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Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

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Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#151

Post by somenameforme »

pm90 wrote: post #57

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?

"Pure capitalism", or "war" as Steve Jobs put it in one of his emails, is a race to the bottom in terms of company profits because of countless scenarios like this. I want employee X because he will bring $Y value to me, so I can technically pay anything below $Y for him. But then your company also has similar logic. If we simply aggressively compete then these cost of any employee, who has a skillset where supply This is very much in the interest of employees, but not in the interest of companies. So companies have a motivation to implicitly (legal) or explicitly (illegal, slap on the wrist punishment) cooperate to keep wages somewhat fixed. One way to do this is to not proactively "poach" each other's employees. If you hire a Bob, I won't actively try to recruit Bob - though I will extend him an offer if he, himself, proactively approaches me.

2 years after this email exchange, you had this [1]. A Google recruiter tries to poach an Apple employee. Steve contacts Google, Google responds that the recruiter will be "terminated within the hour", and Steve responds with a smiley face. They were sued over this [2] and "punished" with a fine that can't even be called a slap on the wrist. Now they do the same, but more cleverly. But having recruiters just spam everybody with endless recruitment offers, they can claim to be competing yet those recruitment offers become meaningless.

[1] - https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1443263744906305543

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#152

Post by umbs »

wanderingmind wrote: post #122

All this stopped not because of any class action, but one company Meta will not play along with the cabal. Zuck raised the salary so much he started poaching left and right from other tech giants. Google and Apple had no choice but to match the salaries to retain and hire top talent. For all the fault of Meta, they knew the worth of employees and have always tried to give them a good bargain.

Netflix also played a huge role in raising salary bar.

Anecdote: In 2008, I was working at Ericsson in San Jose, as a junior software engineer on edge routers. I was paid ~$140K (bonus + RSU). We heard that very senior engineers were paid around $180K. Cisco was sought after place in our industry (Networking). They would pay ~$225K for senior engineers.

(all numbers are unverified and rumors).

Then one of my peer at Ericsson, a junior engineer, had an offer from Netflix and told during lunch break, his total comp was $250K, all cash (no RSU). I can still remember the gasps that followed.

I have read the book "No Rules Rules. Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention" [0]. It's fascinating the number of times Netflix pivoted and rewrote many rules. They discuss their philosophy on compensation in the book. They played important role in raising the salary bar.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/No-Rules-Netflix-Culture-Reinvention-...

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#153

Post by [deleted] »

pm90 wrote: post #57

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?

[deleted]

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#154

Post by DonHopkins »

nikanj wrote: post #90
pm90 wrote: post #57

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?

He was a dick. And there was a strong trend around 2010-2015ish that essentially said "Jobs was a dick and a genius. Therefore I must act like a dick, to prove that I'm a genius". So many startup CEOs acting like assholes to prove they're revolutionary visionaries.

Case in point:

Bill Nguyen: The Boy In The Bubble

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3229299#3230401

https://www.fastcompany.com/1784823/bill-nguyen-the-boy-in-t...

>“I never use anyone else’s products but my own. I literally don’t think there’s anything to be learned from other people’s stuff,” says Nguyen.

>And then, that very night, everything came crashing down. Color execs started noticing that users were quick to rate the app a measly one or two stars out of five–nails in the coffin, given an oversaturated app market that was spawning more than 1,000 new apps a day. The problem was simple: In order for Color to work, many users had to be in a similar location, but since Color hadn’t widely seeded the app prelaunch, users arrived to a social network that resembled a ghost town. “I wanna see that pitch deck,” ranted influential tech blogger Robert Scoble. “It must have had some magic unicorn dust sprinkled on it.” A mock satirical pitch deck began circulating around tech circles, spoofing Color’s attempt to capitalize on every web 2.0 cliché: “People. Colors. Apps. Cats. Bacon. Organic. Bieber. Mobile. Social. Local. Pivot.”

https://sadtrombone.com/

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#155

Post by causi »

pm90 wrote: post #57

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?

Is he just a bully?

From everything I've read in the last twenty years, there was not one single facet of Steve Jobs' life in which he was not a bully.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#157

Post by gghffguhvc »

_zzaw wrote: post #149
gghffguhvc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably Dave Hyatt.

Hyatt never worked for Google—he's still at Apple as far as I know. Might be that Google ultimately retracted their offer, but knowing Steve, Hyatt would probably not have remained at Apple no matter what happened. I don't have any inside info here, but I'd be willing to bet Darin Adler was one of those other REDACTEDs. He was an early Safari guy, as well as tech lead for Mac OS 7 and worked at General Magic, so Goog…

I still think the main one was Dave Hyatt. Ben Goodger (referenced in those emails) worked on V0.6 of Firefox that Dave started. Ben was founding team at chrome just before these emails (see his LinkedIn for dates). Dave was instrumental on WebKit for Safiri. Chrome picked WebKit too. Dave was also that good and was well known to Steve.

I also think parakey was the startup referenced as his other option (Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt)

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#158

Post by simondotau »

chc wrote: post #133
throwaway82388 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I understand your larger point, but whatever corrections or amendments need to be made to the myth of Jobs, the idea that he was in any way average shouldn’t be one.

The dude basically chose to die of treatable cancer in his 50s because he just didn't like the idea of getting medical treatment. That's one of the most odd behaviors I've ever heard of.

Plenty of incredibly smart people think and do incredibly stupid things.

Isaac Newton was one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of history, inventor of the telescope, father of Newtonian mechanics, and a key figure of the Enlightenment. Yet he considered that scientific work of lesser importance, spending much of his effort studying the occult, biblical interpretation, and alchemy.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#159

Post by [deleted] »

wanderingmind wrote: post #122

All this stopped not because of any class action, but one company Meta will not play along with the cabal. Zuck raised the salary so much he started poaching left and right from other tech giants. Google and Apple had no choice but to match the salaries to retain and hire top talent. For all the fault of Meta, they knew the worth of employees and have always tried to give them a good bargain.

[deleted]

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#160

Post by Thorrez »

rlt wrote: post #121
Thorrez wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? That could wind up in a bidding war that could end up affecting many employees and salaries going up a lot. That's a lot of lost money for Apple, which makes Steve Jobs mad. Additionally, some employ…

That's a long way of saying: yes, he's a bully.

What motivates a bully? Power?

I think Steve Jobs is motivated by money here.

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