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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

#201

Post by pdpi »

grecy wrote: post #192
smackeyacky wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Everyone fails. Not everyone gives up.

The flipside is that not everyone can afford to not give up.

It's very easy to dimiss successful people as lucky without acknowledging the perseverance that goes into pushing through all the failures until you get a success, but it's also easy to dismiss people who never hit that success as lacking that perseverance.

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

#202

Post by aardvark179 »

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…

Sometimes there is just more work to be done than that small team can handle. It’s often extremely effective to have a small highly skilled team explore an area and chart out a path, and then expand that team so the core won’t be working on the problem for the next ten years.

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

#203

Post by xpe »

Agingcoder wrote: post #75

I tend to think that large corporation are optimized to run things as usual, not make new ones, unlike a startup. Hence the obsession with process, and why it somehow works.

Your comment prompted me to consider the ratio between two kinds of information: (a) that which already exists and (b) has yet to be created.

By "information" I'm hand-waving around concepts such as code, organizational hierarchy, processes, lessons learned, sales pipelines, industry connections, brand awareness, etc.

I will toss out some claims: the human mind, operating in the context of an organization with more stuff that already exists, will largely "anchor" on what is known. In an organization, people share common knowledge -- and people know this about each other. It shapes how they interact and what they think is worth doing and trying.

So, to put a finer point on it: To what degree will existing information provide a productive jumping off point for what needs to be done?

To the extent my simplifications above capture the core dynamic -- it would perhaps explain a lot: (a) why some pivots feel incredibly hard, while others feel easy; (b) why some teams evolve fluently while others struggle to modernize; (c) why some cash cows transition to adjacent profitable opportunities while others languish; (d) why the idea of "skunk works" is so compelling when rapid innovation is needed

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

#206

Post by namdnay »

icelancer wrote: post #22
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.

Process is required to get mediocre talent to churn out reasonable content, which is Steve's references to HP/IBM/etc. Most people think they're putting out great content. But that's obviously false. One side of Steve's point about letting elite talent do their work presupposes that the talent is elite. Mediocre talent will do much worse work if not bound to process, and Steve was very, very good at rooting out what…

What I always say is that McDonalds have laminated recipes pinned to the wall. A Michelin starred restaurant doesn't. Both of these are good processes

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

#207

Post by wiseowise »

asveikau wrote: post #200
wiseowise wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eit…

I completely agree with the premise that labeling people dead weight is wrong. My question was about rewarding people who step further.

Specifically about this:

> Even harmful to those you have estimated as "top performers" should they make the kind of kind of money you think they deserve. It is a false estimation of their ability and contribution, and there is seldom worse than confidently false judgements that exclude some people and favor others. Harmful to all parties involved.

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

#208

Post by grecy »

pdpi wrote: post #201
grecy wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Everyone fails. Not everyone gives up. The flipside is that not everyone can afford to not give up. It's very easy to dimiss successful people as lucky without acknowledging the perseverance that goes into pushing through all the failures until you get a success, but it's also easy to dismiss people who never hit that success as lacking that perseverance.

Without a doubt people give up for a host of different reasons, but I don't actually think that is what we should focus on or is the key takeaway.

The important part to focus on is not giving up.

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

#209

Post by NickC25 »

hef19898 wrote: post #86
icelancer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Process is required to get mediocre talent to churn out reasonable content, which is Steve's references to HP/IBM/etc. Most people think they're putting out great content. But that's obviously false. One side of Steve's point about letting elite talent do their work presupposes that the talent is elite. Mediocre talent will do much worse work if not bound to process, and Steve was very, very good at rooting out what…

And even elite talent needs to be professional enough to - accept the need guidance - follow some standards and rules to make work reproduceable and understabdable by others - be able to work in teams People tend to ignore the finer points in whatever Steve Jobs said, especially after his return to Apple.

I think this dynamic is different depending on 1. how elite that elite talent actually is (I think of elite athletes here, where one might be elite enough to be on the roster of a top level team, but not elite enough to be the de-facto best on the team - they have a whole bunch of rules to follow, but the best of the best on that team can effectively do as they please); and more importantly, 2. what stage the company is at. A small company with an elite team or elite performer has a whole different set of challenges or structure to deal with versus an elite team or performer at a large established behemoth like Apple.

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

#210

Post by dpflan »

jerf wrote: post #154
icedchai wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely! I had several university group projects where several of the team members did little-to-nothing. If you want to succeed you gotta drag people along. It's actually better if they're honest about it, telling you they're not going to be able to do the work either on time or to the expected standards. Instead, I find people pretend things are "going well", then produce crap other people, superstars or not, ha…

It took me a while to figure out the underlying problem with "group projects" in school, but I think what I eventually settled on is that there's no way for the grader to have any insight into the group dynamics. Or at least, after some non-trivial thought on the topic, I haven't come up with any. This creates certain inevitable pathologies; why shouldn't the whole group just sort of bet on one of their members doing…

Great points about how managers can help, as it is their job. At a company, there are the incentives but the desired output by any means necessary (e.g. relying on the “superstar”) can supersede creating a solid team.

Regarding improving group projects in schools: This is not a good idea, but a thought: school groups have rotating “managers” that are made to mainly coordinate and communicate with the professor. This mirrors the dynamic in industry, but I can see it becoming a nightmare, far worse than the current paradigm.

Also, documentation is a great idea, and I think pull requests are useful way to track this and improve the situation - by taking action to fix a problem and create an artifact of the action (with comments on the why).

(the $SLACKER env var is a nice touch. The goal is to have never get defined, but alas.)

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