Live data from Hacker News

Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

techemails.com

171–180 of 398 posts

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#171
post #155
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.

They were competing, to Jobs it could've looked like either Apple or Google was going to stay alive. It is natural for people to threaten competition and I guess not like your competition?

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#172
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Bullying google… I don’t think that’s a thing even if you’re Apple. I think this is just shrewd business.

"Shrewd business", bullying, tomato, tomahto.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#174
post #65
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? LMAO. Yes. And a bad person.

The fact that his own company fired him just shows how bad of a bully he is. The power probably went to his head when he got there, I'd like to see how he gets bullied by someone tbh.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised

50+% of parents are bad? I don’t believe that.

Depends how you define "bad". High-functioning people with abusive childhoods tend to perform quite well under capitalism. Low-functioning victims of childhood abuse end up in prison.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#176
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#177

This is interesting to read from the angle of personality dynamics. People underestimate the sense of control that Jobs derived, not from being prophetic or smart, but from making things extremely personal and psychologically stifling for other people. (Musk works in the same way when he gets flustered or fearful.) Jobs talked a lot about seeing the future, but his high-use "like/dislike switch" was really in control…

Jobs was a poet. A brutal, calculating, ruthless businessman, but ultimately a poet. I have no doubt that every important decision in his life was driven primarily by emotion.

It is impossible for decisions to be driven by anything but emotion since rational thinking serves emotional ends.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#178
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 Th…

When I read the original question, I thought that yes - he was essentially a bully, but he probably didn't think of himself as one. But that smiley face - he must have felt at least somewhat like a bully just then.

Re: Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

You’re still missing the forest for the trees. It’s unrealistic for execs in companies that size to even take a cursory review of why each individual person left the company (and they would be incompetently wasting their time if they did).

Anything that involves the attention enough to warrant actual emails makes that employee extraordinary. This is the same whether the outcome is negative or positive.

Post reply on HN