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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

#241

Post by duxup »

wombatpm wrote: post #194
duxup wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 custo…

> large company attitude

Yup, cog in the wheel type situation. I'm sure some guys like working like that... it has to be comfortable, but I don't like it when the end result is not good.

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

#242

Post by tarruda »

tamimio wrote: post #222

>According to the Apple co-founder, the best employees are also a pain in the butt to manage. Said to me by every single manager, for the reasons of not following a faulty process (a one that I even suggested to fix) or attending the usual silly and useless meetings and always thought it’s a “me-problem” for being “anti-authority” despite over delivering every requirement with a very happy clients we had in a very sh…

Instead of being a 10x engineer, dial down your performance to match the rest of the team. Then, use the extra time/energy to work on side projects that make you happy.

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

#243

Post by icedchai »

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…

In my experience, it often does match the real world. Many dev managers are out-of-touch with day-to-day work. They often don't have the time to get into the details. Example: It's been 10 years since I last had one that helped with code reviews, or even looked at PRs. Direct complaints are often ignored because they don't want to rock the boat or deal with the additional work.

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

#244

Post by oriel »

inaprovaline wrote: post #205

Unfortunately those employees are the minority. So yeah in an ideal world this is correct, in the real world that’s not possible as the avg dev needs direction and be guided hand in hand.

Ive found that I work this way often enough in the professional world, the problem for me is when management/leadership decides to average the devs' treatment and i get micromanaged despite delivering early and at or beyond scope/requirements.

In recent times, this has gotten to the point that I stop delivering early, and end up spending more time 'validating' scope/requirements than actually doing the work... simply due to the overhead of having my time minced by someone else's "best practice" beliefs.

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

#245

Post by pintxo »

speeder wrote: post #135
pintxo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2x sounds like it includes non-billable employees like assistants, HR, accounting etc. A 100% overhead is probably quite common. Pure employee costs are more in the 1.2 - 1.3x range (Europe). That is 30% on top of the gross salary for employer taxes, health insurances etc.

I am in Portugal. Here your real wages are tiny compared to the company expenses. To start: everyone pays 34.75% of mandatory social contribution, even if you are on minimum wage. Government tricks people saying the contribution is "only" 11% but charges the other 23.75% from the employer. So if a company pays 1000 eur to "you" (remember a chunk goes straight to government and skips you, but they are still spending t…

So, Portugal is pretty much in my 1.2-1.3 range?

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

#246

Post by soperj »

chris_wot wrote: post #58
mediumsmart wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cost the rest of us a lot more.

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

#247

Post by xiphias2 »

tamimio wrote: post #222

>According to the Apple co-founder, the best employees are also a pain in the butt to manage. Said to me by every single manager, for the reasons of not following a faulty process (a one that I even suggested to fix) or attending the usual silly and useless meetings and always thought it’s a “me-problem” for being “anti-authority” despite over delivering every requirement with a very happy clients we had in a very sh…

You probably don't (yet) have the power to fix the process, so it's better to learn the game of getting promoted first.

Also you wrote that you suggested a change in the process, not that it was accepted.

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

#248

Post by smackeyacky »

signatoremo wrote: post #185
elzbardico wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being fired at that time was the best thing that could happen both to Apple and Jobs. If it didn't happen, our business mythology today would full of tales about Jobs, the lose cannon that destroyed apple with his megalomanic and narcissistic ego. The Steve from the Second Advent of Jobs was a dramatically improved version of him, seasoned in no small part by this "humilliation".

> Being fired at that time was the best thing that could happen both to Apple and Jobs. Easy to say in hindsight. Canion, who was worshipped by the GP, also got fired by Compaq but never bounced back. Or may be that’s a testament to Jobs’s ability to learn and adapt. > the lose cannon that destroyed apple with his megalomanic and narcissistic ego. I doubt it. Apple was Jobs’s number one priority, even to the detrimen…

It's true Canion got fired by the board of Compaq, but before that he ran the company such that it was the fastest to a billion in revenue in history.

Nobody wants to remember the boring business IBM compatible market but not only did Compaq make the first 386 (redefining what a PC was) they also got the other manufacturers to rally around things like the EISA bus which abruptly stopped IBM's dominance of the PC standard and made a truly open market that not only swallowed PCs, but took the minicomputer industry out at as well and everything you have on your desktop and server room is still rooted in those seminal Compaq products.

It was Eckhard Pfieffer who eventually screwed the pooch and put Compaq into HPs grasp. If Canion had been allowed to flesh out his strategy for lower cost PCs that might never have happened.

Apple was always a 10% of the market sideshow until they made the iPhone.

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

#249

Post by iwontberude »

orochimaaru wrote: post #181
iwontberude wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Superstars are why I don’t try harder and am less engaged. They take all of the interesting ownership and inject themselves into every process and space for communication. I wait for these people to burn out and want to actually be a team member instead of a productivity bully hoarding opportunity for themselves. They want to be the first on everything so they can influence it to be more how they like, the rest of te…

Actually, a superstar will welcome and mentor other capable "superstars". She or he will not have patience for one that expects to be taught everything. One thing they understand very well is while everyone won't be at the same level as them, helping other people skill up leaves them space to go do other interesting things as well So what you have isn't a superstar. That's a jerk who will burn out fast and your manag…

They are really good at what they do and they've been going strong for years, so I think there will be more waiting necessary. I like to rise to the challenge and this person covers all gaps so there is no pressure which builds.

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

#250

Post by iwontberude »

jerf wrote: post #144
iwontberude wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Superstars are why I don’t try harder and am less engaged. They take all of the interesting ownership and inject themselves into every process and space for communication. I wait for these people to burn out and want to actually be a team member instead of a productivity bully hoarding opportunity for themselves. They want to be the first on everything so they can influence it to be more how they like, the rest of te…

"Superstars are why I don’t try harder and am less engaged. They take all of the interesting ownership and inject themselves into every process and space for communication. I wait for these people to burn out and want to actually be a team member instead of a productivity bully hoarding opportunity for themselves." Are you sure you've got a "superstar" there? I think the term ought to be reserved for people who truly…

They truly do a lot of good (great!) work and for quite a few years straight, so much so that the rest of the team atrophies as they continue to fill larger and larger gaps.
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