Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 322 posts

Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

#161

Post by mradek »

w10-1 wrote: post #16

It's hard to overstate how bloated Apple was internally. Marketing had products for every conceivable niche. Engineering was all posturing: great hand-waving plans papered over nasty middle-management infighting. Hundreds of engineers in new glass-walled offices, producing plans. I wrote test code against a component that had been delivered months earlier only to find that it was just a stub. Even the debugger had bu…

I wish companies would be run in a way that removes insane leveling completely.

In my current company there are 7 or 8 levels (depending how you look at it) for ICs. Why?

IME it has led to so much “talk” and bloat, and useless meetings led by people trying to prove something who go on and on about things that make no sense. No execution, only flattery and BS.

IMO, the only levels you need should be Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, and Software Architect. The architects should be rare, and there should be a healthy mix of seniors and juniors focused on building and supporting products internal and customer facing.

Why do we have several layers of managers? Out of a dozen managers only two have been good. They’re also the first ones fired. It just seems stupid, even if it’s purposefully done that way (that’s even dumber to consider). Have lean teams with a lead, and a manager who manages several teams, and a director for each product offering who reports to a CTO or something. VP, SVP, EVP. Why?

I’m on a team where people waste so much time and yet I see those same people get promoted, while I’m told I’m disengaged because I don’t turn on my camera in bullshit meetings (to plan future meetings or ramble). On the other hand, my team consistently delivers on time or sooner, while those teams take forever.

It’s sad, really.

Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

#162

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

w10-1 wrote: post #16

It's hard to overstate how bloated Apple was internally. Marketing had products for every conceivable niche. Engineering was all posturing: great hand-waving plans papered over nasty middle-management infighting. Hundreds of engineers in new glass-walled offices, producing plans. I wrote test code against a component that had been delivered months earlier only to find that it was just a stub. Even the debugger had bu…

Well, it's much easier to write a brand new language and class libraries. Everything is self contained, there are no dumb users involved, no undocumented external functions, most of the library functions can be ported from existing languages etc.

Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

#163

Post by makapuf »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #127
tester756 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 36 classes per *day* (900/250 workdays) I don't know how many people were working on that but when developing standard library you do not really want to rush designs. You want to be very, very careful about it. Here's a book about it from one of the most experienced people in API/Standard lib design on the planet https://www.amazon.com/Framework-Design-Guidelines-Conventio...

I think the first part of a standard lib is pretty straightforward to design. String operations, math, standard protocols, I/O are petty well understood. It gets more tricky once you get to higher levels abstraction like UI.

Nio and streams API show that even those were not evident from the beginning of java.

Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

#164

Post by hedgehog »

KerrAvon wrote: post #139
hedgehog wrote: post #34

The best reading on that period I'm aware of is the Jim Carleton book "Apple". He's a WSJ reporter who was covering the company at the time and the book covers the period ending around when Jobs returned but before he stepped in as CEO. The thing I find most interesting about that book is it was written without being tainted by knowledge of the company's later resurgence. It provides a really different take than anyt…

I have the Carlton book; beware that it is chock full of inaccuracies -- I don't recommend it. Gil Amelio's book ("On the Firing Line"?) is better. Isaacson's book is like the notes one takes before writing the actual book -- a starting point, but very incomplete and there's no center to it. If you want to read a Jobs biography that is good -- but does not pull punches -- "Becoming Steve Jobs" is the one to get.

Thanks for recommendations. It's been a while since I've read the Carlton book, do you remember offhand any major errors?

Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

#165

Post by smugma »

mradek wrote: post #161
w10-1 wrote: post #16

It's hard to overstate how bloated Apple was internally. Marketing had products for every conceivable niche. Engineering was all posturing: great hand-waving plans papered over nasty middle-management infighting. Hundreds of engineers in new glass-walled offices, producing plans. I wrote test code against a component that had been delivered months earlier only to find that it was just a stub. Even the debugger had bu…

I wish companies would be run in a way that removes insane leveling completely. In my current company there are 7 or 8 levels (depending how you look at it) for ICs. Why? IME it has led to so much “talk” and bloat, and useless meetings led by people trying to prove something who go on and on about things that make no sense. No execution, only flattery and BS. IMO, the only levels you need should be Software Engineer,…

The IC leveling at Apple is similar to what you have described. ICT 3/4/5 roughly maps to what you have. The problem with this is that while it's relatively easy to go from a 3 to a 4 after a few years, it's a huge jump from 4 to 5, and then after that you've basically peaked for life. If you just care about building great things, it can work, but for many people, feeling like there's growth and not stagnation is a problem. It also creates a problem for managers having to temper those expectations.

Limiting IC layers doesn't remove all the other politics.

Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

#166

Post by ribs »

KerrAvon wrote: post #132
Aloha wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gil Amelio and Ellen Hancock were I think some of the most underrated management that Apple had, they at least had a better clue about where the company needed to go. Also, I think Michael Spindler did more damage to Apple than Scully did.

No, Gil and Ellen were incompetent. If they had understood how to separate the wheat from the chaff, a useful version of Copland could have been out in 1997. They were not willing to say no and fire people. The first thing Steve did when he took over? Mass layoff. It was absolute malpractice to buy NeXT for the OS, which was an obsolete, moribund, and expensive version of Unix. What they ended up getting was adult ma…

How could Apple could have gotten a real OS more quickly? The Mac OS of the time had no preemptive multitasking or protected memory, so software running on it was doomed to be made unstable by all the other software. NextStep, maybe it was what you say, but they needed to make a change.

Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

#167

Post by cma »

hot_gril wrote: post #71
kypro wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "TikTok threat" is so overblown. It's not activity competing with any existing social or video platform. It's competing for time, but that's about it. No one is using TikTok to stay in touch with their Grandmother or watching 2 hour Podcasts on it. They invented a new type of video entertainment which has a social element, that's it - it's neither a YouTube or a social network competitor. I'd argue Snapchat is pr…

It directly competes for some use cases, for time, and for ads. One person's total time spent watching videos doesn't grow just because there's a new platform on the block. Kids even use TikTok as an alternative to Google searches for knowledge. I'm not saying TikTok alone can wreck Google, but YouTube at least felt threatened enough to make something similar called Shorts. IDK about the social network side. Google d…

> Kids even use TikTok as an alternative to Google searches for knowledge

Is that why Google search heavily forces tons of Youtube results to the top now even when it is barely relevant?

Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

#168

Post by ghostly_s »

m0llusk wrote: post #124
CyberDildonics wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs comes by and every employee tells him that he can't ask what they're working on and they all quit the next day? That sounds a little hyperbolic.

Admittedly I only saw Steve doing this like two or three times. The group that was next to mine was not large and was gone in about a week. Heard similar stories from others who observed Steve Jobs randomly talking to people who then left and also heard some of these people talking about these events. Morale was very low in many groups at that time and a lot of people working there had quite remarkable egos.

Doesn't it seem more likely that the CEO (or proto-CEO, you didn't clarify what time period this was) fired these people after they were uncooperative in these informal talks?

Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

#169

Post by E39M5S62 »

diskzero wrote: post #146

I have a fairly interesting perspective; I was there when Steve first returned, left after a few months and then returned in less than eighteen months. I initially joined as a refugee from Be, as it became obvious the PowerPC would no longer be a viable platform for BeOS. I joing the Final Cut Pro team, which has just joined Apple as part of an aquisition of the "Key Grip" video editor from Macromedia. The FCP team l…

I had a PowerPC Mac in ~1998 and I put BeOS R4.5 on it. What a HUGE change from MacOS ... I couldn't believe a computer could actually act and respond like that! I jumped ship to Intel hardware to stick with BeOS.

I'm very curious what you worked on at Be - the development team wasn't that large, was it?

Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?

#170

Post by fardo »

mradek wrote: post #161
w10-1 wrote: post #16

It's hard to overstate how bloated Apple was internally. Marketing had products for every conceivable niche. Engineering was all posturing: great hand-waving plans papered over nasty middle-management infighting. Hundreds of engineers in new glass-walled offices, producing plans. I wrote test code against a component that had been delivered months earlier only to find that it was just a stub. Even the debugger had bu…

I wish companies would be run in a way that removes insane leveling completely. In my current company there are 7 or 8 levels (depending how you look at it) for ICs. Why? IME it has led to so much “talk” and bloat, and useless meetings led by people trying to prove something who go on and on about things that make no sense. No execution, only flattery and BS. IMO, the only levels you need should be Software Engineer,…

> In my current company there are 7 or 8 levels (depending how you look at it) for ICs. Why?

Promotions tend to represent some combination of four things to most companies:

• more expected impact and workload,

• more status,

• more money, and

• more expected industry experience and seniority

The three level system you propose might work if the company using it is in fact actually flatter in its internal hierarchy on those traits - but if it’s not, from the perspectives of the workers, all you’ve done is intentionally obscured the mechanics of the actual hierarchy you’re using in a way that even further obscures pay disparities, denies workers who are motivated by externally visible status a route to progression, equates high performing “just below architect” and “barely above software engineer” workloads in a way likely to incentivize many seniors to coast, and surrenders an easy tool for gauging performance by measuring how successfully someone is progressing at the company and in the field based on their level vs. years of experience.

Post reply on HN