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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

#211

Post by hef19898 »

NickC25 wrote: post #209
hef19898 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Everytime a soccer team, or any other team, is built around one individual, it is only ever as good as said individual. If that is done, no titles are won and no great accomplishments achieved.

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

#212

Post by ryandrake »

aardvark179 wrote: post #202
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…

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.

I think an underrated skill is the ability to say no to work that "has to be done." You're maybe taking it as a given that there is this list of -stuff- that simply has to be done, and therefore we need a bigger team to do it. Often that -stuff- are features nobody wants, UI re-designs for their own sake, and adding metrics nobody is going to look at. Many companies lack this ability to curate so we get the software we have today.

A good eng manager or product owner says NO to a lot of crap. Bad ones triple their team size, hire managers of other managers to deal with the huge org, implement process to keep things sane, all to cram stuff into the product that should not even be written in the first place.

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

#213

Post by abirch »

namdnay wrote: post #206
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…

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

Depends if you're a line cook or not at the Michelin starred restaurant.

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

#214

Post by fifilura »

015a wrote: post #198
fifilura wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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…

Yes, as I posted further down I am really intrigued by what makes it possible to lift other people up. Because the potential is there. Not in everyone but surely someone who would step up as the new lead if someone disappears.

Documentation is good but sometimes i feel like there is a need for something more.

Maybe the previous guy needs to move out of the way. Maybe his way of doing code reviews is discouraging - how important is it really to do everything like it was wired in his brain? Or just let go of the idea of how the code is structured?

I take mentoring seriously since this is my way of adding force multiplication without having to become a manager.

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

#215

Post by adventured »

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.

It's an important point. In the broader context, most new businesses fail in relatively early stages due to running out of capital, ie time. Which is to say, most entrepreneurs fail due to running out of money. There is no doubt that there is a diminishing return factor that kicks in, but it would be interesting to see how many more success stories are produced if the runway is N longer (for each increment of capital, how many more successful outcomes are there).

You'll see some cynical takes such that: well if an entrepreneur had a really great thing, they'd have no terminal money problem to begin with (just show it to a VC, insta check). That's pretty blatantly false however, as the capital equation is a whole 'nother skillset and luck/chance/network factor that goes to work for or against your efforts.

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

#216

Post by thfuran »

NickC25 wrote: post #209
hef19898 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's no such thing as a one-man football team.

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

#217

Post by ransom1538 »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #43
thesumofall wrote: post #26

Why would we see a 80/20 distribution when most human abilities are distributed on a bell curve? I don’t think we really have the tools to reliably measure performance, because performance can mean so many things in so many different contexts. And yes, this can include “process.” The referred McKinsey study talks about politics. Is success in democratic politics really defined by content or by your ability to build a…

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…

"Less than 50% of new hires make it through probation. Staff that survive all have the same attributes: excellent sales ability and focused determination."

Sales is cut throat. They take in new people to extract all their first rate contacts (friends family). Once those are sucked out, they don't need you.

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

#218

Post by NickC25 »

ochoseis wrote: post #199
NickC25 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I would think that would be industry specific, but maybe a decent standardized way of doing so would be finding the people who made it to industry titans (elite tech firms or trading firms) and left for whatever reason who then went off and did their own thing but still managed to reach a specific level of success.

And example of this is (in finance) if some team at a bank or whatever all left as a group founded a small hedge fund or prop trading fund, yet were still able to make a great return.

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

#219

Post by dilyevsky »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #43
thesumofall wrote: post #26

Why would we see a 80/20 distribution when most human abilities are distributed on a bell curve? I don’t think we really have the tools to reliably measure performance, because performance can mean so many things in so many different contexts. And yes, this can include “process.” The referred McKinsey study talks about politics. Is success in democratic politics really defined by content or by your ability to build a…

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…

In some areas like hft it was effectively achieved with engineering. For a time… I hear it’s changed now.

The problem is in most software businesses it can be hard to objectively measure who is providing business value and who is just lots of busywork

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