Tribute to Andy Grove with Ben Horowitz. Worth watching.
http://a16z.com/2015/09/28/the-man-who-built-silicon-valley-...
Andy Grove has died
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Re: Andy Grove has died
#32From Wikipedia, >Grove's office was an 8-ft by 9-ft cubicle like the other employees, as he disliked separate "mahogany-paneled corner offices." He states, "I've been living in cubicles since 1978 — and it hasn't hurt a whole lot." Preferring this egalitarian atmosphere, he thereby made his work area accessible to anyone who walked by. There were no reserved parking spaces, and Grove parked wherever there was a space…
It seems like early Intel and HP higher ups were more in tune with egalitarianism as well not being aloof or unapproachable. The Moore foundation has been an amazing charity. Here in Santa Cruz, Andy Grove built a house out on one of the streets near the beach between Santa Cruz and Capitola. He worked with neighbors (according to local press) to not be out of place in the design, etc. Contrast that with Zuckerberg a…
Gates also is known for having built a home that stood out. It's not about the era its about the person.
Re: Andy Grove has died
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bunking with the troops sounds a hell of a lot nicer as a gesture than what the usual exec in a company would have done: give himself a corner office with a nice view while the rest of the company spends their time in windowless cubicles. He wasn't promoting it per se, he was merely using it. Also, I think it is in poor taste to use this moment to attempt to draw attention away from the matter at hand to make it seem…
I don't see how it's a nice gesture. Not only does it fail to improve what is bad about the conditions, but also it creates an unspoken rule that you're not even allowed to complain, not even allowed to hope, for something better. Wearing tattered shoes and claiming they are "good enough" isn't a nice gesture nor is it helpful for the person who badly needs better shoes. Instead it's a message: deal with the bad stuf…
You're taking a sympathetic act and you're twisting it out of proportion just so you can promote your hobby horse. I don't personally like cubicles either but I'd far prefer the managers of the company to dogfood what they believe is best for their employees rather than that they create a better situation for themselves. If you don't understand why if every manager did that you might actually achieve your goal then that's just too bad.
Re: Andy Grove has died
#34Andy was brilliant and driven. After he retired from Intel, he worked to help find a cure for Parkinson's, from which he suffered. I wish that story had a happier ending but it does demonstrate the fight in him.
Re: Andy Grove has died
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how it's a nice gesture. Not only does it fail to improve what is bad about the conditions, but also it creates an unspoken rule that you're not even allowed to complain, not even allowed to hope, for something better. Wearing tattered shoes and claiming they are "good enough" isn't a nice gesture nor is it helpful for the person who badly needs better shoes. Instead it's a message: deal with the bad stuf…
You're taking a sympathetic act and you're twisting it out of proportion just so you can promote your hobby horse. I don't personally like cubicles either but I'd far prefer the managers of the company to dogfood what they believe is best for their employees rather than that they create a better situation for themselves. If you don't understand why if every manager did that you might actually achieve your goal then t…
Bloomberg, a company famous for an executive who expressed this same "down in the trenches" preference for cubicles, famously does not have offices.
Far from their "egalitarian" culture leading to acceptable working conditions over time, it has only enshrined the idea that no one, ever, may have an office.
It is much better that some people have offices even if not all do, for then at least there can be a path to earning the chance to work in one. Some hope. When they are all taken away under the guise of egalitarian conditions, you can bet they are not coming back.
Re: Andy Grove has died
#36Grove's High Output Management is highly recommended. It's a masterpiece of management theory and practice.
http://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp...
Re: Andy Grove has died
#37What an unfortunate attitude for him to take, promoting a poor quality working environment merely because it anecdotally didn't create problems for him, thereby damaging others who may have physiological conditions (such as misophonia) or who may be more strongly introverted and need privacy for productivity. And how bad for us now that we laud such poor anecdotes and allow words like "egalitarian" to be associated w…
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11333465 and marked it off-topic.
Re: Andy Grove has died
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cubes dysfunctional? Interesting. Your opinions are strong. I prefer working at home, but individual offices were a nice touch if I had to be in the office, the worst of all worlds was "open offices". A senior executive not using his role to be away from the other employees is incredibly rare these days.
Paul Graham expressed this much more strongly than I have, and he wrote about it over 10 years ago: "After software, the most important tool to a hacker is probably his office. Big companies think the function of office space is to express rank. But hackers use their offices for more than that: they use their office as a place to think in. And if you're a technology company, their thoughts are your product. So making…
Please stop.
Re: Andy Grove has died
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like early Intel and HP higher ups were more in tune with egalitarianism as well not being aloof or unapproachable. The Moore foundation has been an amazing charity. Here in Santa Cruz, Andy Grove built a house out on one of the streets near the beach between Santa Cruz and Capitola. He worked with neighbors (according to local press) to not be out of place in the design, etc. Contrast that with Zuckerberg a…
Gates also is known for having built a home that stood out. It's not about the era its about the person.
It is extravagant but hardly stands out. You can only see it by boat if you already know where to look.
Re: Andy Grove has died
#40What an unfortunate attitude for him to take, promoting a poor quality working environment merely because it anecdotally didn't create problems for him, thereby damaging others who may have physiological conditions (such as misophonia) or who may be more strongly introverted and need privacy for productivity. And how bad for us now that we laud such poor anecdotes and allow words like "egalitarian" to be associated w…
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11333465 and marked it off-topic.
This is unfortunate. I think it could not be more on-topic. It is as much about the legacy impact of his choices as the parent comment onto which I made it, and it seems exceedingly hypocritical to detach it.
But nonetheless I accept your choice. What other option do I have.