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27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

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Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#51

Post by mamp »

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #3

Corporations, at their root, are an arbitrage on the fact that other corporations follow the bell curve. The entire goal of salaries and “teams” in my experience, is to ENSURE that high performers get diluted and averaged in with mediocre performers so the company can pretend the high performers don’t exist. This was my experience in (large co). I have seen situations where a single IC is dragging a division of 30 pe…

I agree with your assessment.

The real challenge is how can organisations best leverage super stars to achieve great things. It's difficult because managers have to be smart and confident, and the super star can't be allowed to undermine others.

The high prevalence of insecure managers and arrogant super stars makes this hard to do.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#52

Post by cjbgkagh »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #28
billy99k wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Their boss looks down and sees Director managing 30 people and getting amazing result X, where X is 90% the effort of the one super star." This is interesting because it was my experience in school as well. In most group projects, 1 or 2 people would carry the rest of the group.

I admit I was sometimes carried. In creative work this is bound to happen. All people firing on all cylinders and coordinating well is a rarity in creative work. It might work in a kitchen or sailing boat though.

At my university marks and course content was divided up between exams and group projects. Individuals would optimize their own scores by focusing on exam tested content and hoping someone else in the group would carry them. People who wanted top marks always had to carry the entire group as the other members knew they could get away with not contributing and holding the grade hostage. It was a fucking nightmare, and if you complained then you were not a team player. Instead of dealing with a stressful discovery process where people promise to deliver work but fail to at the last minute I would just let the group know upfront that I’ll be carrying them. A lot of people graduated that probably shouldn’t have and I’ve been resentful of group work ever since. This was a top tier university so I’d hate to think that other universities are somehow even less rigerous.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#53

Post by conradev »

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #3

Corporations, at their root, are an arbitrage on the fact that other corporations follow the bell curve. The entire goal of salaries and “teams” in my experience, is to ENSURE that high performers get diluted and averaged in with mediocre performers so the company can pretend the high performers don’t exist. This was my experience in (large co). I have seen situations where a single IC is dragging a division of 30 pe…

Your zero sum outlook assumes that everyone does the same job, when the primary point of a convening an organization is combining different specializations and dividing labor accordingly.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#54

Post by ksec »

Except Tim Cook's Apple focuses much more on process and forget about the content.

It is also strange this being brought up now in 2024. Because from 2014 to 2021 or 2022, the only sentiment allowed was every employees are roughly equal. There are no high performer. No such thing as 10x programmers etc.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#55

Post by Sateeshm »

gieksosz wrote: post #37

If you yourself feel like an under appreciated superstar this kind of article will surely resonate with you (it is HN after all). I personally find the premise unlikely, without good process you cannot get a larger group of people to do anything consistently.

Yes. Can't really scale well without good process. And it's flat out unrealistic for a large org to hire only superstars. You're gonna have a ton of open positions for years.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#56

Post by thesumofall »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #50
lll-o-lll wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hesitate to write this, but I think a counterbalance is needed. In software development, there are things you can measure. For example, you can put a new starter on a big pile of bugs and say “get through these”. You can measure throughput of work tasks, or story points, or lines of code. Can people game this stuff? Yes, but managers can be the check on such things (and have managers of their own). I know someone t…

It has always amazed me how differently sales people are treated compared to tech. One of the historical reasons has been that it’s very hard to find and hire tech people - I wonder if that is changing? It’s also been fairly easy for tech teams to obfuscate performance and bamboozle managers who don’t understand tech. With sales the performance criteria tends to be very simple and there aren’t really any good excuses…

I think this is because sales tends to be a one-person job in most settings (except the very highest value deals). One sales person manages a number of accounts. Measuring the results of that person is then quite straightforward. Tech tends to be a collaborative job even in quite simple settings, which makes it immediately more difficult to measure. Add to that that the true results are often only visible after months if not years of work and you have a real challenge at hand. But I agree: there are also simple settings where you can measure a programmer’s productivity. Those are probably just not the settings in which people are that concerned about attracting top talents, though

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#57

Post by m_a_g »

fxtentacle wrote: post #23
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #3

Corporations, at their root, are an arbitrage on the fact that other corporations follow the bell curve. The entire goal of salaries and “teams” in my experience, is to ENSURE that high performers get diluted and averaged in with mediocre performers so the company can pretend the high performers don’t exist. This was my experience in (large co). I have seen situations where a single IC is dragging a division of 30 pe…

That's why I incorporated a tiny company. Sometimes, companies will interview me and then when I tell them my salary expectations, they usually pretend to be offended and refuse by arguing that it would destroy the salary structure inside their company. But that doesn't really mean anything because many of them are happy to book my consulting company at 1.5x that salary afterwards.

If you don’t mind me asking, what specific area do you specialize in with your consulting work?

I’d like to do what you do in the future and I’m just curious.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#58

Post by chris_wot »

mediumsmart wrote: post #20
fredski42 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link?

Maybe it is this email exchange: https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1443263744906305543 second result on Kagi using “steve jobs email to eric schmidt”

Yup, cost Apple a bucket.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#59

Post by bornfreddy »

whatshisface wrote: post #48
glitchc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that's how the world works most of the time. Superstars also know it and are used to it from early childhood. They are expected to carry the load and equally importantly, the team is expected to listen to them. It works like this in all walks of life, because simply put, human beings are not equal in ability. Things break down when the team and management stop listening. That's when the superstar actually g…

That makes sense until you consider that the world (and any team) is "sprinkled" with a lot more narcissists and know-it-alls than geniuses!

It still makes sense. The group that listens to these people instead of real superstars (assuming it has any) is at disadvantage.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#60

Post by picklerish »

fxtentacle wrote: post #23
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #3

Corporations, at their root, are an arbitrage on the fact that other corporations follow the bell curve. The entire goal of salaries and “teams” in my experience, is to ENSURE that high performers get diluted and averaged in with mediocre performers so the company can pretend the high performers don’t exist. This was my experience in (large co). I have seen situations where a single IC is dragging a division of 30 pe…

That's why I incorporated a tiny company. Sometimes, companies will interview me and then when I tell them my salary expectations, they usually pretend to be offended and refuse by arguing that it would destroy the salary structure inside their company. But that doesn't really mean anything because many of them are happy to book my consulting company at 1.5x that salary afterwards.

@fxtentacle - I'm currently planning on starting a consulting company for my area of expertise (data engineering), can I reach out to you and learn the 101 of doing something like this?
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