Whatever. Jeff might be super smart, but apparently he is not smart enough to instill some happiness in the people he works with.
I cannot help it, but I have little respect for people who do this, especially if they are super smart.
Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant
131–140 of 178 posts
Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant
#132His description of presentations to Bezos reminds the infamous BillG reviews http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html
Me too. Except that in Joel's piece Bill G seemed to ask an entirely relevant question and in Steve Yegge's piece Bezos seemed to ask about something quite secondary. Like Bezos has an arsenal of nasty questions up his sleeve and BillG actually knows what the f he's talking about.
"Why aren't these topics on your list" is perfectly relevant to a presentation on "subjects a generalist engineer should know."
Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant
#133Whatever. Jeff might be super smart, but apparently he is not smart enough to instill some happiness in the people he works with. I cannot help it, but I have little respect for people who do this, especially if they are super smart.
Why is that a necessary quality for smartness? Amazon seems to be doing quite well in spite of it.
Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I assume they meant the one product was search, it would probably be accurate to stay that the product is advertising and that they rest exists to feed the beast. But I doubt that was the innuendo of their rant.
In the same way that television shows are all about advertising and the acting/stories/dialogue are just to 'feed the beast'? You're confusing what Google's main product is with how they make money. That's a bit insulting to the engineers at Google that make Search so good.
It's perfectly reasonable to decline calling something a "product" if it doesn't make money. A widget company might produce a lot of memos in its daily operation, and might have its own cafeteria that produces food for its employees. But I think most people wouldn't count lunches or memos among the company's "products," no matter how good they might be.
Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I assume they meant the one product was search, it would probably be accurate to stay that the product is advertising and that they rest exists to feed the beast. But I doubt that was the innuendo of their rant.
In the same way that television shows are all about advertising and the acting/stories/dialogue are just to 'feed the beast'? You're confusing what Google's main product is with how they make money. That's a bit insulting to the engineers at Google that make Search so good.
It's not meant to be insulting, the reason why they can make any money with advertising at all is because search is so good that it brings in the eyeballs.
Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant
#136I hate fear-driven cultures where presentations/meetings/casual talk with the CEO are treated as a gladiator match. In addition to Bezos, of course Jobs and (from what I read) Gates created such cultures. Another interesting, lesser known example was Col. Robert R.MacCormick, the editor for the Chicago Tribune for long years. He was described as "remote, coldly aloof, ruthless aristocrat, living in lonely magnificenc…
I don't think all the "gladitorial"-style preparation is necessarily fear-driven. To a great extent it's an acknowledgement that the CEO's time and attention is a valuable, limited resource and should be treated accordingly.
Is it the case that some people only respect and respond to fear?
So Jobs, rather than waste time trying to figure out what makes every Apple employee tick (which wasn't a practical option considering Apple's size), he instituted a culture of fear and awe. This is akin to him wearing the same black turtleneck every day because he didn't want to waste brain cycles figuring out what to wear.
Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant
#137The issue of "so smart he needs a challenge so leave something for him to find" may overlap with "so narcissistic he needs something to smack you with so make a deliberate 'mistake' for him to find". I've found this quite effective; some people just need to find _something_ wrong with your idea/presentation/execution, so when they're going to review it, don't polish it to perfection - leave an error somewhere; you kn…
I've always called this tactic "The Admiral's Pipe" after this story: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brada/archive/2005/05/12/417064.aspx
Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant
#138The issue of "so smart he needs a challenge so leave something for him to find" may overlap with "so narcissistic he needs something to smack you with so make a deliberate 'mistake' for him to find". I've found this quite effective; some people just need to find _something_ wrong with your idea/presentation/execution, so when they're going to review it, don't polish it to perfection - leave an error somewhere; you kn…
Yeah, the trick to getting some people to go along with something is getting them to think it's their idea.
Leaving parts out so they can provide input and fill in the gaps is a way of guiding them down the path -- you're essentially manufacturing buy-in.
Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant
#139His description of presentations to Bezos reminds the infamous BillG reviews http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html
> The cult of the MBA likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don't understand. Exactly. A few years back, I found myself in a one-on-one saying: "you would think someone taking a job managing a hog farm would at least know what a hog is." Though, that was about web-development. A suitable allegory.
Yea, but I think the real problem is that the old MBA courses taught a bunch of horrible stuff.
Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant
#140Misdirection and inauthentic, that's what I call Steve Yegge's follow up piece.
Internet attention spans suck.
Remember his first post? Amazon is doing everything wrong and Google is doing everything right.
If Bezos is a super intelligent alien, this begs the question, why is Amazon doing everything wrong?
Also, Google didn't fire Steve Yegge because he did what their 6-figured marketing people couldn't: With a single post, Steve Yegge brought millions of uniques to Google+.