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Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

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Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#51

Post by inamberclad »

DonHopkins wrote: post #26
smegsicle wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rather get one from donald knuth

John McCarthy trolled me once! When I met him, we were chatting about Stanford, and I mentioned that I really admired that huge radio telescope that you could see around 280 and Page Mill Road in the hills above Stanford. He looked puzzled and confused, and asked "Which huge radio telescope?" I was flustered and explained how you couldn't miss it, right by 280 and Page Mill Road, it's out there in a field, its huge,…

It's just called The Dish, and I mean, it's only medium sized (46 meters) compared to the main antenna at a DSN site (70 meters).

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#52

Post by ActorNightly »

woodruffw wrote: post #19

These are funny, and their humor should be treated of how evidence of malfeasance really reveals itself: not in smoke-filled rooms, but silly emails between CEOs beefing over a talented employee.

Probably not that funny to the engineer in question, and Im willing to bet that Jobs didn't once approach him and offer him more money to stay.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#53

Post by karaterobot »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #20

... it seems silly to have both firefox and safari. perhaps there is some unificaiton strategy that we can get these two to pursue. combined, they certainly have enough marketshare to drive webmasters. --sergey This line of thought seems somewhat nefarious. I suppose you could say it was just to fight back against msie, but in retrospect it feels like a plan to dominate web development.

Charitably, his thought at the time seems to be that those two vendors could create a viable competitor to Internet Explorer. People forget how much IE dominated the browser market, and how much that hurt the web. Ultimately Google would create its own browser monopoly, but this statement does not seem to refer to that plan unless you read a lot into it.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#54

Post by i2shar »

swyx wrote: post #25

> Basically, [Steve] said "if you hire a single one of these people that means war". what realistically could steve jobs have done here? its not like he had any legal power to prevent his guys going over, and if he wanted to poach from google just to spite google it’d just be a stupidly expensive affair

If you scroll down on the original post, there's another techemail from Palm CEO Ed Colligan to Steve Jobs [0] in which he says: "Threatening Palm with a patent lawsuit in response to a decision by one employee to leave Apple is just out of line."

So, don't know what Jobs could have done with Google specifically, but safe to assume that it would be something else equally out of line.

[0]: https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1422603572814962692

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#55

Post by vxNsr »

rubyfan wrote: post #46

Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George Steinbrenner (Yankees) and Jonny Tyler (Tyler Chicken) get into an argument over George Costanza and start negotiating a deal. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V-Tspdoouns

Of course George ends up getting "eaten alive" by NYC and losing both jobs.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#56

Post by eyelidlessness »

jjulius wrote: post #32
wahnfrieden wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I mean, it can be both cool that I'm talented enough to have those two people fight over me, and also suck that my wages might get impacted. Ain't nuance neat? :)

Here’s some nuance: anyone so talented they warrant legal action over a fight to employ them already knows they’re very talented. Being their stakes in a war over strategic business goals isn’t more affirming, it’s almost certainly less. It’s (almost invariably) not cool to be someone else’s meat. Even if you know you’re very highly valued meat, and even if they affirm that your value as meat is very high indeed.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#57

Post by pm90 »

I don’t understand Jobs’ logic here. Is he just a bully? If Google makes such a great offer that his employee will leave him, shouldn’t he try to make a better offer, or meet with the employee instead of calling Sergey?

Say he did get the offer canceled. How would this employee feel about working for a CEO that does this?

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#58

Post by JKCalhoun »

ActorNightly wrote: post #52
woodruffw wrote: post #19

These are funny, and their humor should be treated of how evidence of malfeasance really reveals itself: not in smoke-filled rooms, but silly emails between CEOs beefing over a talented employee.

Probably not that funny to the engineer in question, and Im willing to bet that Jobs didn't once approach him and offer him more money to stay.

I wouldn't make that bet. Jobs played favorites and I believe he was known to amply reward his favorites.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#60

Post by eyelidlessness »

kortilla wrote: post #41
wahnfrieden wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Whooooosh. The whole point is that you’re even worth the attention of attempted wage suppression by two high level execs. It has nothing to do with fawning over execs.

It’s an honor to be suppressed by C-levels in two giant corporations! It isn’t fawning over the people who systematically deny me seeking value for my talent, I’m privileged to have both of them fuck me simultaneously!
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