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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."
by 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 agoI'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 agoThat'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.