Live data from Hacker News

Apple 2001

corecursive.com

1–10 of 50 posts

Re: Apple 2001

#3
80 and 90 hour work weeks? Steve Jobs changing software direction at nearly every weekly meeting? Huge secrecy requirements including assigned lunch breaks? I hope they were getting paid a lot.

Re: Apple 2001

#4
TL;DR: (Though you really, really should read it, it's fascinating)

A guy got paid actual money to work on a variant of iPod that works like a James Bond gadget, with the secret stuff hidden under a boring interface option and all.

Re: Apple 2001

#5
post #3

80 and 90 hour work weeks? Steve Jobs changing software direction at nearly every weekly meeting? Huge secrecy requirements including assigned lunch breaks? I hope they were getting paid a lot.

Well, if they got any stock, it's worth about 50x as much now as it was then (not adjusting for inflation or other factors). So if they were getting $25k in stock for 4 years, that would be worth a few million today.

The sad thing is I'd wager 95-99% of startup employees put in work hoping for some kind of similar payout, only to never find it.

Re: Apple 2001

#6
post #3

80 and 90 hour work weeks? Steve Jobs changing software direction at nearly every weekly meeting? Huge secrecy requirements including assigned lunch breaks? I hope they were getting paid a lot.

Well, if they got any stock, it's worth about 50x as much now as it was then (not adjusting for inflation or other factors). So if they were getting $25k in stock for 4 years, that would be worth a few million today. The sad thing is I'd wager 95-99% of startup employees put in work hoping for some kind of similar payout, only to never find it.

> Well, if they got any stock, it's worth about 50x as much now as it was then (not adjusting for inflation or other factors). So if they were getting $25k in stock for 4 years, that would be worth a few million today.

But that's assuming they held onto all that stock for all this time, which is probably did not happen in the vast majority of cases. My guess is that most sold it for less than 10x within 10 years.

Re: Apple 2001

#8
post #3

80 and 90 hour work weeks? Steve Jobs changing software direction at nearly every weekly meeting? Huge secrecy requirements including assigned lunch breaks? I hope they were getting paid a lot.

Well, if they got any stock, it's worth about 50x as much now as it was then (not adjusting for inflation or other factors). So if they were getting $25k in stock for 4 years, that would be worth a few million today. The sad thing is I'd wager 95-99% of startup employees put in work hoping for some kind of similar payout, only to never find it.

You mean 400x.. it was split a couple of times.

2500$ is 1M now

That 25k would be 10M now per year, or $40M in your example

Re: Apple 2001

#9
post #3

80 and 90 hour work weeks? Steve Jobs changing software direction at nearly every weekly meeting? Huge secrecy requirements including assigned lunch breaks? I hope they were getting paid a lot.

Well, if they got any stock, it's worth about 50x as much now as it was then (not adjusting for inflation or other factors). So if they were getting $25k in stock for 4 years, that would be worth a few million today. The sad thing is I'd wager 95-99% of startup employees put in work hoping for some kind of similar payout, only to never find it.

If they were paid for their actual time (i.e. something like overtime) they would have made in excess of $25K and could have invested it wherever. That they happened to work at Apple and it did what it did was a little lucky.

I think Jobs was a special and good leader in many ways, but also a total jerk.

Imagine if Jobs were to have kept notes and been more coherent in his feedback i.e. "I don't like the menus. Don't distract the team now but analyze it, and I want a plan for adjust them in X weeks. Then, push it into the schedule".

There may actually be some benefit in keeping your devs. on a 1 or 2 weeks sprint dogleash but I doubt it. Keeping them on pace but not needlessly diverting them is good.

And Hardware leaders not understanding refactoring is bad. I mean, we never really estimate it well, but still.

I think it shows us how far marketing goes with respect to how we understand a company as much as it's products.

Re: Apple 2001

#10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if they got any stock, it's worth about 50x as much now as it was then (not adjusting for inflation or other factors). So if they were getting $25k in stock for 4 years, that would be worth a few million today. The sad thing is I'd wager 95-99% of startup employees put in work hoping for some kind of similar payout, only to never find it.

> Well, if they got any stock, it's worth about 50x as much now as it was then (not adjusting for inflation or other factors). So if they were getting $25k in stock for 4 years, that would be worth a few million today. But that's assuming they held onto all that stock for all this time, which is probably did not happen in the vast majority of cases. My guess is that most sold it for less than 10x within 10 years.

10x was after 5 years.

10years was 50x

Post reply on HN