Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

inventor-labs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 138 posts

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#71

Post by kamaal »

danabramov wrote: post #12

Reading this reminded me of a post by Miguel de Icaza: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Nov-07.html Basically, Miguel argues that Walter Isaacson failed, as did many who tried to describe Steve Jobs recently: >Whenever the story gets close to an interesting historical event, or starts exploring a big unknown of Steve's work, we are condescendingly told that "Steve Activated the Reality Distortion Field". >Every.…

After reading his biography by Walter Isaacson. I lost all respect I had for Steve Jobs.

At the end of the book it felt like he rode on the successes of other geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive and many others. His biggest advantage seems to have be, that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 were made.

After that it was riding on others success and building cult of personality around him.

Walter Isaacson sort of ruined it.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#72

Post by chernevik »

Unanswered questions about Steve Jobs:

- How did he hire? What traits was he looking for? How did he evaluate technical ability? He seemed able to hire technical people able to stretch through the conventionally accepted boundaries. - How did he manage technical people? He seemed able to identify those boundaries that could be pushed through, and motivate people through them. - How did he envision the plausible technical possibilities outside the conventional wisdom? - How did he envision product possibilities enabled by the combination of those various possibilities?

I get the love of design and focus on user experience. It's the ability to find to that at the edge of technical possibility that seems unique to me.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#73

Post by carbon8 »

This sounds very similar to what I've heard from people who have actually worked with Jobs, as well as the Steve Jobs described by Ken Segall in Insanely Simple http://www.amazon.com/Insanely-Simple-Obsession-Drives-Succe...

Segall’s description of Jobs includes an important additional component: obsession with keeping things simple (hence the book title). Segall provides numerous anecdotes of Jobs beating an idea with the “Simple Stick,” as he calls it, and compares it favorably against his relatively frustrating experiences working with other companies like Intel and Dell.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#74

Post by bob-wagner »

adventured wrote: post #43

So what's it actually like working with Steve Jobs? Half joking aside, it would have been nice if the author would have spent more than 1/5th of the article actually talking about what he claimed he was going to give insight on. Instead the author spent most of the article tooting his own horn, which is fine, if that's what the title had indicated to expect.

Exactly what I thought. Disappointed.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#75

Post by michaelpinto »

kamaal wrote: post #71
danabramov wrote: post #12

Reading this reminded me of a post by Miguel de Icaza: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Nov-07.html Basically, Miguel argues that Walter Isaacson failed, as did many who tried to describe Steve Jobs recently: >Whenever the story gets close to an interesting historical event, or starts exploring a big unknown of Steve's work, we are condescendingly told that "Steve Activated the Reality Distortion Field". >Every.…

After reading his biography by Walter Isaacson. I lost all respect I had for Steve Jobs. At the end of the book it felt like he rode on the successes of other geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive and many others. His biggest advantage seems to have be, that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 were made. After that it was riding on others success and building cult of personality around him. Walter Isaacs…

But I have to wonder if Jobs manipulated Isaacson so people would worry less about Apple after his passing away? Isaacson's book was very poorly done and offered very few actual insights other than Jobs getting to see his father. In fact after I read Inside Apple I was left wondering how Isaacson got away with writing something so lightweight.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#76

Post by asveikau »

ryanmolden wrote: post #33
taligent wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should look back through the history of http://minimsft.blogspot.com Microsoft is worse than most because its ranking system actually encourages you to compete within your team not just outside.

In theory that is false, in practice it is less clear (at least to me). The ranking (and subsequent curve fitting known formally as calibration) is done across a level-band (bascially 'job title') across a much wider scope than a single team (i.e. across a division). The idea that your co-workers are actively plotting to somehow take some reward from you come review time is a poor caricature of reality. Does it happe…

Can't you see that what you cite is exactly the problem? The people in your level band, including the ones in your hallway that you work with every day, are your competition.

I was a dev in Windows from 2008 to late 2011. Many comments from Mini MSFT resonated with me. My review history was never bad, but knowing precisely who in my peer group got more money (by watching title changes) and knowing which talented, hardworking devs got shafted (by private conversations) was really bad for my morale. Every review period I'd reliably see the same set of folks (manager's favorites) get regular title changes for doing crap work, and the same bright hardworking people doing the "real work" would be given some lame excuse (if not outright set up for failure) and told to just reach a little higher next year. It stings.

Never mind the outright stupidity of a system where a theoretical "dream team" of 10 hardworking, talented, best in class individuals would need to have 1 go without a bonus every year.

Maybe they'll be more diplomatic than what I'm writing, but I don't know anyone at Microsoft whose opinion I respect that won't concede these points or admit that there's a problem.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#77

Post by mortenjorck »

leoc wrote: post #37
veemjeem wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must've been somewhere nice that had fast internet. I think most people back then had dialup, and downloading a single song would take at least 20 minutes on their 28.8k modem.

As mech4bg said, much or most of people's .mp3 libraries at that point had probably come straight off CD. Napster wasn't even released until 1999, and "Rip. Mix. Burn." was Apple's edgy new slogan of 2001 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ECN4ZE9-Mo .

Wow, that's quite a find. A rare artifact from the pre-iPod, pre-iTunes Store tip of Apple's foray into digital media, and a strong piece from Apple's agency at the time.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#78

Post by jxdxbx »

danabramov wrote: post #12

Reading this reminded me of a post by Miguel de Icaza: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Nov-07.html Basically, Miguel argues that Walter Isaacson failed, as did many who tried to describe Steve Jobs recently: >Whenever the story gets close to an interesting historical event, or starts exploring a big unknown of Steve's work, we are condescendingly told that "Steve Activated the Reality Distortion Field". >Every.…

Isaacson made several telling errors about Apple products, showing he didn't really know them--for example, he seems not to understand how NeXT technology is still the core of OS X and iOS. This is not a trivial detail, since if Jobs was all about products you're not going to understand his work if you don't understand the products.

So, Isaacson fails as a book that will help you understand Job's work, or his management style, or what he did to turn Apple around--which I think had quite a bit to do with Apple's habit of leveraging technologies across products, developing economies of scale, and having people work in small, autonomous teams.

It's still a good book, though--I think it painted a balanced picture of an obsessive and mercurial man who, slowly, almost became a normal person.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#79

Post by rlu »

Not to sound harsh but reading that was a complete waste of time. In the end it came down to this:

Q: What is it really like working with Steve Jobs?

A: It wasn't magic, it was hard work, thoughtful design, and constant iteration.

No way, really? Come on, I'm sure everyone on HN knows that this is true for any product.

Re: What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs

#80

Post by transitionality »

philwelch wrote: post #64
transitionality wrote: post #52

So Jobs loved to micromanage. And it worked at Apple and at NeXT and at Apple, because Jobs knew a thing or two about software. But micromanaging your own cancer care doesn't work so well, does it now?

Judging from the Isaacson biography, Jobs would have been fine had he actually attended to the fact that he had cancer right away, rather than spending a year ignoring it.

He didn't ignore it, he wasted that year on alternative medicine voodoo. This detail may not have made it to the Isaacson book, I didn't read it.
Post reply on HN