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

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

#241

Post by sroussey »

ribs wrote: post #166
KerrAvon wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The lack of protected memory was pretty insidious—essentially the kernel relied on application memory for its own internals in MacOS, and reentrancy was a problem for, oh, everything. Copland was to fix that first problem though (but only for new apps).

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

#242

Post by maxbond »

mlindner wrote: post #214
mbesto wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The guy had a vision that seems unparalleled. Yet, he asked a group of software developers to paint a data center rack mount because "it wasn't acceptable" and made people work until 3am (even though numerous studies state that this doesn't make people more productive). One can call him "visionary" all they want, but the work environment he created doesn't sound exactly utopian. Do the ends really justify the means…

I've never worked in such an environment myself but I imagine it feels something like soldiers feel following a leader who feels like he knows what he's doing. It's the feeling of shared hardship and shared experience and it creates culture of driving to follow the leader. I imagine Elon Musk (at least used to, not sure if he still does) cause the same experience in employees. That's the sense you get when you read b…

I don't think people spray painting parts no one in the public will ever see feel like their leader is on the ball. They probably feel like they're at the whims of an unreasonable narcissist who can erase their weekend and generally make them miserable for no reason whatsoever.

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

#243

Post by scroot »

CharlesW wrote: post #184
scroot wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world needs to know more about HyperCard 3. I wish some kind person would throw a development version up online for us plebs to explore. It would be great to know and see what it was going to be all about!

I couldn't agree more. HyperCard changed the world, and it's a tragedy that it was abandoned. The idea that QuickTime¹ would be the runtime for HyperCard 3² — or from a different perspective, that HyperCard stacks would be just another media type — was extremely clever. We'd³ previously experimented with specific interactive functionality, but QTi generalized interactive media capabilities in a technically-interestin…

> The 1996 WWDC session Hypercard 3.0: The Phoenix Rises was electric. Here's a report from that session, complete with a response from the awesome Kevin Calhoun. http://folkstream.com/muse/teachhc/hc3.html

Makes me sad to read this!

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

#244

Post by brhsagain »

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,…

I agree with you that promo culture is pretty much the root of modern big company rot, but under your system, how do you propose an industrious, ambitious IC move up, whatever that means? Even if you think the status is fake and dumb (and I would agree), how do you make more money as an IC?

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

#245

Post by someonehere »

Some stories I’ve heard over the years when I was at Apple Retail. I cannot confirm or deny any of these are true and maybe someone here can corroborate them.

- employees used to steal Steve’s license plates as a joke so that’s why he was always leasing cars. The maximum grace period for getting plates was six months so he’d change Mercedes every six months.

- Steve used to park in the handicap spot up front at IL1.

- there was gourmet chocolate milk for Steve stashed in the back of refrigerators at Cafe Macs. Yes I know he was vegan but I questioned the story as well. Apparently it was a secret indulgence only a few knew about.

- he had his own connection from PAIX (Palo Alto Internet Exchange) to his house.

- he had his own mail server at Apple.

- an employee with the corporate email steve@ before Steve’s return was asked to give up his email address for Steve.

- Steve had his own personal IS&T person to go to his house or work on things for him. On average they lasted a few months before Steve asked that tech be fired (for whatever reason), and HR just shuffled them somewhere else in the company.

- if you were in an elevator with Steve after coming back from a smoke break, you were likely in deep shit and probably out of a job.

I remember using an old company directory tool app for employees and looking up Steve. It said he report to Woz. When you looked up Woz, it said he reported to Steve.

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

#246

Post by zwaps »

solardev wrote: post #198
shanusmagnus wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a place like that before. A lot of people were grumpy that they were not progressing. Some of them were probably right; some were probably wrong. But it was clear to me that having a concrete thing to aim for (a new title) mattered. A lot. I take it that wasn't the case at Palantir. Since I'm convinced that all humans are status-seeking, I'm curious how Palantir satisfied that urge, if not w/ title differ…

Is it bad to discourage status-seeking behavior, such that the people are just that way... look elsewhere?

Can you, as a business, afford it?

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

#247

Post by hackmiester »

codexjourneys wrote: post #96
MaintenanceMode wrote: post #91

I was there in 1999 as OS X was being developed, and the beta was just about to be released. I was building another product that was released at MacWorld in 2000 (and still exists today)! I have a lot of funny stories. Steve didn't like our data center rack mounts being silver, we had to pull them all out and spray paint them black, because silver just wasn't acceptable, in a datacenter. That was my first day at work…

> Steve didn't like our data center rack mounts being silver, we had to pull them all out and spray paint them black, because silver just wasn't acceptable, in a datacenter. This strikes me as funny because of all the canonically silver iMacs and Macbooks that came afterward. Is black even an option?

Yeah, not to mention silver Xserves ("RackMacs").

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

#248

Post by FabHK »

m463 wrote: post #191
mradek wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I remember finding out some companies had SO many VPs. how can you have that many VPs? isn't it like making everyone a senior engineer?

In investment banking, that's just a mid-level title. The usual progression is Analyst, Associate, VP, Director, Managing Director.

Not everyone becomes MD, but you definitely become VP by sticking around for a few years.

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

#249

Post by kccqzy »

m463 wrote: post #191
mradek wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I remember finding out some companies had SO many VPs. how can you have that many VPs? isn't it like making everyone a senior engineer?

At my current job between the CEO and me the reporting chain had one SVP and three VPs.

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

#250

Post by smugma »

gajjanag wrote: post #213
smugma wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Not really true anymore unfortunately, and the system is converging with other large organizations. For example, to keep compensation in line with market and reduce attrition, there were definitely more people who got promoted to ICT5 last year and the designation has thus been diluted. Furthermore, candidates coming in from other large companies expect the title/leveling prestige in many cases, and ICT5 is a tough s…

Fair number of ICT6… would you say more than 250 out of what, 25K engineers?
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