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Steve Jobs in Kyoto

www3.nhk.or.jp

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Re: Steve Jobs in Kyoto

#141

Post by WhompingWindows »

johnwheeler wrote: post #69
bcantrill wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate your frustration, but you should appreciate something else in turn: Steve Jobs was an asshole to many, many people for many, many years -- and "Steve stories" abound among the veterans in our industry. Speaking personally, my own introduction to Jobs was being at a friend's house as a kid, and overhearing her father being absolutely screamed at by someone on a speaker phone in his office. I looked at her,…

I know I’ll get downvoted, but who cares. I know that’s callous but people have too much an aversion of getting yelled at by their bosses nowadays. That’s ego and vanity.

How can Jobs go to Japanese Zen temples which teach the exact opposite of being a total asshole and yelling at everyone? It's incongruous, he just comes across as entitled and unnecessarily mean in these stories. He could've gotten the same amount out of people by sternly asking, not screaming and demeaning.

Re: Steve Jobs in Kyoto

#142

Post by johnwheeler »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #141
johnwheeler wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I’ll get downvoted, but who cares. I know that’s callous but people have too much an aversion of getting yelled at by their bosses nowadays. That’s ego and vanity.

How can Jobs go to Japanese Zen temples which teach the exact opposite of being a total asshole and yelling at everyone? It's incongruous, he just comes across as entitled and unnecessarily mean in these stories. He could've gotten the same amount out of people by sternly asking, not screaming and demeaning.

He was entitled. I’m sure he did a bit of both asking and screaming.

Re: Steve Jobs in Kyoto

#143

Post by soperj »

adventured wrote: post #133
soperj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but disavowing your daughter to not pay child support, or trying to recoup someones shares because they have cancer isn't a personality quirk.

Since it's important to be accurate when you're condemning someone - Gates never tried to take back Paul Allen's shares. That isn't merely a bit of nuance. It never happened. The only thing that ever happened was the infamous discussion between Gates and Ballmer, which Allen overheard. Gates offered to purchase the shares in 1983, which Allen rejected. Allen is quite clear about what happened in his book Idea Man. A…

They were discussing ways to dilute his shares. Bill tried to buy him out at a much reduced rate ($5 a share). When they went public a couple years later, the share price was $35 on the first day. Either way the whole thing was precipitated because he wasn't being as productive on account of having cancer. Bill likes to say that the relationship was repaired near the end of Paul's life, but at the same time, he wouldn't take or return a call from him when he was on his death bed, which they talk about in the mini-doc "Inside Bill's Brain".

Re: Steve Jobs in Kyoto

#144

Post by pazimzadeh »

glandium wrote: post #52
pazimzadeh wrote: post #9

> Oshima says he would even jokingly ask Jobs to name one of Apple's products 'Hiro.' That's not a bad alternative to 'Siri'

Fun fact: In Japanese there is no "Si" sound and the closest is "Shi", so "Siri" is pronounced "Shiri". You know what else is pronounced "Shiri" in Japanese? Buttocks (尻).

Interesting! 'Shir' means lion in Farsi, 'sheer' means milk so Shiri would mean 'you're a lion'

If you use a hard r 'Siri' translates to "garlic-i" or "you're a garlic"

Re: Steve Jobs in Kyoto

#145

Post by zepto »

bradlys wrote: post #109
zepto wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is saying that, the point is that what Jobs did is no worse than the everyday corporate passive aggressive manipulative stuff that nobody bothers to comment on.

Eh, I disagree. It's not like the anger didn't come with firings. In terms of things I'd like to get - I'd prefer someone doesn't yell and belittle me. If they want to do some corporate jargon speak to say, "you're gonna be fired in 4 weeks and this PIP is really just a formality" then I prefer that over yelling and belittling and then the firing happens anyway. It's a false dichotomy anyway. Steve could've been a ni…

> It's a false dichotomy anyway. Steve could've been a nice person but instead he was an asshole. You're just letting him get away with it because someone else does bad things too.

You won’t find anything in what I said that is related to this straw man. Nothing I said excuses his behavior.

It’s also absurd to suggest he got away with anything. He is well known as an ‘asshole’.

My point is that you and others who focus on Jobs are letting everyday passive aggressive corporate asshole behavior go unexamined just because the anger is hidden with a fake veneer of cordiality. Jobs is a scapegoat in this regard.

Steve was no worse than a passive aggressive middle manager. The difference was, he wasn’t fake. To put it another way - he would stab you in the front rather than the back.

Re: Steve Jobs in Kyoto

#146

Post by cududa »

blihp wrote: post #126
blimplab wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a difficulty fathoming (or believing) how this anecdote would be possible. When Steve Jobs' secretary picked up the phone, was it working hours? Brushing that aside, how could the secretary have called Nomura headquarters, reach the person who can grant access to the site, then have that person call the chauffeur within 10 minutes?

Working hours wouldn't matter. Steve was a very well connected CEO and probably better connected than most re: Japan. Canon was a significant partner with and investor in NeXT, for example. So it's not a stretch to imagine he knew connected people over there. All his secretaries probably needed to do was get in touch with the staff (more likely, the personal secretaries) of no more than a few of his contacts within a…

I always tell new founders to treat Executive Assistants as more important than the VC or exec they’re talking to. The elite ones all somehow know each other and talk. One particular EA that managed a billionaires life (he was on my board) and I became very close friends, she’s retired now, but there’s not a single powerful person she hasn’t managed to get me a meeting with, within a few days

Re: Steve Jobs in Kyoto

#147

Post by DanielleMolloy »

WoodenChair wrote: post #82

If you go through the entire article, you'll find a link to a documentary that just came out about SJ's love of Japanese art. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/special/episode/202101020...

Thanks, I had seen this one too (had even tried sharing it with HN in a parallel submission). It is made with a lot of care and tactfulness, and is one of the best documentaries about Steve Jobs I know.

Little warning: It totally brought me to tears. I knew he liked Japanese aesthetics, but wasn't aware it meant so much for him.

Re: Steve Jobs in Kyoto

#148

Post by javchz »

ksec wrote: post #135

Apple during Steve Jobs era felt very much as his interpretation of Japanese Culture and Zen Buddhism. Everything from Product Design to Apple Store and Services. The only thing that Japanese dont get ( and they somehow still dont ) is Software. Tim Cook first visit to Japan was in 2016 for business reasons. So I am going to say he has very little understanding of Japanese Zen culture, everything Steve took and put i…

Japanese Software development it's a weird beast.

On one side you have people that managed to squeeze the last bit of clock cycles and memory in video games in the 90s, without losing sight of the creativity and human interaction. And that's rare, usually, people and teams are great in the technical space, or great on the abstract emotional one, but not both. A lot of them are a masterclass in UX that need not tutorials for complex topics.

On the other hand, most of the Apps outside entertainment are only made by and for the Japanese market. I can not recall many recent names outside of LINE in the software field (and after WhatsApp added stickers... begun to fade away in the west; Today, I know more that use WeChat / Signal than LINE).

But I don't think this it's a problem of lack of great developers or education (A lot of great CS papers, frameworks, and libraries are created by Japanese devs).

My bet on the problem is in how businesses work in Japan. - They put a lot of effort into weird metrics hyper-focused on the local market - A hierarchy that puts a lot of weight on tradition and forms, rather than results (ie "appear productive" doing a lot of office hours).

In defense of Japan, I would say that most industries outside of IT in the west, work kinda the same (MBAs for CTOs, etc).

Re: Steve Jobs in Kyoto

#149

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

javchz wrote: post #148
ksec wrote: post #135

Apple during Steve Jobs era felt very much as his interpretation of Japanese Culture and Zen Buddhism. Everything from Product Design to Apple Store and Services. The only thing that Japanese dont get ( and they somehow still dont ) is Software. Tim Cook first visit to Japan was in 2016 for business reasons. So I am going to say he has very little understanding of Japanese Zen culture, everything Steve took and put i…

Japanese Software development it's a weird beast. On one side you have people that managed to squeeze the last bit of clock cycles and memory in video games in the 90s, without losing sight of the creativity and human interaction. And that's rare, usually, people and teams are great in the technical space, or great on the abstract emotional one, but not both. A lot of them are a masterclass in UX that need not tutori…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project could have been...

If it hadn't been vetoed/sabotaged...

Re: Steve Jobs in Kyoto

#150

Post by ksec »

javchz wrote: post #148
ksec wrote: post #135

Apple during Steve Jobs era felt very much as his interpretation of Japanese Culture and Zen Buddhism. Everything from Product Design to Apple Store and Services. The only thing that Japanese dont get ( and they somehow still dont ) is Software. Tim Cook first visit to Japan was in 2016 for business reasons. So I am going to say he has very little understanding of Japanese Zen culture, everything Steve took and put i…

Japanese Software development it's a weird beast. On one side you have people that managed to squeeze the last bit of clock cycles and memory in video games in the 90s, without losing sight of the creativity and human interaction. And that's rare, usually, people and teams are great in the technical space, or great on the abstract emotional one, but not both. A lot of them are a masterclass in UX that need not tutori…

Agree on every point. I have written something about the Japanese working culture on HN but I couldn't find it. The one I could find [1] was on the lack of A64FX outside Japan.

So it really is very strange indeed. I guess there is also a language barrier which stop them from global reach.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23370702

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