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Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

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Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#121

Post by sangnoir »

throwanem wrote: post #56
yyyppp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such a disgruntled take. Having a "smart friend" was merely a nice advantage. Jobs' strength was in how he saw the world. His intuition, ability to imagine the future, inspire others and execute on that vision. Marketing and communications skills then almost felt like a by-product of such rare personality traits. I suggest reading "Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products" or any interviews with J…

Wasn't Ive also the genius behind the Touch Bar, the butterfly keyboard, and USB-C ports for everything because of their beautiful symmetry? If we're talking about swings and misses, we should talk about those, too.

...and many generations of aesthetically pleasing but unusable mice, and the thermally-limited trash can Mac Pro.

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#122

Post by unfocussed_mike »

zcw100 wrote: post #2

What really set Steve Jobs apart is that he never should have gotten to where he did. I don't mean he didn't deserve it or anything but based on that structures that exist to filter people who attain the positions that he did. By luck, or accident, or raw determination, he became a person in the drivers seat that no one would have chose to put there. He was so much not the person they would have chosen that they kick…

Another thing sets Steve Jobs apart that people almost always forget: he was a child out of place, to some extent.

He's the biological child of a Syrian muslim immigrant and an American of Armenian descent.

And then he's adopted into a sort of purely American life.

There's a whole lot of outsiderism to unpack there, and while he adored his adopted parents he seems to have struggled with his own fatherhood roles etc.

He was aloof and had a sort of paradoxical relationship with conformism -- he was consistent to his own personal design (the wardrobe full of identical outfits, the repeated leasing of the same kind of car) -- but rejected the conformism of others.

Really a lot of his manner -- including some of his more sociopathic traits -- could be explained by early disruption in life. He had quite a tough start.

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#123

Post by aesopsfable »

sleepybrett wrote: post #111
aesopsfable wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to belittle Nokia or anything, they took already available eg. smart calculators' digital displays adopted to GSM phones. Steve Jobs (Apple) did something no one ever expected, knew, or supported at the time (Steve Ballmer reaction*) Although they make great objects of desire, Toyota is no Tesla, Nokia is no Apple. Wozniak is acting like an ex partner probably because he owes his entire identity to Jobs, an ident…

You can trace the iphone back to, concretely, the newton but even further back if you check out the concepts that got them to the newton. There is a 1997 book called 'Apple Design 1997 The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group' that shows a ton of concepts and a few 'communication device' concepts (video and audio phone integrated computers). Sadly out of print, and quite expensive for a paperback 'coffee table'…

There is a cheesy movie from Tom Cruise, Minority Report, whomever takes those displays to market, finds a scalable profitable way to produce them, finds enough courage to resist status quo and find massive product market fit, will be the next Jobs or Musk. Idea wise, everything literally was on either Star Trek or on Star Wars previously. I know these personalities are not exactly likeable but we'll keep this conversation for the next simulation of the universe with different parameters...

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#124

Post by Apocryphon »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #110
Lio wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the C64's 1541 disk drive notoriously rubbish? Not sure I'd use it as an example of something "magic". It cost more than the computer it came with and was almost as slow as a tape deck. For no better reason than the Commodore marketing department thought it should be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_1541#Throughput_and_... IMHO Woz is genius, Jobs was probably a genius too of a different kind but in th…

"Wasn't the C64's 1541 disk drive notoriously rubbish?" Not that I can remember my 1541 being rubbish. "Not sure I'd use it as an example of something "magic"." It had a 6502 CPU in it and when we run code on the 1541 and detached the cable and it did still run, it felt magic to me. Because it was forty years ago, I can't remember all the details but I think there was a copy program on two drives that run without the…

Apparently the 1541 disk drive is notoriously slow.

https://ilesj.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/1541-why-so-complicat...

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#125

Post by stocknoob »

rowanG077 wrote: post #116
stocknoob wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me chuckle when people dismiss the industry-defining success of Apple as just marketing. Gee, why don’t their competitors try that?

It's not like marketing like Apple is easy. They build a brand over decades. You can't "just" copy that. Apples brand is absolutely the most valuable thing Apple has.

Agreed; that brand was reinforced by a stream of (generally) high-quality products.

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#126

Post by Apocryphon »

bar_de wrote: post #63
zcw100 wrote: post #2

What really set Steve Jobs apart is that he never should have gotten to where he did. I don't mean he didn't deserve it or anything but based on that structures that exist to filter people who attain the positions that he did. By luck, or accident, or raw determination, he became a person in the drivers seat that no one would have chose to put there. He was so much not the person they would have chosen that they kick…

Would another Steve Jobs personality have a chance at today's corporate environment? I have doubts: leadership is a hot iron where laissez faire approaches are favoured. The cite from Kawasaki that he was "unpleasant and always scary" would surely give a today's Steve Jobs a date with HR. A leader like Steve would be today called "toxic" and probably never promoted at all.

There are plenty of toxic executives and managers still in abundance in the corporate world, never mind toxic CEOs.

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#127

Post by sangnoir »

numinos1 wrote: post #64
late2part wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is toxic and offensive to me.

Would you care explaining?

Not OP, but that's a solipsistic method of "debate", similar to "your pointing out racism is the real racism". It's a way to delegitimize an opposing view by making the position seem insincere or possibly meaningless (in the semantic satiation sense).

The person using this tactic may cynically thinks its just a game of words, and the other side really doesn't genuinely hold the views they communicated; so they too will "play that game"... or to add another layer of cynicism: they are fully aware of their minimization, but want to reframe such that other readers interpret the original speaker as playing semantic games, and nothing is real.

You'll notice it a lot, once you start looking for it.

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#128

Post by psyc »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #72

In a tech world with dozens of "amazing leaders", is it possible that some of them just got lucky? They took some shots in the dark, some got lucky, some got unlucky: can it be that simple? If Steve Jobs was coming up today, could he have owned leetcode and tech interviews, would he have gotten a CS degree, could he have succeeded in a start-up today? Could many of us here in tech now have done what he did? My point…

If anything, I find this forum - perhaps by way of overcompensation - fetishizes luck and privilege (very fashionable concept) to an alarming degree. Name a biography of a notable person, whose primary theme is how lucky that person was and how they just lucked into everything. Forrest Gump doesn't count (and would still be a bad example - if I had his tenacity and stamina I'd be rich too). I get that biographies are narratives. So are luck and privilege. Everything is a narrative these days. Might as well pick one that gives you more agency.

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#129

Post by unfocussed_mike »

hnlmorg wrote: post #53
mrtksn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, Steve Jobs didn't luck out. Instead, he never went through the filters. Had he tried to become an Aircraft Engineer or a Doctor, he might get filtered out but he and Woz ventured into an unestablished field that was about to boom. There were no filters to keep him out and though he lacked a scholar formation he was exceptionally brilliant and managed to walk the path better than the most. Peter Thiel says…

> instead of making better phone than Nokia he would make something that no one at Nokia or anywhere else even dreamed of. The interesting thing about the iPhone is that people assume that was always the vision when in fact it was an idea that evolved and matured through the R&D process. Just as Android started out as a camera OS and pivoted to smart phones, the iPhone started out as a tablet, which was already a mar…

> I would say perhaps he was better at pivoting failures early

Right. Good at deciding, throwing weight behind even a wild and dramatic choice (like his sort of pirate-captain-and-pirate-crew with the original Mac team) and committing.

And then unusually brave at cutting losses or finding a new use for failures. He cut a hell of a lot of losses when he returned to Apple.

But in interviews he was also sort of a student-philosopher of decision-making. Witness the clip on this page, with Jobs talking about being taught about not interfering with brand design (in this case the NeXT brand) by Paul Rand:

https://www.logodesignlove.com/next-logo-paul-rand

You can see that made an impression on him and probably got absorbed into his sort of precision-anecdote-driven way of communicating his ideas.

(The other thing I like about this clip is seeing Jobs talking quite personally about someone he admires)

Re: Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader

#130

Post by notjustanymike »

P_I_Staker wrote: post #106
notjustanymike wrote: post #3

The most impactful class I ever took as a programmer was Theater. Because of theater, I can confidently demonstrate a new feature in front of 150 people, and effectively lead retros and sprint demos. Communication is the most undervalued skill by other engineers, and getting good at it sets you apart far quicker than technical growth alone.

Does theater improve communication skills (we're also talking about politics and social skills)? It seems there are a ton of performers that are totally inept interpersonally, and would also do bad in the type of group exercises you're talking about.

Theater teaches you control of how you appear to other people. You can pair it with parallel communication skills (in particular, learning empathy) to significantly benefit any kind of interaction.

Communication is mainly down to two things: how you present yourself, and how you are interpreted by others. Theater helps with the first, and learning empathy helps with the second. Pair it with a book like "Crucial Conversations" and it's surprising how effective you can be.

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