great. My contention is that he appropriated other people's original ideas, and other people implemented his modifications. I'll admit that directing such efforts is not an easy thing to do, and most breakthroughs are improvements upon others' ideas. But it is very rare for the original creators to be alive and ignored while the modifier is celebrated with maudlin elegies. EDIT: The media's treatment of his death, President Obama's statement that he was a great "inventor", etc. was not his fault. But I think that when the deaths of people like Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy in the same month as Steve are ignored, then the world is suffering from a serious case of myopia. Ignoring Dennis and John while celebrating Steve is like fawning over the interior decorator with praise about the warmth of a house while ignoring the carpenter and contractor. Perhaps I should add that I am being critical of Steve because of an abundance of articles that did not focus on what he actually contributed, or criticized only his behavior towards others. Steve did seem to be able to hire, attract, or motivate as many talented engineers as he did drive away. This is a very hard thing for a CEO to do, and he deserves a large amount of credit for doing this. The talent that he helped attract and the products they create are responsible for Apple's stock price rise and continued profitability since his death. [‡] http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html (see definition of "hacker") [1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/01/146206585/steve-jobs-listened-to-vinyl-at-home-neil-young-says http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/01/146206585/ste... [2] http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html [3] http://www.freetype.org/patents.html http://www.freetype.org/patents.html [4] http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/21/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-yacht/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/21/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-yac...
euphoria83 14y ago
Cutting line to get food when you are the CEO and have a lot of stuff to get done is not too bad. Impolite, but not too bad. Think about all the perks that CEOs have. Good managements have weak links. You can either gather the courage to get your message to people who have the strength to listen to you and act on it, or you can keep cursing your boss and stick to you job. If the author would have gathered the courage to get her message (discretely) to a higher-up, she would have been not been remembering that mess-up. She might have either prevented it, or been fired.
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  That's BS. Have an assistant go get your food. You know, as one of the perks that you have as a CEO.
  - euphoria83 14y ago
    I appreciate your comment.
vampirechicken 14y ago
The story about the middle managers not approving ideas that they team was later excoriated for not having implemented is classic Corporate America.
MrBra 14y ago
and you don't know who you are calling 'you'
rockin 14y ago
And u are not my mom.
michaelochurch 14y ago
My first thought, which may be wrong, is: Steve Jobs being a prick didn't make him more effective. He was a prick because he was so effective that he had a +5 sigma trail of early success[0]. Because of his effectiveness, he could get away with being a prick. Once he'd established momentum, it was "part of his charm". [0] Sure, he got fired, but with a net worth of $500 million. Doesn't count. I'll let you fire me five times for a tenth of that. You can even do it in public. Hell, even have Donald Trump do it. While it's arrogant to say this, I think I have nearly as strong a design sense as him. I honed it studying the German style of board games, and eventually writing my own games (most were failures, but I learned from them and got good). I optimized a trick-taking card game (Ambition) to drive out card-luck. Not an easy thing to do. After years of playtesting and throwing out things that suck and rebalancing, the damn thing plays well. I was also a bit "youthful" in my self-promotion, got into some pretty awful flamewars on Wikipedia. I can't exactly hide that. I was 20. Shit happens. I certainly understand the mental "edge" that turns top designers into arrogant people. It's there, and it's part of what drives you to be great, but it also needs to be checked. Not because it's offensive or morally wrong to be a jerk, but because it makes you suck. If you're unaccountable for the quality of your ideas, you'll have bad ones. When people see Steve Jobs's behavior, they see what someone like me would be like without a few hefty doses of humility (some deserved, others not) in my 20s. ::shudder:: As a competent-or-better designer, I will say this: you don't have to be a jerk to get good designs. In fact, often what you do as a design lead is take in other peoples' ideas, and moderate. If you shut people out (or scare them) you're losing signal for no good reason. You need all the signal you can get, because good ideas come from everywhere. I think Jobs had one positive effect, which is that he burned away corporate bullshit. I'm sure that there was as much politicking under him as under any charismatic leader, but I think a Jobs-like figure makes it just too embarrassing to let corporate boondoggles get into the product. I'm sure there was just as much nastiness as anywhere else, but that the more successful lieutenants knew that a product that mirrored internal politics (Conway's Law, applied to design) should be shredded to pieces. So maybe it does take an asshole figure like Jobs to keep a corporation from devolving into design-blindness... not because design requires assholes, but because of what corporations are. That said, I can't stand the goddamn fake Steve Jobs's who use him to justify being an asshole. I am closer to Jobs than 99.5+ percent of them and not nearly as much of a jerk (I have my moments, but I fucking work like no one would believe on patience.) If you cite Steve Jobs to justify bad behavior (I've encountered this a million times) then you are an idiot because most people who behave badly are not Steve Jobs.
crusso 14y ago
I worked at Apple as a contractor after Steve's return. He was in front of me at the salad bar one day - he didn't cut, was just there ahead of me. I noticed he piled a huge amount of shredded carrots in his plate... anyhow. Steve was wearing his usual black turtle neck and blue jeans. He was kind of leaning forward and I noticed that I could see his underwear since he wasn't wearing a belt. I seriously pondered, "I REALLY SHOULD GIVE JOBS A WEDGIE". Sure, he'd be pissed. Sure, my contract would be cut short. But I would be THE guy who gave Steve Jobs a wedgie. I chickened out and didn't do squat. Missed my chance for greatness.
- visualR 14y ago
  Lol...be funny if he had STEVE written on his underwear
CarlTheAwesome 14y ago
I think pointing out problems directly and efficiently will eventually make someone a total asshole, and that's what I think Steve Jobs really did. However, some people(especially those blink-eyed Steve Jobs enthusiastics) just mistook the whole point. They thought it's being a total asshole making him efficient and successful, and by being a total asshole will eventually lead to him/her being an awesome leader of big cooperation. These people really have to learn some principles of logic before they start to learn anything from Steve Jobs. Pardon my poor English.
shurcooL 14y ago
Sometimes I wonder how much more productive Apple could be if they used a language other than Objective-C. Would they be more or less productive and able to get software/services done more quickly with another language?
- Vecrios 14y ago
  I don't think Apple would be where it's now if it wasn't for Objective-C, IMHO. I don't know why, it just feels right.
- stephencanon 14y ago
  > Sometimes I wonder how much more productive Apple could be if they used a language other than Objective-C. I'm not sure where you get the notion that Apple doesn't use languages other than Objective-C; good engineers use the right tool for the job, including assembly, C, C++, python, ruby, javascript, prolog, lisp, perl, ... and sometimes even Objective-C.
jokoon 14y ago
People should try to compare what Bill Gates achieved, and what Steve Jobs achieved. Bill gates is not microsoft itself, but steve jobs was apple itself. Jobs's success was thanks to Bill Gates's success. You don't snap and make iphones without all the experience brought by what microsoft pushed on computer manufacturers. Not to mention OSX grew thanks to unix too. objc is still a massive pain in the ass for many developers, who just want to use C/C++ and forget about objc stuff NOBODY USE. How come a device which sold so much, wants developers to use stuff that begins with NS prefixes ? When does ideology got into technology ? Nextstep is the only piece of sh*t jobs seems to have created, and that's how he wanted to shove his dick onto nerds. Jobs was a salesman figure. You now discover that's what our pre ww2 consumer world likes to buy. Salesmen who looks like the guy who either buy it or make it. Nothing new here. Stock don't reflect value of something that is aimed at research and looking for programming talents. People who can apply their skills onto a market in need to evolve. Please tell me how many traders actually know what is the industrial difference between all those techs which depends on the stock they buy. Learning both programming and electronics is not for everyone. Even today, there are very few former mechanics who can know how to trade automotive stocks, but the economy don't care about them. You can be good at selling differently-sized cars to be more competitive, but in IT, the possibilities are so far from exploited into the right direction, it becomes quickly irrelevant to sell cars with the same underlying technologies. But all of this is nerd rant. Good luck telling western consumers all of that. At least in Asia, people are able to understand technology and that might be why android has so much success. Over there they make the different between hype and charlatans.
ashcairo 14y ago
Are there any good counter-examples of uber-successful tech CEOs who aren't/weren't jerks?
thrush 14y ago
Steve Jobs was a leader above all else. He brought amazing changes to the world of technology in the only way that he knew. You can speak negatively because he was extremely abrasive, rude, and disrespectful to some of the smartest people of the last few centuries, but you can't deny that he was effective at what he did. His job, or his passion, was to deliver chasm-crossing products, not to get people to like him. Perhaps acting like Mr. Jobs is not the most effective strategy in your company, but if you figure out which strategy is effective, and then pursue that strategy as passionately and consistently as Mr. Jobs did, then I do not know how you could fail.
jkuria 14y ago
Btw, here's a Wozniak talk that does give Steve a little more credit for his (Jobs' talents) than much of the discussion here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WBX6SACViI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WBX6SACViI
riams 14y ago
Steve was one of the best product guys this world has seen. The same qualities that this article complained over, were the qualities that also allowed him to provide the world with all these gadgets. There's two sides to every coin, and no one's perfect.
jonmc12 14y ago
imo, the sentiment of this article is better articulated in discussion of his biography. Not sure why its presented as an edgy opinion. ie, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/be-a-jerk-the-worst-business-lesson-from-the-steve-jobs-biography/249136/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/be-a-jer... "(Jobs) was not the world's greatest manager," Walter Isaacson said in a recent interview with 60 Minutes. "In fact, he could have been one of the world's worst managers." "Being an asshole was part of the Steve package, but it wasn't essential to his success." etc.
ishansharma 14y ago
Looks like many people are learning from the wrong side of coin (that was Steve Jobs). I am a big fan and have seen almost all his keynotes and read 2 of his biographies and I fully acknowledge that he was a terrible guy sometimes. If you have to learn, learn from awesome things that he did in his lifetime, not being an d*ck!
jdietrich 14y ago
Warning signs of a dangerous cult: * The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law. ‪ The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel. ‪ The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members. ‪ Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities. ‪ The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society. ‪* The leader is not accountable to any authorities. ‪ The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group. ‪ Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished. ‪ The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion. ‪ Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group. ‪ The group is preoccupied with making money. ‪ The most loyal members (the "true believers") feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group. Jobs was a cult leader, a pathological narcissist who would do anything to shape the world in his image. By some billion-to-one fluke, Jobs was right about nearly everything. His impeccable taste was the driving force of an entire industry for several decades. You can't emulate an outlier like that, any more than eating chicken nuggets will turn you into Usain Bolt.
- lcentdx 14y ago
  this sounds exactly like my country's one and the only one political party - the always great, always glorious, always right CCP.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
gesman 14y ago
This justifies another book: "The Real Jobs by The Real People"
anuraj 14y ago
Irrespective of Steve Jobs, Mobile Me was a disaster; I don't see how a delayed launch would have saved what is obviously an ill thought out product. Product Manager, are you listening?
jakejake 14y ago
"In my first two weeks of being hired, he cut in line in front of me and a co-worker at the office cafeteria sushi kiosk." More than any negative thing I have ever heard about Steve Jobs, this is the most disappointing to me.
- GeorgeTirebiter 14y ago
  You know, he regularly parked in Handicapped spots too (before he had a Handicap sticker - which I'm not sure he had when he was really sick, but he certainly could have qualified for one then).
- gnaffle 14y ago
  You can also find stories about how Steve would hold doors open for people. He wasn't an ass all the time.
anantzoid 14y ago
Though Steve may have done many things wrong,stolen designs, mistreated staff, but how many people know about this? What matters is the result you produce, not behind the curtain mess. Of course, Steve built Apple 1 without a support team, so obviously he deserves to be called a hacker. But the biggest inspiration that one can derive from him is his determination to not stop even when removed from his own company. Not everyone can go and build another successful company after being removed from one. The road was tough and you can't expect a fair play all the time and get success at the same time.
ksec 14y ago
The following has nothing against or for Steve ( which every comment seems to be focus on ), but a matter of opinion on the problem. So she has a problem with THE highest chain of Command cutting her across the queue for lunch? May be i am the only one who dont see a problem with that. ( If everyone higher up then you would cut queues then i would have a fxxking problem. ) Engineering Project Manager - I am not very good at those inflated Titles. ( So what's higher up? Senior VPs? ) But that title suggested to me she is responsible, whether or not some Jerks up there gave Steve a suck up or not. MobileMe was a disaster. To me it was even worst then the Map problems Apple have had. As an Engineering Project Manager, By letting it out, knowingly this is Apple, which holds an even higher standard then other company. Did she have a go at Steve or higher up about the launch? Because if not, then she didn't burn the bridge, someone burnt it for her already.
bambax 14y ago
For a company to be successful it needs vision and discipline. This is usually done by having a visionary at the head, and a nasty enforcer just under him. This is how it works at Facebook for example (Zuck + Sheryl Sandberg). Marissa Mayer used to do the same thing at Google (for a long time, her main responsibility was saying no to people who wanted to add links to Google's home page... which is probably harder than it sounds). What's remarkable about Jobs is that he was both. He was the visionary and the enforcer. There are not many people like that. And of course, enforcers alone can't do shit. When Jobs was removed from Apple, the company almost went bankrupt. When enforcers become CEO all they do is upset people without actually improving the prospects of the company (see how every single recent news that comes out of Yahoo is some incomprehensible blunder).
seolinkresearch 14y ago
nice
michalu 14y ago
Bloggers giving advice to CEOs. Another hilarious peculiarity of this tech hype.
lectrick 14y ago
> I worked on the MobileMe team Oh crap, she's already biased. That product was a shit-show from the get-go. It doesn't matter how devoted the employees were, the reliability and apparent technical excellence of the product was lacking and that speaks to "poor programmers". You can be the most devoted employee around, but if you simply can't do your job well, that's nobody's fault. iCloud, by comparison, works pretty great.
mangler 14y ago
From Isaacson's excellent biography of Jobs, the one thing I gathered is that he had taste (turtlenecks and baggy jeans notwithstanding... ok, haven't seen the yacht either). He bullied a whole company into satisfying his exquisite taste, and the results are still outstanding. I'll take them even at a small price premium. That does not justify any boss being a jerk, but if you have the taste and the power to bully a lot of people to satisfy that taste, you'll likely produce something tasty.
kaa2102 14y ago
Treating people with respect and motivating folks to do better than their best are traits of an effective leader. I think we somehow confuse "people-shaming/screaming asshole" with a good leader.
Uncompetative 14y ago
I don't get the point. I am not Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was. I am me. Also, all the criticism in this thread that he wasn't a great engineer and Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy should have been given more coverage in the press the month he died is naive to say the least. They were both older. He still had much to do and was the boss of the world's biggest corporation. A bunch of Hackers on Hacker News won't reckon much on Steve Job's contribution to their field, but then he never was a hacker! He was a visionary who appreciated minimalistic design even if this meant that Apple products did fewer things. He made tech popular for the general consumer by simplifying it to just the essentials and burying all of the complexities. Hackers like to have every choice to exploit. That is why they like PCs and increasingly the Linux OSes. Everyone else that actually wants to get on an accomplish some creative work just ponies up the money for an Apple and what extra they pay out on hardware they tend to save on software - MS Office > iWork. Choosing which minimal set features to include in a product is harder than just lumping everything in, but the interface is far less cluttered and intrusive with less stuff to learn and therefore easier to use - which may not matter to Hackers like you, but is undoubtedly a factor in Apple's continued success.
Uncompetative 14y ago
I don't get the point. I am not Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was. I am me. Also, all the criticism in this thread that he wasn't a great engineer and Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy should have been given more coverage in the press the month he died is naive to say the least. They were both older. He still had much to do and was the boss of the world's biggest corporation. A bunch of Hackers on Hacker News won't reckon much on Steve Job's contribution to their field, but then he never was a hacker! He was a visionary who appreciated minimalistic design even if this meant that Apple products did fewer things. He made tech popular for the general consumer by simplifying it to just the essentials and burying all of the complexities. Hackers like to have every choice to exploit. That is why they like PCs and increasingly the Linux OSes. Everyone else that actually wants to get on and accomplish some creative work just ponies up the money for an Apple and what extra they pay out on hardware they tend to save on software - MS Office > iWork. Choosing which minimal set features to include in a product is harder than just lumping everything in, but the interface is far less cluttered and intrusive with less stuff to learn and therefore easier to use - which may not matter to Hackers like you, but is undoubtedly a factor in Apple's continued success.
davesque 14y ago
I'm a little bit confused that this article has gotten so much attention. So he was a jerk because he cut in line at the sushi bar? Okay. Maybe you had to be there, but is it hard to imagine that he might not have had time to wait in line? It does sound unfortunate that he shamed everybody for the iCloud launch, but I'm already inclined to believe that this account was exaggerated if the sushi bar story is any indication.
squozzer 14y ago
They say, “Peace, brother.” I say, “Bruise my feelings. Flatten my ego. Save my job.”

616 points by OafTobark 14y ago

calinet6 14y ago

tl;dr: "And that's a damn good thing."

arbuge 14y ago
A bit extreme. No doubt he had many warts, but few would disagree that his net contribution to society was enormously positive.
- andrewljohnson 14y ago
  A great many people seem to think we'd have been better off without Steve actually. They will tell you Steve/Apple set back the free software movement, and brought dictatorship to the world of software, when the web used to rule with anarchic democracy. They would tell you he sells closed devices that neuter people's creativity, and that the devices are hard to hack or dispose of. I think he was a brilliant artist who made technology less imposing.
  - vor_ 14y ago
    I think a great many other people--mainstream customers who don't read websites like Hacker News--would argue that they don't care about the free software movement or hacking devices. They think people using the term "dictatorship" in reference to computer software are extremists. They just want Shit That Works.
- pekk 14y ago
  He made money by selling things. Good for him, but that doesn't make him a Saint.
- olegbl 14y ago
  I guess I'm one of the few. While he headed a company that spearheaded internal innovation, it also stifled external innovation. He was also a jerk, as well documented.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- calinet6 14y ago
  How much of it was Steve Jobs, and how much of it was Apple's company. Surely he had a huge influence on the company, but there were a lot of people who did.
- obviouslygreen 14y ago
  I definitely don't agree with this. Jobs' contribution to a whole lot of wallets, most of them already fat, was extremely positive. His role in many contributions to the advancement of technology was also significant. "Society" is something he did not contribute much at all to. Workers' rights, work environments, corporate culture, none of these things benefited from Jobs at all; his contributions to them were largely negative.
jonursenbach 14y ago
Can we stop with the tl;dr's?
- calinet6 14y ago
  Heaven forbid we explain things succinctly. Might as well just not put titles on things either, amiright?

johnrob 14y ago

Maybe the title should be "You don't want to be Steve Jobs" instead of "You are not Steve Jobs".

keiferski 14y ago

There are equal amounts of "Steve was awesome" and "Steve was an ass" stories. Conclusion? He was a human being, just like the rest of us.

jarcoal 14y ago
Exactly right. The best thing we can do is learn what made him great and what made him not great. I really treasure the man because he had a lot of both. Just more to learn from.
mtct 14y ago
He was an awesome ass.
tsurantino 14y ago
I don't know about you but that seems to be an over-simplification. You can find some pretty strong trends from these stories and, while I'm not quick to derive value judgment, Steve did exhibit a distinct personality. It's not an accident that stories like this are, in some sense, predictable.
- rmrfrmrf 14y ago
  Any information you consume about a human being is going to be an over-simplification. What's really important is making sure that you're staying critical of the sources of this information. I also think that you're missing the broader implication of your parent post: Steve didn't wake up every morning with the intent of embodying some kind of persona -- he just was. Sure, he may have done well to have some training by an HR expert on how to communicate more effectively, but he was just managing a company the way that 1) he knew how and 2) in a way that brought Apple success. What I admire about Steve's Apple is that it was able to maintain a very clear vision and point of view despite growing exponentially. Look at huge corporations like IBM, HP, Microsoft, etc. What are there goals? Go to IBM's website and try to piece together a vision out of 80000 disparate research projects. HP makes...computers? printers? calculators? fax machines? cameras? Microsoft is a maker of operating systems, but are infamous for their spaghetti-style auxiliary product lines (throw it on the wall and see what sticks). These are three well-respected companies, and I don't know what the hell any of the 3 are about. Apple, by contrast? They're about delivering sleek computing products that are accessible and easy to use. Ask anyone on the street what Apple's mission is and they'd be able to give you some variation on good-looking products that are easy to use.

immy 14y ago

Very ego-less of Steve to have put so much trust in the chain of command.

zalzane 14y ago

Absolutely everything I have read about Steve Jobs paints him as a narcissistic asshole who is impossible to work with. How is it that he was so successful and how did apple become the behemoth it is today if the man at the wheel was so insufferable? I want to believe that this has only been a recent development and that he used to be an easier person to deal with in apple's early days, because to be quite frank the only way I could see such an individual being so successful with the attitude he had was if he was just riding the coattails of other forces in the company. Hopefully someone can enlighten me as to how this kind of person could lead a successful company when everyone fears him and doesn't question anything he says.

hkmurakami 14y ago
You can read about some Steve Jobs anecdotes during the original Macintosh era at folklore.org http://folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&characters=Steve%20Jobs&detail=medium http://folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&cha...
calinet6 14y ago
Perhaps because the things he said were right, and he wasn't afraid to say them. Other than that, I don't think being an asshole is a good strategy in general.
- dave809 14y ago
  In OP's anecdote he wasn't right
bitops 14y ago
> How is it that he was so successful and how did Apple become the behemoth it is today if the man at the wheel was so insufferable? Strangely, it was partially because he was so insufferable that Apple became as successful as it is today. Steve Jobs was notorious for being in-your-face brutal about the quality of work being done simply not being good enough. Crying, screaming, throwing tantrums - all these histrionics went hand-in-hand with that. What's interesting about this is that Steve had two things that most people lack: (1) vision in spades. And more importantly, very good vision. (2) an ability to push people beyond their limits by berating them, but then having really amazing work come out of that process. Steve Jobs was awe-inspiring because he could dress people down and grill them on details that most other people either didn't notice or would gloss over. If you read many of the books about Steve Jobs, there's a common refrain said by many of those who worked under him. "I'd never work for him again, but he pushed me to do things I never knew I was capable of." [EDIT: forgot to add] The reason Steve was able to get away with all this negative behavior is that it produced amazing results. But for most people, being so belligerent and nasty without having an amazing vision to back it up will not get you very far. And, for the most part, such people are completely egomaniacal. (Steve was too, he just happened to be right a lot).

maxheadroom513 14y ago

Thank you for writing this. Substitute Steve Jobs -> Tony Fadell and Apple -> Nest Labs and you've got almost the experience I had. We have to stop enabling these sociopaths and vote with our feet (immediately) when this stuff happens.

calinet6 14y ago
Agreed, Sociopaths might have extreme qualities which might enable extreme outcomes, but that doesn't mean we need to enable them. It is overwhelmingly unhealthy and negative for anyone connected to them. Been there.
GuiA 14y ago
Interesting. I interviewed at Nest and was on the way to getting an offer, but in the end ended up doing something completely different. Do you have any writings about Fadell?

JDGM 14y ago

I didn't think I was going to like this from the opening paragraph but she quickly won me over. My take away is "You are not Steve Jobs. You are not a massive arsehole!" - pretty much in agreement with calinet6. However, actually it's a lot richer than that. I love this paragraph in particular: "Now, regardless of whether no one in the inner sanctum of dudes-that-Steve-listened-to-at-the-time told him all the things we told our bosses, or who-up-the-chain-of-command was not brave enough to suggest we do something not-Apple-like — this was the system that Steve created. He made himself so fearful and terrible that an entire group of amazing, talented, hard working people, ended up getting screamed at wrongfully. It was his fault that the MobileMe launch went so poorly, not ours." Even if that's not even remotely true (I wouldn't know), I find it a good lesson that a boss could be so terrifying that no-one wants to be honest with them and this flows down the hierarchy to the point of dysfunction. I've heard of it before, but I like the clarity of explanation this nth time around.

exodust 14y ago
Agreed. And I think the article is less about "Steve Jobs" and more about the lessons to be learned from high-level project difficulties, and the people on the ground caught up in the line of fire when things don't go to plan. Or, when blame is unleashed unjustly from management, whose plan was flawed in the beginning, or whose chain of command failed to notice the red flags raised along the way. The other article on her blog is also worth a look, and a good reminder about communication in the workplace. "How to handle conflict".... https://medium.com/career-pathing/a713b75ad9bd https://medium.com/career-pathing/a713b75ad9bd

SkittlesNTwix 14y ago

I believe he was successful in spite of his negative qualities, not because of them. What I mean by this is that we shouldn't worship his negative traits and spin them somehow to be positive qualities in a leader, such as some people have done. He was very much a human being. A highly-intelligent man and visionary in the right place at the right time, surrounded by the right people, making a lot of good, and a few poor, choices. Don't try to reverse-engineer his success so as to duplicate it.

l0c0b0x 14y ago

I'm sorry, but you worked at Apple (doesn't matter if it had been only for a week) and you didn't know who it's CEO was? You worked at Apple, and you didn't know who STEVE JOBS was? or had seen a picture/video of him somewhere? That does NOT compute! There are plenty of 'Steve' stories (www.folklore.org) out there. Conclusions vary from person to person as to what kind of person was Steve Jobs, but most people wouldn't taken back the time they worked with him/or Apple. Apple's/his contributions to computer history really outweigh the means it took to get there. Sometimes it just takes a jerk (most-likely insane), human being to push people to achieve extra-ordinary things.

ritchiea 14y ago
Absolutely absurd. She clearly knew who Steve Jobs was. She probably just didn't know what Steve Jobs looked like the year she got the job. There are a great number of people who I know by reputation, know by amazing reputation, but I have no idea what they look like. I know who Larry Page is, I have no idea what he looks like. I have a really really vague idea of what Sergey Brin looks like. But really, who cares what they look like?
- l0c0b0x 14y ago
  She got the job in 2008... My point is, if you were to get a job at xyz company, wouldn't one of your initial moves be to find out who the major players were at your new job were/looked-like? What the environment/culture is? Some research would have suggested that she might expect this kind of behavior from a certain individual? I don't have to number the many reasons WHY you would want to do some research, or care to. Why is that absurd?
  - wpietri 14y ago
    Knowing somebody's bio photo may not help you when they cut in front of you in the lunch line. Recognition cues there are very different. Also, recognition is a lot about context. When you see him in a black turtleneck on stage, you're primed. I was once visiting a pal Google and ran across Eric Schmidt. Turns out his office was right next to a development team. I could have easily picked him out of a set of photos, but I wasn't expecting him to walk out of a small office in a random part of the building. It wasn't until he was walking away that I said, "Wait a minute. Was that..." And that was seeing his face, rather than the back of his head.

danilocampos 14y ago

I'm often frustrated at folks who take the wrong lesson from Steve Jobs. As this piece describes, they look at the dude and take away that they should be jerks because that's how things get done. And that's a terrible lesson. In my read, as a guy who's been following Apple since he was a kid, there's one principal lesson for leaders and entrepreneurs: If you care about making exactly what you want, make sure you're the boss. That's it. You can define the agenda, you can get the right people, you can motivate them according to your style. You get to win all the design arguments. You get to slip the deadlines for quality. You can definitely be a jerk in that context, but you don't have to.

monksy 14y ago
I would argue that there are plenty of better, and less publicised, examples of people who are passionate about their work than Steve Jobs.
- jonnathanson 14y ago
  Steve Jobs is such a striking example because he was highly unusual in the business world, and especially in the tech business, and because he succeeded on such a massive scale. He was basically an artist. I don't mean that as a fawning compliment; I mean that as a description of his personality: for better and for worse. He was driven by a relentless aesthetic vision, he worked himself up into near-manic episodes, he was emotionally labile, and he was perfectionistic. These are qualities you usually find in the arts. I've worked with and around writers and directors for most of my career, and I've seen "Steve Jobs" in a lot of the more successful ones. Consider the example of Stanley Kubrick, or, more recently, David O. Russell. Now, go watch the infamous David O. Russell temper tantrum video on YouTube. You could just about substitute Steve Jobs for David in that video and believe it.
  - zjmichen 14y ago
    I don't agree with the idea of the "mad artist," an elite diamond-in-the-rough character who cloisters himself away on manic episodes of hyper-creativity, becomes an alcoholic, and emerges with a genius piece of Art. Art is a slog. Artists are the ones with enough endurance to churn out shit day after day, refining the best of what they produce. The best artists are social, because that's where the most ideas flow freely. Most artists I know (writers, musicians, graphic artists) are like this. Perpetuating the myth of the great lone genius is elitist, which is a discriminatory and dangerous ideology.

SurfScore 14y ago

Its a testament to his legacy that these "You are/not like/dislike Steve Jobs" articles keep popping up. Jobs is what you call an EXTREME OUTLIER. People like him come around once every 30 or 40 years. You don't compare outliers to the mean, because they skew everything. Nothing anyone ever writes about what to do or what not to do like Steve Jobs is relevant, because he was so far off from any of the data points we have or probably ever will have to matter. You get people like this in history; ones that seemingly do so much wrong yet change the entire world. I don't know if we'll ever have a concrete explanation for it, but for some reason the bad things ARE part of the reason for their success. Another more common example of this is Jim Morrison (or any really good drug addict musician). Do you have to be a drug addict to be a musician? Of course not. And I seriously doubt they're gonna start dropping acid at Juilliard. But somehow there's a few of them that make it work, and I would argue that if Jim Morrison wasn't a drug addict he wouldn't have been as successful as he was. If Jobs wasn't such an asshole, he wouldn't be Steve Jobs. There's some mix assholishness and genius (that he got absolutely perfect) that creates a legendary figure.

mturmon 14y ago
Agree. Pursuing your Morrison analogy: so many artistic and literary figures are similarly hard to characterize. Polarizing their colleagues and fans, causing denunciations, feuds, embarrassment. Difficult to compare to anyone (i.e., outliers, as you say). Think of someone like Norman Mailer, or Gore Vidal. These people are not role models! They don't have to be that way, but it's a lot more likely. After they are gone, asking "were they a good person" is usually not the right question (unless you were close to them). If you know them mainly through their work, the right question is, "do you value their work?" Here's the relevant quote from Auden: Time that with this strange excuse Pardoned Kipling and his views, And will pardon Paul Claudel, Pardons him for writing well.
- exodust 14y ago
  Since when does taking drugs and going to heaps of parties, writing classic songs, performing in a band, learning and playing instruments, reading and studying literature, singing, having lots of sex, writing poetry, recording albums, and inspiring millions make someone a "bad person". Just in case anyone is unclear, the answer to the question "was Jim Morrison a good person" is YES.

robterrell 14y ago

As a general rule, if you're a CEO and you find yourself assembling a group of people who don't directly report to you, so you can tell/yell them how they failed you... stop yourself. The people who failed your are (a) your direct reports and (b) you yourself. Figure out how the correct information didn't get to you, or how you ignored it, and fix that problem. There's zero chance a roomful of individual contributors all got it wrong at the same time -- the only way they all got it wrong was that they lacked the proper leadership.

danso 14y ago

Lets not forget that it's hard to imagine Steve being successful if he hadn't paired with the equally extraordinary Woz. Yes, Jobs got along just fine without Woz, but only after the Apple ][ gave him enough runway to continue pushing his vision. Jobs was special, but he still made errors that would've tanked lesser companies. It should also be noted that Jobs should be given credit for dragging a reluctant Woz into the spotlight..their estrangement is to me one of the most bizarre and saddest mysteries about Apple.

onemorepassword 14y ago

Most of this article, except the cafeteria anecdote, isn't about Jobs, or about megalomaniac CEO's in general. It's about utter failure of middle management, and how they can totally fuck both sides of the company. The lesson here is not "don't be an asshole" (although you shouldn't), it's "don't hire ass-kissing assholes".

webwright 14y ago
Disagree. If you kick middle managers in the stomach every time they tell you something you don't want to hear, they stop being honest with you.
- rmrfrmrf 14y ago
  In which case they should get fired. That's totally unacceptable behavior. If middle management is more concerned about saving face than delivering honest reports, it's their problem.

bschiett 14y ago

Who the fuck is erin caton? No tech background, yet tech manager

jrockway 14y ago
Does it matter? The point is the same whether she's a programmer or not. And she makes it clear in the article that she's a PM, not a SWE.
- bschiett 14y ago
  It does matter a lot, think about it.
  - consz 14y ago
    Why does it matter so much? There are tons of articles on the front page of HN from no-names.
    - bschiett 14y ago
      Exactly.
      - consz 14y ago
        So you agree that it doesn't matter who the author is?
  - aria 14y ago
    Can't argue with logic like that.
aria 14y ago
How dare she have an opinion about management? Seriously. I'm glad you're here to police such matters.
homosaur 14y ago
Who the fuck are you? Just some dude who didn't write an article.

ricardobeat 14y ago

Many, if not most of Apple's innovations are not Steve's ideas, but from someone working under him. He seems to have learned the wrong lesson. From the outside, the MobileMe fiasco looks like a standard failed software project, where nobody steps up to say the truth and management doesn't understand/care what's going on. How a huge group inside Apple got to that point is anybody's guess (and would probably make for a great lesson in project management).

cromwellian 14y ago

As a counterpoint to the "you must be an asshole to be a successful leader" line of thinking, I put forward Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Sergey, et al. I don't think one can say they haven't helmed a successful company and commanded respect, but they are also not infamous for throwing angry tantrums and yelling at people. Larry's practically so soft spoken you can't hear him sometimes. :)

gnnr 14y ago

Ugh, though instead of through. Proofread

acabal 14y ago

I thought this was going to be about people who took the Steve Jobs route of design: "I know better than you, you'll use my design and like it, or go to hell." People see Jobs' success in design and think they too can be successful by being merciless dictators of their design vision. Unfortunately 99% of people don't have Jobs' talent and they end up messing up their projects. (Gnome 3 and Unity, I'm looking at you, though this terrible phenomenon isn't isolated to those projects.) 37 Signals is also guilty of spreading that mindset, perhaps more so because they aggressively blog and write about it all the time and because they are (or at least were) startup darlings.

annymsMthd 14y ago
I've been in this situation before. The my way or the highway attitude is a bad mindset to have when managing engineers. Skilled engineers are free thinkers and will push back on bad design. If someone says they can write something better than your spagetti code you shouldn't yell at them or make them feel inferior. You should allow them to build a system that will be clean and maintainable for the sake of all engineers that have to work on the codebase. Good leaders should know humility and when to admit they are wrong.
Cardeck1 14y ago
That's a huge mistake.It means your not a natural and talented CEO or whatever job you aspire to get.A true leader will set a certain path not because he saw it at someone else but because he feels it's the right way.And most importantly what he feels is usually right.That instinct that very few people have, something that cannot be learned. And you know what?I strongly believe that if Steve Jobs would've tried to become a technical guy he would've ruined his talent.Maybe some will not understand what I am saying but I believe it is true.

ScottBurson 14y ago

This puts a really interesting spin on the MobileMe story. I wonder what would have happened if they had yelled back at Steve while he was dressing them down. I also wonder who turned down their request for a more incremental launch. I'm not enough of an Apple-watcher to know what the org chart looked like, but could it have been Scott Forstall?

yoda_sl 14y ago
No it was not Scott... Scott was too busy with iPhone launch. The VP in charge was John Martin former Microsoft and Starbucks... he came at .Mac with a bunch of ex-Microsoft and try to run the place most likely like Microsfot, but even worst only trying to show nice UX/UI without caring about performance. Project Managers/Engineers/QA leads did their job and reported to their upper management (Director and then VP John Martin) but they instead decided to silence everyone and kick a bunch of engineers out of the group.

Zimahl 14y ago

The cafeteria anecdote is interesting because I've been in line in a cafeteria with a billionaire (former) CEO - Phil Knight. Very personable (he certainly didn't cut in line) and he seemed comfortable in his Nikes and jeans. Knight built his empire quite differently than Jobs. While it's not great being a developer at Nike, the company's atmosphere is somewhat laid back. Things still get done and they make a lot of money doing it.

yoda_sl 14y ago
I have been many times in the Apple cafeteria back when Steve was there, and I never saw him cutting lines as described. I am not saying that it did not happen, but I will not make it a statement that he was always like that neither
- jfb 14y ago
  I never saw him cut in line, either; he was always in a hurry, and could be short, but I didn't see him pull rank, ever. He did almost run me over once.

yoster 14y ago

This lady would be shell-shocked and would need therapy if she ever went into construction. Not just the "boss", anyone that is not an apprentice will be yelling, cursing, and putting down your work on a regular basis.

aria 14y ago
There's no indication that she couldn't endure the silly dress down, just that it was a dick thing to do. Also, lady's been through a ton of shit, including cervical cancer (https://medium.com/lady-business/67303ff64202 https://medium.com/lady-business/67303ff64202). So yeah, I think she could handle a little yelling. I'd do a little research before I put someone down. Guard your ignorance.
- yoster 14y ago
  So she got a std, went through three procedures to get rid of the cancer, and you think that's a ton of shit? Try telling someone who is going through chemo if three procedures is a ton of shit. GUARD YOUR IGNORANCE.
  - aria 14y ago
    I think the most mature thing to do here is get into a pissing match about whose cancer is worse rather than just agree that it's all probably worse than being yelled at. Let's meet under the bridge to discuss.

m0wfo 14y ago

This somewhat attempts to contradict the Machiavellian insight that "it is better to be feared than loved" but in an ideal world, I'd have to agree.

itsmeok 14y ago

1) How can you be in tech and not know Steve jobs, more so given that you work at apple? 2) Steve was a dick... most of the times, especially when he wanted his way. nothing new. 3) You gripe should be with spineless middle management, not CEOs.

moron4hire 14y ago
leadership is always responsible for the failings of the team. Steve Jobs most likely surrounded himself with sycophants.
aria 14y ago
Um..Shouldn't Steve had yelled at said middle management or at least sussed it out before yelling at engineers?
aria 14y ago
Also, she didn't know what he looked like that particular year. Not who he was. Some people just have incomplete photo shrines.

abalone 14y ago

This reads like sour grapes. If it really was Steve Jobs's "fault that the MobileMe launch went so poorly" because of "the system that he created," and her team was really as "completely kick-ass" as she says it was, then why has Apple had so much success with so many projects run exactly the same way? The problem with MobileMe was the engineering management, not the system. If anything this shows how vulnerable the Apple "system" is to the quality of the people they hire, and why they spend so much effort trying to hire and hold on to A-grade people. That just doesn't jive with the tired lore of Jobs being an asshole all the time. They wouldn't be able to hold on to folks like they have.

tomelders 14y ago
I'm not so sure. Apple hires the best and their evaluations of new candidates are rigorous, so I doubt they have idiots running things. We all know there's a lot of the worlds best talent at Apple. But they struggle a lot with the web services they've tried to create. Mobile me, iCloud, game centre, ping, Maps; these have all fallen short of Apples promises. It's a repeating pattern that to me indicates a culture issue inside Apple.
- abalone 14y ago
  If it was a culture issue it would extend to the successful product teams as well. Those failures point to the people in charge of those groups, not the Apple culture. Unless by Apple culture we mean giving people lots of responsibility and autonomy.. then, yes. But that's also the key to their successes.
  - fancyketchup 14y ago
    Is it possible that a culture which is effective at producing "good" outcomes in one domain is ineffective at producing "good" outcomes in another? Should managers use the same techniques to manage steelworkers as they do software engineers? Edit: steel works -> steelworkers
    - 14y ago

itsmeok 14y ago

tomelders 14y ago

A lot of people want to be like Steve jobs, but have neither the balls to commit the way he did, nor the requisite skills to evaluate like he did. So as has been mentioned elsewhere, there's just a bunch of mediocre assholes out there who would be mediocre ass holes wether or not Jobs had ever existed, only he did, and that validates their shitty behaviour in their own inflated heads.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

lutusp 14y ago

Quote: "Even Steve Jobs wasn't Steve Jobs initially. He only outed himself as a giant jerk after he had a company that could afford to have a huge turnover, and he had a pile of minions that hero-worshiped him no matter what he did." This isn't true. I knew Steve when he and Steve Wozniak were starting Apple, in the late 1970s, and he (Jobs) was always intolerable -- it wasn't something that came out after he acquired power. I couldn't stand working with him, so, even though people at Apple asked me to stay, I wouldn't. (I eventually worked with Apple on various software projects, but not at Apple.) Steve Jobs had the worst interpersonal dynamics of anyone I have ever met. All that proves is that being perpetually rude and having terrible people skills isn't a deal-breaker in corporate America.

dm8 14y ago
I'm not questioning your judgement of Steve's personality. But it surprises me that person like Steve can be so successful. Moreover, how did he recruit and manage so many world class developers and designers? Not once. But thrice - Apple, NeXT and Pixar. What made Steve so successful when everyone who has worked with him thinks he was a jerk! I read his stories at - http://folklore.org/ http://folklore.org/ And he looks inspirational as well as jerk. But most of these stories are around creation of Mac. By that time, Apple was quite successful. I'm genuinely curios about how did he manage to recruit first 10 employees if he had terrible inter-personal skills.
- omegaham 14y ago
  Have a good enough idea and a vision of how you can accomplish it, and you can find those 10 people regardless of how mean you are. After you succeed, you'll have thousands of people chomping at the bit to be associated with you, even if you're an asshole. Success makes everything okay, just like failure makes nothing okay.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > Have a good enough idea and a vision of how you can accomplish it, and you can find those 10 people regardless of how mean you are. Steve Jobs didn't have the ideas. The ideas came from others -- Xerox PARC, Steve Wozniak, Jef Raskin, others, and to a lesser extent, me. But he did know how to sell other people's ideas and get people passionate about them. Promotion was his talent. He was the Willy Loman of the late 20th century.

a_p 14y ago

Steve Jobs was not a "hacker". [‡] He knew almost nothing about computer languages, computer architecture, and according to Neil Young, he listened to vinyl records at home [1] — which shows that he was ignorant of how audio quality works (see [2]). Steve did not contribute any original ideas or any important technological innovations. He claimed during his Stanford commencement speech that if Macintosh had not included eye pleasing typography, then computers would never have had typographically pleasing typefaces (because "Microsoft just copied Apple); this is ludicrous. In fact, Apple's software patents for digital typography added unnecessary difficulties. [3] Many people are unhappy about Apple culture of paranoia, litigation, and features that restrict user's freedoms that Steve created. Steve is known for having a great sense of design, but it seems that he only had taste in choosing among the good designs of others. Just look at the yacht he designed without Jonathan Ive's collaboration. [4] Many of you may say that I'm missing the point; that his ability to convince others of what was important and his "vision" is what made him great. My contention is that he appropriated other people's original ideas, and other people implemented his modifications. I'll admit that directing such efforts is not an easy thing to do, and most breakthroughs are improvements upon others' ideas. But it is very rare for the original creators to be alive and ignored while the modifier is celebrated with maudlin elegies. EDIT: The media's treatment of his death, President Obama's statement that he was a great "inventor", etc. was not his fault. But I think that when the deaths of people like Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy in the same month as Steve are ignored, then the world is suffering from a serious case of myopia. Ignoring Dennis and John while celebrating Steve is like fawning over the interior decorator with praise about the warmth of a house while ignoring the carpenter and contractor. Perhaps I should add that I am being critical of Steve because of an abundance of articles that did not focus on what he actually contributed, or criticized only his behavior towards others. Steve did seem to be able to hire, attract, or motivate as many talented engineers as he did drive away. This is a very hard thing for a CEO to do, and he deserves a large amount of credit for doing this. The talent that he helped attract and the products they create are responsible for Apple's stock price rise and continued profitability since his death. [‡] http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html (see definition of "hacker") [1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/01/146206585/steve-jobs-listened-to-vinyl-at-home-neil-young-says http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/01/146206585/ste... [2] http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html [3] http://www.freetype.org/patents.html http://www.freetype.org/patents.html [4] http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/21/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-yacht/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/21/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-yac...

euphoria83 14y ago

Cutting line to get food when you are the CEO and have a lot of stuff to get done is not too bad. Impolite, but not too bad. Think about all the perks that CEOs have. Good managements have weak links. You can either gather the courage to get your message to people who have the strength to listen to you and act on it, or you can keep cursing your boss and stick to you job. If the author would have gathered the courage to get her message (discretely) to a higher-up, she would have been not been remembering that mess-up. She might have either prevented it, or been fired.

FireBeyond 14y ago
That's BS. Have an assistant go get your food. You know, as one of the perks that you have as a CEO.
- euphoria83 14y ago
  I appreciate your comment.

vampirechicken 14y ago

The story about the middle managers not approving ideas that they team was later excoriated for not having implemented is classic Corporate America.

MrBra 14y ago

and you don't know who you are calling 'you'

rockin 14y ago

And u are not my mom.

michaelochurch 14y ago

My first thought, which may be wrong, is: Steve Jobs being a prick didn't make him more effective. He was a prick because he was so effective that he had a +5 sigma trail of early success[0]. Because of his effectiveness, he could get away with being a prick. Once he'd established momentum, it was "part of his charm". [0] Sure, he got fired, but with a net worth of $500 million. Doesn't count. I'll let you fire me five times for a tenth of that. You can even do it in public. Hell, even have Donald Trump do it. While it's arrogant to say this, I think I have nearly as strong a design sense as him. I honed it studying the German style of board games, and eventually writing my own games (most were failures, but I learned from them and got good). I optimized a trick-taking card game (Ambition) to drive out card-luck. Not an easy thing to do. After years of playtesting and throwing out things that suck and rebalancing, the damn thing plays well. I was also a bit "youthful" in my self-promotion, got into some pretty awful flamewars on Wikipedia. I can't exactly hide that. I was 20. Shit happens. I certainly understand the mental "edge" that turns top designers into arrogant people. It's there, and it's part of what drives you to be great, but it also needs to be checked. Not because it's offensive or morally wrong to be a jerk, but because it makes you suck. If you're unaccountable for the quality of your ideas, you'll have bad ones. When people see Steve Jobs's behavior, they see what someone like me would be like without a few hefty doses of humility (some deserved, others not) in my 20s. ::shudder:: As a competent-or-better designer, I will say this: you don't have to be a jerk to get good designs. In fact, often what you do as a design lead is take in other peoples' ideas, and moderate. If you shut people out (or scare them) you're losing signal for no good reason. You need all the signal you can get, because good ideas come from everywhere. I think Jobs had one positive effect, which is that he burned away corporate bullshit. I'm sure that there was as much politicking under him as under any charismatic leader, but I think a Jobs-like figure makes it just too embarrassing to let corporate boondoggles get into the product. I'm sure there was just as much nastiness as anywhere else, but that the more successful lieutenants knew that a product that mirrored internal politics (Conway's Law, applied to design) should be shredded to pieces. So maybe it does take an asshole figure like Jobs to keep a corporation from devolving into design-blindness... not because design requires assholes, but because of what corporations are. That said, I can't stand the goddamn fake Steve Jobs's who use him to justify being an asshole. I am closer to Jobs than 99.5+ percent of them and not nearly as much of a jerk (I have my moments, but I fucking work like no one would believe on patience.) If you cite Steve Jobs to justify bad behavior (I've encountered this a million times) then you are an idiot because most people who behave badly are not Steve Jobs.

crusso 14y ago

I worked at Apple as a contractor after Steve's return. He was in front of me at the salad bar one day - he didn't cut, was just there ahead of me. I noticed he piled a huge amount of shredded carrots in his plate... anyhow. Steve was wearing his usual black turtle neck and blue jeans. He was kind of leaning forward and I noticed that I could see his underwear since he wasn't wearing a belt. I seriously pondered, "I REALLY SHOULD GIVE JOBS A WEDGIE". Sure, he'd be pissed. Sure, my contract would be cut short. But I would be THE guy who gave Steve Jobs a wedgie. I chickened out and didn't do squat. Missed my chance for greatness.

visualR 14y ago
Lol...be funny if he had STEVE written on his underwear

CarlTheAwesome 14y ago

I think pointing out problems directly and efficiently will eventually make someone a total asshole, and that's what I think Steve Jobs really did. However, some people(especially those blink-eyed Steve Jobs enthusiastics) just mistook the whole point. They thought it's being a total asshole making him efficient and successful, and by being a total asshole will eventually lead to him/her being an awesome leader of big cooperation. These people really have to learn some principles of logic before they start to learn anything from Steve Jobs. Pardon my poor English.

shurcooL 14y ago

Sometimes I wonder how much more productive Apple could be if they used a language other than Objective-C. Would they be more or less productive and able to get software/services done more quickly with another language?

Vecrios 14y ago
I don't think Apple would be where it's now if it wasn't for Objective-C, IMHO. I don't know why, it just feels right.
stephencanon 14y ago
> Sometimes I wonder how much more productive Apple could be if they used a language other than Objective-C. I'm not sure where you get the notion that Apple doesn't use languages other than Objective-C; good engineers use the right tool for the job, including assembly, C, C++, python, ruby, javascript, prolog, lisp, perl, ... and sometimes even Objective-C.

jokoon 14y ago

People should try to compare what Bill Gates achieved, and what Steve Jobs achieved. Bill gates is not microsoft itself, but steve jobs was apple itself. Jobs's success was thanks to Bill Gates's success. You don't snap and make iphones without all the experience brought by what microsoft pushed on computer manufacturers. Not to mention OSX grew thanks to unix too. objc is still a massive pain in the ass for many developers, who just want to use C/C++ and forget about objc stuff NOBODY USE. How come a device which sold so much, wants developers to use stuff that begins with NS prefixes ? When does ideology got into technology ? Nextstep is the only piece of sh*t jobs seems to have created, and that's how he wanted to shove his dick onto nerds. Jobs was a salesman figure. You now discover that's what our pre ww2 consumer world likes to buy. Salesmen who looks like the guy who either buy it or make it. Nothing new here. Stock don't reflect value of something that is aimed at research and looking for programming talents. People who can apply their skills onto a market in need to evolve. Please tell me how many traders actually know what is the industrial difference between all those techs which depends on the stock they buy. Learning both programming and electronics is not for everyone. Even today, there are very few former mechanics who can know how to trade automotive stocks, but the economy don't care about them. You can be good at selling differently-sized cars to be more competitive, but in IT, the possibilities are so far from exploited into the right direction, it becomes quickly irrelevant to sell cars with the same underlying technologies. But all of this is nerd rant. Good luck telling western consumers all of that. At least in Asia, people are able to understand technology and that might be why android has so much success. Over there they make the different between hype and charlatans.

ashcairo 14y ago

Are there any good counter-examples of uber-successful tech CEOs who aren't/weren't jerks?

thrush 14y ago

Steve Jobs was a leader above all else. He brought amazing changes to the world of technology in the only way that he knew. You can speak negatively because he was extremely abrasive, rude, and disrespectful to some of the smartest people of the last few centuries, but you can't deny that he was effective at what he did. His job, or his passion, was to deliver chasm-crossing products, not to get people to like him. Perhaps acting like Mr. Jobs is not the most effective strategy in your company, but if you figure out which strategy is effective, and then pursue that strategy as passionately and consistently as Mr. Jobs did, then I do not know how you could fail.

jkuria 14y ago

Btw, here's a Wozniak talk that does give Steve a little more credit for his (Jobs' talents) than much of the discussion here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WBX6SACViI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WBX6SACViI

riams 14y ago

Steve was one of the best product guys this world has seen. The same qualities that this article complained over, were the qualities that also allowed him to provide the world with all these gadgets. There's two sides to every coin, and no one's perfect.

jonmc12 14y ago

imo, the sentiment of this article is better articulated in discussion of his biography. Not sure why its presented as an edgy opinion. ie, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/be-a-jerk-the-worst-business-lesson-from-the-steve-jobs-biography/249136/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/be-a-jer... "(Jobs) was not the world's greatest manager," Walter Isaacson said in a recent interview with 60 Minutes. "In fact, he could have been one of the world's worst managers." "Being an asshole was part of the Steve package, but it wasn't essential to his success." etc.

ishansharma 14y ago

Looks like many people are learning from the wrong side of coin (that was Steve Jobs). I am a big fan and have seen almost all his keynotes and read 2 of his biographies and I fully acknowledge that he was a terrible guy sometimes. If you have to learn, learn from awesome things that he did in his lifetime, not being an d*ck!

jdietrich 14y ago

Warning signs of a dangerous cult: * The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law. ‪ The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel. ‪ The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members. ‪ Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities. ‪ The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society. ‪* The leader is not accountable to any authorities. ‪ The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group. ‪ Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished. ‪ The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion. ‪ Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group. ‪ The group is preoccupied with making money. ‪ The most loyal members (the "true believers") feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group. Jobs was a cult leader, a pathological narcissist who would do anything to shape the world in his image. By some billion-to-one fluke, Jobs was right about nearly everything. His impeccable taste was the driving force of an entire industry for several decades. You can't emulate an outlier like that, any more than eating chicken nuggets will turn you into Usain Bolt.

lcentdx 14y ago
this sounds exactly like my country's one and the only one political party - the always great, always glorious, always right CCP.

deleted 14y ago

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gesman 14y ago

This justifies another book: "The Real Jobs by The Real People"

anuraj 14y ago

Irrespective of Steve Jobs, Mobile Me was a disaster; I don't see how a delayed launch would have saved what is obviously an ill thought out product. Product Manager, are you listening?

jakejake 14y ago

"In my first two weeks of being hired, he cut in line in front of me and a co-worker at the office cafeteria sushi kiosk." More than any negative thing I have ever heard about Steve Jobs, this is the most disappointing to me.

GeorgeTirebiter 14y ago
You know, he regularly parked in Handicapped spots too (before he had a Handicap sticker - which I'm not sure he had when he was really sick, but he certainly could have qualified for one then).
gnaffle 14y ago
You can also find stories about how Steve would hold doors open for people. He wasn't an ass all the time.

anantzoid 14y ago

Though Steve may have done many things wrong,stolen designs, mistreated staff, but how many people know about this? What matters is the result you produce, not behind the curtain mess. Of course, Steve built Apple 1 without a support team, so obviously he deserves to be called a hacker. But the biggest inspiration that one can derive from him is his determination to not stop even when removed from his own company. Not everyone can go and build another successful company after being removed from one. The road was tough and you can't expect a fair play all the time and get success at the same time.

ksec 14y ago

The following has nothing against or for Steve ( which every comment seems to be focus on ), but a matter of opinion on the problem. So she has a problem with THE highest chain of Command cutting her across the queue for lunch? May be i am the only one who dont see a problem with that. ( If everyone higher up then you would cut queues then i would have a fxxking problem. ) Engineering Project Manager - I am not very good at those inflated Titles. ( So what's higher up? Senior VPs? ) But that title suggested to me she is responsible, whether or not some Jerks up there gave Steve a suck up or not. MobileMe was a disaster. To me it was even worst then the Map problems Apple have had. As an Engineering Project Manager, By letting it out, knowingly this is Apple, which holds an even higher standard then other company. Did she have a go at Steve or higher up about the launch? Because if not, then she didn't burn the bridge, someone burnt it for her already.

bambax 14y ago

For a company to be successful it needs vision and discipline. This is usually done by having a visionary at the head, and a nasty enforcer just under him. This is how it works at Facebook for example (Zuck + Sheryl Sandberg). Marissa Mayer used to do the same thing at Google (for a long time, her main responsibility was saying no to people who wanted to add links to Google's home page... which is probably harder than it sounds). What's remarkable about Jobs is that he was both. He was the visionary and the enforcer. There are not many people like that. And of course, enforcers alone can't do shit. When Jobs was removed from Apple, the company almost went bankrupt. When enforcers become CEO all they do is upset people without actually improving the prospects of the company (see how every single recent news that comes out of Yahoo is some incomprehensible blunder).

seolinkresearch 14y ago

nice

michalu 14y ago

Bloggers giving advice to CEOs. Another hilarious peculiarity of this tech hype.

lectrick 14y ago

> I worked on the MobileMe team Oh crap, she's already biased. That product was a shit-show from the get-go. It doesn't matter how devoted the employees were, the reliability and apparent technical excellence of the product was lacking and that speaks to "poor programmers". You can be the most devoted employee around, but if you simply can't do your job well, that's nobody's fault. iCloud, by comparison, works pretty great.

mangler 14y ago

From Isaacson's excellent biography of Jobs, the one thing I gathered is that he had taste (turtlenecks and baggy jeans notwithstanding... ok, haven't seen the yacht either). He bullied a whole company into satisfying his exquisite taste, and the results are still outstanding. I'll take them even at a small price premium. That does not justify any boss being a jerk, but if you have the taste and the power to bully a lot of people to satisfy that taste, you'll likely produce something tasty.

kaa2102 14y ago

Treating people with respect and motivating folks to do better than their best are traits of an effective leader. I think we somehow confuse "people-shaming/screaming asshole" with a good leader.

Uncompetative 14y ago

I don't get the point. I am not Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was. I am me. Also, all the criticism in this thread that he wasn't a great engineer and Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy should have been given more coverage in the press the month he died is naive to say the least. They were both older. He still had much to do and was the boss of the world's biggest corporation. A bunch of Hackers on Hacker News won't reckon much on Steve Job's contribution to their field, but then he never was a hacker! He was a visionary who appreciated minimalistic design even if this meant that Apple products did fewer things. He made tech popular for the general consumer by simplifying it to just the essentials and burying all of the complexities. Hackers like to have every choice to exploit. That is why they like PCs and increasingly the Linux OSes. Everyone else that actually wants to get on an accomplish some creative work just ponies up the money for an Apple and what extra they pay out on hardware they tend to save on software - MS Office > iWork. Choosing which minimal set features to include in a product is harder than just lumping everything in, but the interface is far less cluttered and intrusive with less stuff to learn and therefore easier to use - which may not matter to Hackers like you, but is undoubtedly a factor in Apple's continued success.

Uncompetative 14y ago

I don't get the point. I am not Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was. I am me. Also, all the criticism in this thread that he wasn't a great engineer and Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy should have been given more coverage in the press the month he died is naive to say the least. They were both older. He still had much to do and was the boss of the world's biggest corporation. A bunch of Hackers on Hacker News won't reckon much on Steve Job's contribution to their field, but then he never was a hacker! He was a visionary who appreciated minimalistic design even if this meant that Apple products did fewer things. He made tech popular for the general consumer by simplifying it to just the essentials and burying all of the complexities. Hackers like to have every choice to exploit. That is why they like PCs and increasingly the Linux OSes. Everyone else that actually wants to get on and accomplish some creative work just ponies up the money for an Apple and what extra they pay out on hardware they tend to save on software - MS Office > iWork. Choosing which minimal set features to include in a product is harder than just lumping everything in, but the interface is far less cluttered and intrusive with less stuff to learn and therefore easier to use - which may not matter to Hackers like you, but is undoubtedly a factor in Apple's continued success.

davesque 14y ago

I'm a little bit confused that this article has gotten so much attention. So he was a jerk because he cut in line at the sushi bar? Okay. Maybe you had to be there, but is it hard to imagine that he might not have had time to wait in line? It does sound unfortunate that he shamed everybody for the iCloud launch, but I'm already inclined to believe that this account was exaggerated if the sushi bar story is any indication.

squozzer 14y ago

They say, “Peace, brother.” I say, “Bruise my feelings. Flatten my ego. Save my job.”