Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader • Hacker News Board

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#171

Post by WhompingWindows » Wed, Mar 09, 2022, 4:44 PM UTC

newaccount74 wrote: post #97

WhompingWindows wrote: post #72

In a tech world with dozens of "amazing leaders", is it possible that some of them just got lucky? They took some shots in the dark, some got lucky, some got unlucky: can it be that simple? If Steve Jobs was coming up today, could he have owned leetcode and tech interviews, would he have gotten a CS degree, could he have succeeded in a start-up today? Could many of us here in tech now have done what he did? My point…

I really don't think Steve Jobs was taking shots in the dark. He had remarkable foresight and an uncanny ability to see where the puck was going. Not all of his ideas worked out. But he had a very high success rate. Doing leetcode and tech interviews is not what a young Steve Jobs would be working on today; a young Steve Jobs today would be working on something that most of us wouldn't bother with because we don't se…

Well, he certainly had a ton of help from other people to ensure he wasn't taking shots in the dark most of the time. He copied most of his best ideas from other sources, and point-blank refused to acknowledge Woz and Apple 2, publicly denigrating their work when it would've been SO easy to just give them a quick shout-out.

I'd consider this, at best, waiting by the goal for the puck to be passed so he can flick it in behind the goalie, and then being good at raising his arms in triumph. Did Gretzky wait for the assist, or was his brilliance that he himself could make tremendous opportunities and then flick it in as well? At least "visionaries" like Elon and Bill Gates coded up solutions themselves when they needed to.

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#172

Post by lifeisstillgood » Wed, Mar 09, 2022, 8:41 PM UTC

sooheon wrote: post #169

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am absilutely fascinated by these questions and will dive into your book recommentation. One can think of an organisation as 'development' on top of land (the market). So Apple has organised (against the 2nd law of thermodynamics) a collection of companies that moves chips and aluminum and glass into a box in a store near me. That is a form of development / improvement of the 'land' (laws of physics, existence of G…

I'm glad you're interested. > So Apple has organised (against the 2nd law of thermodynamics) a collection of companies that moves chips and aluminum and glass into a box in a store near me. [...] That is a form of development / improvement of the 'land' Exactly right. Which is why none of those improvements should be taxed. They are the product of human labor, to which the laborer has full rights. It is only the comm…

So is Amazon's shop owned to the exclusion of everyone else? It's not a natural common good. But it is (if you squint) a utility.

Google's search is a utility with far less squinting

Is an Aqueduct natural common good? Is the water flowing through it? what happens with open source software?

I kind of get where you are trying to draw the line but I think we have progressed so far above "just land"

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#173

Post by lgas » Wed, Mar 09, 2022, 9:09 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #20

hef19898 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, a quite recent thought, that the best thing to happen to Jobs, and Apple, was Jobs being fired. May sound stupid, but I think this break added some experience and humility that Jobs wouldn't have had if had just risen up to CEO and stayed there. And Apple was all the better of for it.

Yeah. It's a bit of a narrative rather than a fact, but from what I can tell he really did some big soul searching and learned a lot of useful, practical advice. IIRC there is some article describing him looking at a warehouse full of unsellable inventory and realizing that not storing computers, but building them near realtime based on demand, was a better way to not lose money.

That sounds more like Dell than Jobs.

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#174

Post by sooheon » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 12:16 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #172

sooheon wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you're interested. > So Apple has organised (against the 2nd law of thermodynamics) a collection of companies that moves chips and aluminum and glass into a box in a store near me. [...] That is a form of development / improvement of the 'land' Exactly right. Which is why none of those improvements should be taxed. They are the product of human labor, to which the laborer has full rights. It is only the comm…

So is Amazon's shop owned to the exclusion of everyone else? It's not a natural common good. But it is (if you squint) a utility. Google's search is a utility with far less squinting Is an Aqueduct natural common good? Is the water flowing through it? what happens with open source software? I kind of get where you are trying to draw the line but I think we have progressed so far above "just land"

> is Amazon's shop owned to the exclusion of everyone else?

Not the online store. The land taken up by their supply chain, offices, and datacenters is all they are excluding others from using.

> Google's search is a utility with far less squinting

It's a valuable service, but because the service was built by humans, it should belong fully to those who built it. I don't see a justification for taxing the output of someone's labor just because it is popular. What they should give back to society is what they have taken from society, again the land that their office buildings and datacenters take up.

There is a more nuanced point about the natural monopolies of certain businesses due to network effects and economies of scale, but it's better to read the book for a full treatment, I can't do it justice.

> Is an Aqueduct natural common good?

I don't see why. It's built by human hands, designed by human engineers. The land the aqueduct takes up, and the reservoir of water it draws from are natural common goods, of course.

> what happens with open source software?

Software is very interesting. It is the output of labor clearly, but ideas are part of the public domain (ideas are there in nature to be discovered, anyone can discover an idea). If you package a set of open ideas into a service, I don't think anyone else has a claim on that service than you.

> I kind of get where you are trying to draw the line but I think we have progressed so far above "just land"

Land is not just land. "The term land embraces, in short, all natural materials, forces, and opportunities". Land is one of the three unique factors of production, along with labor and capital, it is everything that is not the product of human labor. (Labor is labor, and capital is the stored product of labor put to use to create more wealth)

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#175

Post by dogman144 » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #159

dogman144 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope! Not using any tactics. I'm sorry you felt so much cynicism in my commentary though, it's good to be aware of how good-faith discussion can be interpreted like you have mine it seems. Leadership is a science, most people suck at it without training except for the very gifted few. The good news is you can train on it. Because a norm exists of believing leadership is a "have it or not" vs. a "have it or train it"…

We may have crossed lines here - I was criticizing @late2part's[1] reply to your comment which said - in its entirety - "Your comment is toxic and offensive to me." I take no issue with your original comment (I mostly agree with it), but late2part's comment doesn't seem like it was given in good faith; hence my rant. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30601390 edit: I've realized what may have cause the confusio…

All good! Thanks for the clarification. Love HN dialogue b/c of discussions like this.