27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by NickC25 » Mon, Jan 01, 2024, 5:00 PM UTC

kevmo314 wrote: post #177

starky wrote: post #44

I like the comparison of content over process. In my experience a small team full of highly skilled engineers that are motivated to get stuff done don't need much process because they will do the right thing. But once the team gets to a size where that isn't possible, you have to implement and enforce process in order to make sure that those who don't have that skill can be effective at their jobs. Nothing drives me…

> But once the team gets to a size where that isn't possible, you have to implement and enforce process in order to make sure that those who don't have that skill can be effective at their jobs. But why did the team need to grow to that size if they were highly effective before that? Doesn't the growth and the adoption of those that don't have the skill handicap everyone else? I've seen quite a few teams kneecap them…

>But why did the team need to grow to that size if they were highly effective before that?

Having seen this firsthand, (in my experience) it's been that executives or higher-ups decide that this team is working, and because they want to increase the company's bottom line, they will grow that team come hell or high water because in their minds, that team is correlated with results.

>Doesn't the growth and the adoption of those that don't have the skill handicap everyone else?

Considerably.

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

#192

Post by grecy » Mon, Jan 01, 2024, 5:01 PM UTC

smackeyacky wrote: post #6

colund wrote: post #5

Jobs talks about this in https://youtu.be/l4dCJJFuMsE . I wish more leaders understood this. I interpret his words that people who do, understand and care are more valuable than those who only focus on process and politics. Steve Jobs has great points again. I love to hear him talk about what really matters for success of great tech companies.

Nobody else got to fail as much as Jobs and kept getting free passes though. I feel like he eventually got smart but he got very, very lucky first. We could all be Jobs level if we had the sandboxes he was gifted in the 1980s Rod Canion from Compaq was always a better CEO

> Nobody else got to fail as much as Jobs and kept getting free passes though

Stephen King had his first book Carrie rejected 30 times.

The author of Dr Seuss had his first book rejected by 27 different publishers.

Walt Disney was fired from one of his first animation jobs.

Everyone fails. Not everyone gives up.

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

#193

Post by thesz » Mon, Jan 01, 2024, 5:03 PM UTC

curiousguy wrote: post #116

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally have known several people. They are not narcissists. They are literally 100x talent. One of them built out a half dozen hit games, doing all the art and programming for one employer which represented half the companies profit. Then he left, started a 30 person company, got frustrated, quit and built another game entirely from scratch doing all the art direction and sold millions then retired. One person.

> I personally have known several people. They are not narcissists. They are literally 100x talent. I guess this can varies per company. It’s not difficult to be a super star in a dinosaur company. After all, “In The Land of The Blind, The One Eyed Man is King.” This is really common in many European companies. Most developers are doing the bare minimum and it’s common for the department to be carryover by a single g…

> It’s not difficult to be a super star in a dinosaur company.

It is extremely hard to be a superstar in a dinosaur company, if we are talking about software development.

The thing to consider is called "technical debt." You will not believe what can be accumulated through years if technical debt is not addressed. And usually it is not properly addressed, of course.

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

#194

Post by wombatpm » Mon, Jan 01, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #29

colund wrote: post #5

Jobs talks about this in https://youtu.be/l4dCJJFuMsE . I wish more leaders understood this. I interpret his words that people who do, understand and care are more valuable than those who only focus on process and politics. Steve Jobs has great points again. I love to hear him talk about what really matters for success of great tech companies.

I feel like I'm experiencing this in a distant way at a small company I'm working at. We're working at instituting some process, it's a good thing as we've been cowboying out code for a long time, it's not sustainable, it's hard on everyone for all the usual reasons when a small company begins to grow and there haven't been a lot of processes. Tech debt, weird code, poor code reviews (if any ... mostly none), what is…

Your coworkers have a large company attitude prematurely living in a small company. “That’s not my job” is how a company loses time, customers, and money. A large company has customers, time, and money to spare. How much runway or VC money can the company afford to spend going in the wrong direction?

Hammer away with you questions. Because if they can’t convince you of their correctness, how can they convince a customer who is under no obligation to shift through their bullshit?

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

#195

Post by whstl » Mon, Jan 01, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

cudgy wrote: post #175

fxtentacle wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do any kind of research and software development. But the most profitable tasks tend to be finding a new angle for how you can automate something. In Germany, there's still an almost endless supply of companies who urgently need to digitise their customer interactions so that they can react quickly to customer orders. A 2 week lead time for PCBs, for example, just doesn't work anymore if the Chinese competition is…

Nice. Your work eliminates jobs and transfers their salary to the business owner! Seems more like bean counting than tech. Would be nice if there was more focus from software tech on making more opportunities for people rather than the trend of eliminating more humans from the workforce.

That's a good point, but I would argue that lack of digitalisation is a real bottleneck for industries.

Allowing companies to do more work and hire more people in their field of expertise (be it a bakery or a PCB factory) is better than having them hire low-paid employees to operate the fax and fill multiple forms by hand.

Since we're talking Germany, the main complaint here is that there's not enough people available to work. "Well just bring in immigrants", you might say, but funny enough the lack of people in the immigration service is always cited as a bottleneck... and this bottleneck is mostly because of lack of digitalisation.

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

#196

Post by ochoseis » Mon, Jan 01, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

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 have seen situations where a single IC is dragging a division of 30 people yet still being compensated for doing the work of one IC.

I have often wondered about this myself, and believe there's some nuance to acknowledge:

- Yes, it is absolutely the case that individuals often carry teams. It does sometimes feel like they're subsidizing others' salaries.

- There's an old adage in advertising that goes: we know 50% of our budget is wasted on ineffective ads, we just don't know which 50%. The same probably holds true for organizations allocating wages.

- People go through different phases of their lives, where they can devote more or less energy to work. This fact may lend credence to a compensation structure that's based on bonuses and equity versus salary. Flat salary bands seem to discourage meritocracy without this adjustment.

- Organizations themselves are also dynamic. Consider a small org seeded by a prolific worker. They make the org successful, so the org grows and necessarily dilutes the talent (i.e. reversion to the mean).

- Does an organization have an incentive to "slow down" it's most prolific workers so everyone else can keep up? Conversely, should they develop a culture that speeds everyone else up?

- Should / do prolific workers self-select into higher-performance organizations, e.g. after getting fed up being a big fish in a small pond?

- Team dynamics are undeniable; consider two prolific workers with different styles clashing.

I personally would love to work on a team of superstars who mesh, and can capture disproportionate value relative to large, slow, mediocre orgs. The hard part is finding one and keeping it together.

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

#197

Post by AlbertCory » Mon, Jan 01, 2024, 5:10 PM UTC

smackeyacky wrote: post #6

colund wrote: post #5

Jobs talks about this in https://youtu.be/l4dCJJFuMsE . I wish more leaders understood this. I interpret his words that people who do, understand and care are more valuable than those who only focus on process and politics. Steve Jobs has great points again. I love to hear him talk about what really matters for success of great tech companies.

Nobody else got to fail as much as Jobs and kept getting free passes though. I feel like he eventually got smart but he got very, very lucky first. We could all be Jobs level if we had the sandboxes he was gifted in the 1980s Rod Canion from Compaq was always a better CEO

> We could all be Jobs level if we had the sandboxes he was gifted in the 1980s

easily disproved by John Sculley, among others.

Or you could look at all the PC companies that launched in the early 80's (Eagle Computer, looking at you).

Or Digital Research. Or Lotus. Or WordPerfect.

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

#198

Post by 015a » Mon, Jan 01, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

fifilura wrote: post #73

015a wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One strong argument (maybe the only one) for the concept of controlling superstar players is the reality that they are going to leave, eventually; maybe for a better job, maybe retirement, maybe they get hit by a bus. If your output is entirely dependent on a superstar, it inevitably won't be durable against their departure; one way to look at corporations is through the lens of efficiency maximizers, but another equ…

> ... they are going to leave, eventually; maybe for a better job, maybe retirement, maybe they get hit by a bus. I must say that I have heard that "hit by a bus" argument once too many. What I see: 1 People very rarely get hit by a bus. 2 When someone leaves, two things happen. A) Someone else, very often previously anonymous, becomes the new rock star. B) It turns out that super important thing that guy was expert…

I feel its a valid concern, but the way companies generally respond to the concern is what is invalid. Teams should lift everyone up, not push superstars down.

E.g. How much active knowledge sharing on the superstar's domain of expertise, and even process, is happening? A luncheon once a month? Its not enough. How much time is the superstar allowed to spend documenting? Is the rest of the team actually reading it? Is active mentorship happening on the team?

Versus: Create a top-down process, make everyone follow the process, invent hypotheticals as to why the process matters, product factory, etc.

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

#199

Post by ochoseis » Mon, Jan 01, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

NickC25 wrote: post #191

kevmo314 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But once the team gets to a size where that isn't possible, you have to implement and enforce process in order to make sure that those who don't have that skill can be effective at their jobs. But why did the team need to grow to that size if they were highly effective before that? Doesn't the growth and the adoption of those that don't have the skill handicap everyone else? I've seen quite a few teams kneecap them…

> But why did the team need to grow to that size if they were highly effective before that? Having seen this firsthand, (in my experience) it's been that executives or higher-ups decide that this team is working, and because they want to increase the company's bottom line, they will grow that team come hell or high water because in their minds, that team is correlated with results. > Doesn't the growth and the adopti…

The question naturally becomes: how do you find a small, high performing team in the first place? I think maintaining a good network (previous colleagues, involvement in a broader community) will lead to opportunities, but then you have to distill the best ones.

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

#200

Post by asveikau » Mon, Jan 01, 2024, 5:13 PM UTC

wiseowise wrote: post #173

asveikau wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like something between a conspiracy theory and your own ego going unchecked. I observed something like this, or at least I thought I did. With many more years of reflection, and there were hints along the way as it happened in realtime, I came to realize that the contribution of those I had written off as non-performers and dead weight was actually higher than I had estimated and difficult to actually quan…

How would you suggest to reward people who strive for more?

First with an understanding that your opinions are subjective and that you will evaluate people incorrectly. Or more simply, with humility.

Second, I think if you genuinely have a complaint about dead weight it's probably better to hire selectively, cautiously and consciously rather than evaluate staff as sub-par after that point. Yes that's difficult to do especially with the first point, and it won't be perfect either.