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> “Did we push the teams too hard?” says Lazaridis. “Probably. Can you show me a company that doesn’t? I’d be hard-pressed to believe you. The pressure Jobs put

by geon 11y ago

> “Did we push the teams too hard?” says Lazaridis. “Probably. Can you show me a company that doesn’t? I’d be hard-pressed to believe you. The pressure Jobs put his iPhone team through was worse than anything I ever put on my team. The fact is, that’s how business runs.” Asshole.

atmosx 11y ago
It's disgusting the fact that being deliberately an asshole is the de-facto view of the awesome manager today. Quotes like "that's a price you have to pay", etc. usually follow shitty statements like the above.
- snowwindwaves 11y ago
  Elon musk also expects his employees to work hard, the recent story about how spacex and tesla almost went bankrupt had paragraphs about employees totally giving up any semblance of work life balance: >Hollman exemplified the kind of recruit Musk wanted: ... At 23, Hollman was young, single, and willing to give up any semblance of having a life in favor of working at SpaceX nonstop, >SpaceX engineers would work for 10 days straight in Texas, come back to California for a weekend, and then head back. When searching for that article to quote I found this one as well: >If an employee tells Musk a deadline or cost requirement is isn't possible, he will often kick them off their job on the spot. "Elon will say, 'Fine. You're off the project, and I am now the CEO of the project. I will do your job and be CEO of two companies at the same time. I will deliver it,'" former senior SpaceX engineer Kevin Brogan told Vance. "What's crazy is that Elon actually does it. Every time he's fired someone and taken their job, he's delivered on whatever the project was." my only point is that HN loves musk and his work ethos but apparently the same expectations from apple/blackberry don't get the same treatment. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/ [2] http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-doesnt-believe-in-impossible-2015-5 http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-doesnt-believe-in-im...
  - bsg75 11y ago
    Celebrity worship. Musk is favored on HN, Jobs / Apple not as much. Both companies can be considered successful, but are not given similar critiques.
6d0debc071 11y ago
He's not even an asshole who won. So, while that may be how a lot of businesses run, it's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the strategy.
- userbinator 11y ago
  There's also the other side of the argument, that he wasn't enough of an asshole to win...
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    Whipping the team harder in the wrong direction wouldn't have worked any better. It was the wrong product. Even if it had worked perfectly and been delivered in a day instead of nine months, it would still have been the wrong product. That's what a management failure looks like. Turning up the assholery wouldn't have fixed anything.
  - 6d0debc071 11y ago
    The same could be said of making your staff drink honey when they come into work. If it's not increasing their productivity, perhaps they're simply not drinking enough of it. It's true enough that nothing will work if you don't sufficiently commit to it. The limitation with the observation is that it doesn't show how well associated different stimuli are with the desired output. Did torture not get the truth, perhaps you just didn't use enough of it? Did dosing someone with Omeprazole not cure a cold? Perhaps you didn't use enough of it... and so on. Or perhaps it's not the right approach. What we can say in general terms is that if you need a lot of something, the desired effect is at least only weakly associated with the stimuli. It might be possible to get the desired effect by using more of the thing, but this is a poor substitute for understanding the mechanism involved, and can be prohibitively costly; ethically and practically. In the given case: being an arsehole, for all that it comes easily to the individual, seems likely to be expensive to those around them - and by extension to the organisation - in other terms. There are people who will refuse to work with you because you're an arsehole. There are people who will burn out if you push them too hard. There are people who will keep their own counsel on issues rather than attempting to involve you in things. There are normative arguments that you won't be able to make, because no-one will take them seriously coming from someone like that. Balanced against the uncertainty that the output is even there, (anecdotes seem to go both ways on the issue,) that it does not match how I would expect productive working relationships to operate, and that I personally have never seen an effective team that I would attribute to the manager being mean, (and a great many ineffective teams that I would attribute to the same,) it does not seem a wise strategy to me. Though, that said, you might be bringing a different model of productive working relationships, or a different basis of observation, to the discussion. (Or be playing devils advocate.)
pmelendez 11y ago
Yeah... he is a jerk but he is right, Jobs was way worse and the myriad of people buying iPhone make look like he was right.
- 6d0debc071 11y ago
  The question is whether it's a precondition, or enhancer, of success in this sort of field. Not whether some particularly well-known business leader happened to share the property.
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  Do you know of any horror stories from the then iPhone team that you can link to about how Jobs pushed too hard?
- threeseed 11y ago
  I worked at Apple when Jobs was CEO and pretty much ALL of the company worked hard. It was pretty much written into the contract. It didn't have anything to do with Jobs personally telling you had to. It was because the deadlines and work were demanding and at a company that strives for excellence you don't want to be the weak link.
aswanson 11y ago
If he would have pushed himself harder, had tried to imagine the future and bring it into being a year or two earlier instead of sitting on his ass milking the cash cow, maybe the pressure would not have been necessary.

by geon 11y ago

atmosx 11y ago

It's disgusting the fact that being deliberately an asshole is the de-facto view of the awesome manager today. Quotes like "that's a price you have to pay", etc. usually follow shitty statements like the above.

snowwindwaves 11y ago
Elon musk also expects his employees to work hard, the recent story about how spacex and tesla almost went bankrupt had paragraphs about employees totally giving up any semblance of work life balance: >Hollman exemplified the kind of recruit Musk wanted: ... At 23, Hollman was young, single, and willing to give up any semblance of having a life in favor of working at SpaceX nonstop, >SpaceX engineers would work for 10 days straight in Texas, come back to California for a weekend, and then head back. When searching for that article to quote I found this one as well: >If an employee tells Musk a deadline or cost requirement is isn't possible, he will often kick them off their job on the spot. "Elon will say, 'Fine. You're off the project, and I am now the CEO of the project. I will do your job and be CEO of two companies at the same time. I will deliver it,'" former senior SpaceX engineer Kevin Brogan told Vance. "What's crazy is that Elon actually does it. Every time he's fired someone and taken their job, he's delivered on whatever the project was." my only point is that HN loves musk and his work ethos but apparently the same expectations from apple/blackberry don't get the same treatment. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/ [2] http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-doesnt-believe-in-impossible-2015-5 http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-doesnt-believe-in-im...
- bsg75 11y ago
  Celebrity worship. Musk is favored on HN, Jobs / Apple not as much. Both companies can be considered successful, but are not given similar critiques.

6d0debc071 11y ago

He's not even an asshole who won. So, while that may be how a lot of businesses run, it's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the strategy.

userbinator 11y ago
There's also the other side of the argument, that he wasn't enough of an asshole to win...
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Whipping the team harder in the wrong direction wouldn't have worked any better. It was the wrong product. Even if it had worked perfectly and been delivered in a day instead of nine months, it would still have been the wrong product. That's what a management failure looks like. Turning up the assholery wouldn't have fixed anything.
- 6d0debc071 11y ago
  The same could be said of making your staff drink honey when they come into work. If it's not increasing their productivity, perhaps they're simply not drinking enough of it. It's true enough that nothing will work if you don't sufficiently commit to it. The limitation with the observation is that it doesn't show how well associated different stimuli are with the desired output. Did torture not get the truth, perhaps you just didn't use enough of it? Did dosing someone with Omeprazole not cure a cold? Perhaps you didn't use enough of it... and so on. Or perhaps it's not the right approach. What we can say in general terms is that if you need a lot of something, the desired effect is at least only weakly associated with the stimuli. It might be possible to get the desired effect by using more of the thing, but this is a poor substitute for understanding the mechanism involved, and can be prohibitively costly; ethically and practically. In the given case: being an arsehole, for all that it comes easily to the individual, seems likely to be expensive to those around them - and by extension to the organisation - in other terms. There are people who will refuse to work with you because you're an arsehole. There are people who will burn out if you push them too hard. There are people who will keep their own counsel on issues rather than attempting to involve you in things. There are normative arguments that you won't be able to make, because no-one will take them seriously coming from someone like that. Balanced against the uncertainty that the output is even there, (anecdotes seem to go both ways on the issue,) that it does not match how I would expect productive working relationships to operate, and that I personally have never seen an effective team that I would attribute to the manager being mean, (and a great many ineffective teams that I would attribute to the same,) it does not seem a wise strategy to me. Though, that said, you might be bringing a different model of productive working relationships, or a different basis of observation, to the discussion. (Or be playing devils advocate.)

pmelendez 11y ago

Yeah... he is a jerk but he is right, Jobs was way worse and the myriad of people buying iPhone make look like he was right.

6d0debc071 11y ago
The question is whether it's a precondition, or enhancer, of success in this sort of field. Not whether some particularly well-known business leader happened to share the property.
seanmcdirmid 11y ago
Do you know of any horror stories from the then iPhone team that you can link to about how Jobs pushed too hard?
threeseed 11y ago
I worked at Apple when Jobs was CEO and pretty much ALL of the company worked hard. It was pretty much written into the contract. It didn't have anything to do with Jobs personally telling you had to. It was because the deadlines and work were demanding and at a company that strives for excellence you don't want to be the weak link.

aswanson 11y ago

If he would have pushed himself harder, had tried to imagine the future and bring it into being a year or two earlier instead of sitting on his ass milking the cash cow, maybe the pressure would not have been necessary.