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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?

#291

Post by MaintenanceMode »

garyrob wrote: post #285
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…

Buried deep in this thread, ksec quoted Jobs: "When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” It's also a…

Very well summarized. This really captures the dilemma.

Did I mention every single Ethernet cable had to be cut to length and if any server moved all the cables had to be remade ? Lol. They finally hired a wiring company to do all that work because I think we all protested to programming during the night and cutting cables during the day or vice versa.

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

#292

Post by dehrmann »

MaintenanceMode wrote: post #99
codexjourneys wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Somewhere in Steve logic somethings are black, somethings are silver, that's just the way it is.

Now my iPhone is gray and my charger is white. What happened?!

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

#293

Post by dev_tty01 »

mbesto wrote: post #288
dev_tty01 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it can be looked at in more ways than one. Maybe he was just a jerk, or perhaps he was giving an object lesson. Details matter and the boss was paying attention. You decide.

> You decide. I did. Steve Jobs is survivorship bias at its finest. I've met and interviewed plenty of "detail orientated" bosses and not all of them create trillion dollar entities. > Maybe he was just a jerk, or perhaps he was giving an object lesson. 1. There is no legitimate reason to make a server rack a different color. 2. Making people work until 3am isn't a lesson. It ignores all studies that suggest that dep…

Well, moving an icon a few pixels is also a purely aesthetic choice, just like changing the color of your house, the thickness of a header bar on a web page, the color of your office walls, or the color of a server rack. As with all aesthetic choices, there is someone who will think there is "no legitimate reason" to make those changes. There is someone else who will disagree. And yes, many detail oriented bosses are not successful, but Jobs actually did create a trillion dollar entity so I think this is more than just a survivorship bias. But he's controversial, so I get it if you disagree.

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

#294

Post by ksec »

garyrob wrote: post #285
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…

Buried deep in this thread, ksec quoted Jobs: "When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” It's also a…

Object Lessons.

In his first public appearance after revealing he had surgery to remove a tumor from his pancreas in 2004, Jobs met with a handful of reporters at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif. to unveil a new 750-square-foot "mini" store design. Half the size of the typical Apple retail stores of the time, the mini design featured an all-white ceiling, lit from behind; Japanese-made stainless-steel walls, with holes around the top for ventilation that mimicked the design of the PowerMac G5; and a shiny, seamless white floor made with "material used in aircraft hangars," Jobs said at the time.

Before the gigantic curtain draped across the storefront came down, though, Jobs was having a meltdown, refusing in the minutes before the unveiling to step outside and greet reporters. Why? Because the store design that looked so great on paper didn't stand up to real-world use. The walls showed off every handprint and the floors were marred by black scuff marks from the handful of people readying the store for the big reveal.

Jobs was ultimately convinced to step outside, and the curtain was drawn before the small gathering of reporters. When I saw the floor, I immediately turned to Jobs, standing next to me, and asked if he had been involved in every aspect of the design. He said yes. "It was obvious that whoever designed the store had never cleaned a floor in their life," I told him. He narrowed his eyes at me and stepped inside.

A few months later an Apple executive told me that Jobs had all of the designers return to the store after it opened on Saturday, and spend the night on their hands and knees cleaning the white surface. After that, Apple switched the floors to the stone tiles now prevalent in its designs.

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

#295

Post by brhsagain »

mradek wrote: post #266
brhsagain wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Impact? Someone could be an amazing mentor and mediocre at actual output, but their impact could lead to a bunch of people being able to stay leveled up and think more efficiently that lets the team ship more with less bugs. Maybe there’s a senior engineer who can consistently crank out high quality code and identify optimizations that save money. Some sort of holistic 360 reviews by peers where others can vouch for…

How do you stop the measurement of impact from degenerating into exactly the same situation we have now? In fact, I’m pretty sure at many bigcos “impact” is already the official metric for promo.

The real thing you’re getting at is that people should only be paid and promoted for real work, and not for bullshit work, but that’s basically impossible to measure once organizations grow beyond a certain size.

Also, in orgs beyond a certain size, “holistic” peer review based evals make bullshit promo culture worse, not better. It basically ends up meaning how much people like you, and accelerates the shift toward a culture where people optimize for that instead of doing real work. And then you’re back at square one.

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

#296

Post by brhsagain »

jordanbeiber wrote: post #265
brhsagain wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Exactly - what does it mean? You work on stimulating things and get paid what you accept. You’ll have a yearly review where you have your say, and pay can be increased if employer think it’s worth it. Titles are problematic in teams working to produce good stuff! We should compare ourselves to athletes more than the MBA powerpoint version of a company. I hear Tom Brady is a legend - is he an S10 quarterback? Senior q…

I agree with you that a level system creates bad incentives for everyone. But what they do provide is a rubric for the ambitious 23 year old who wants to climb to the top of whatever group he’s in. If you get rid of levels, what’s the new hierarchy for him to climb? If you don’t specify a hierarchy, one is going to form anyway, and then it’s even more out of your control.

If you’re going to say the hierarchy should be based on people doing real work, well I agree, but that is pretty much impossible to measure in groups beyond a certain size.

This groups beyond a certain size problem is the root of the problem, not levels, which are just a stopgap measure to slow the brakes on the deterioration and degeneracy that you find in any gigantic group of people.

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

#297

Post by Aleksdev »

MaintenanceMode wrote: post #224
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…

Hey, you don’t have to tell me, I quit immediately after the project, after bouts of both verbal and physical violence. I left likely tens of millions of future earnings behind as a result. But there’s simply no question that the guy was a visionary. I personally saw many other examples of crazy abusive behavior and I don’t believe the ends justify the means.

I just have to ask. What were some of the crazy things you have seen? Please don’t leave us hanging.

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

#298

Post by Aleksdev »

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.

Just want to add. Becoming Steve Jobs is an excellent read!

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

#299

Post by tomcam »

MaintenanceMode wrote: post #224
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…

Hey, you don’t have to tell me, I quit immediately after the project, after bouts of both verbal and physical violence. I left likely tens of millions of future earnings behind as a result. But there’s simply no question that the guy was a visionary. I personally saw many other examples of crazy abusive behavior and I don’t believe the ends justify the means.

Whoa physical violence?

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

#300

Post by tomcam »

rib3ye wrote: post #287
lloydatkinson wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what was his problem with two button mice anyway?

Too confusing for a first-time computer user or a small child. Having two small kids myself, I agree one button would be better for learning.

Except it gives rise to double-click, triple-click, shift-click, command-click, option-click, etc.
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