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From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

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Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#161

Post by LukeShu »

bilekas wrote: post #150
jorgesborges wrote: post #96

That is one of the most beautifully crafted “I did something dumb” emails — and to a CEO no less. I wish all my emails were so clear, direct, and personable.

: Edit : The OP has history until recently - My message is off base and in the wrong context. Apologies. I feel like I'm in crazy town... Hi - I'm new here. I did something dumb and set up a mail alias so that steve@next.com would go to me. This was a bad idea, I'm sorry. I've changed it to steve@next.com goes to you, not to me. I think that makes more sense. My apologies. Signed, new guy. This was > That is one of t…

> What is happening if you can't email your boss/upper on the regular like that ?

In a 40 person startup or small company, sure. In a 400 person company, the guy at the top is a few levels removed from "your boss" to be emailing with "on the regular".

OP had Jobs as his CEO for 20 years (hired in 1991, until Jobs passed in 2011), and says this was the only time Jobs directly emailed with him (of course, 400 people in 1991 was the smallest the company would be during that time, it would only grow from there).

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#162

Post by actionfromafar »

iwontberude wrote: post #152

One thing that struck me reflecting on this is how much of Steve Job's mythos is about his harsh unrelenting treatment of his employees. I think notes like this shows that Steve must have shown a lot of gratitude as well which goes unnoticed because its less exciting to talk about.

A quick and nice acknowledgment in an email is "a lot of gratitude"?

I don't see it.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#163

Post by fragmede »

jrockway wrote: post #157
jkingsman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the commenter, but I would assume forgoing an exit bonus/severance payment that was contingent upon signing a non-disparagement agreement.

Yup exactly. I got my retention bonus and 2 months pay and all that stuff without agreeing to anything, and they offered a little bit more to agree not to disparage them. I'm pretty chatty so decided it wasn't worth it ;)

Question is, how many zeros would it take to convince you otherwise.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#164

Post by jrockway »

fragmede wrote: post #163
jrockway wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup exactly. I got my retention bonus and 2 months pay and all that stuff without agreeing to anything, and they offered a little bit more to agree not to disparage them. I'm pretty chatty so decided it wasn't worth it ;)

Question is, how many zeros would it take to convince you otherwise.

Some number, absolutely. I don't have that much integrity ;)

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#165

Post by [deleted] »

Affric wrote: post #156
scarface_74 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs knew how to ship products people want. I have no respect for developers in a corporate settings who don’t ship.

Steve: what would this product be like if it were magical? Engineer: I don’t think we can build that with our current technology. Steve: I don’t give a fuck. You’re a nerd who is meant to like inventing. Do it. It’s really easy when we live in the world of the Mac, and the iPhone to say “Ah it was inevitable” but Steve’s approach to product is what got us here. He made sure that the GUI was computers, that capacitive…

[deleted]

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#166

Post by bilekas »

LukeShu wrote: post #161
bilekas wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

: Edit : The OP has history until recently - My message is off base and in the wrong context. Apologies. I feel like I'm in crazy town... Hi - I'm new here. I did something dumb and set up a mail alias so that steve@next.com would go to me. This was a bad idea, I'm sorry. I've changed it to steve@next.com goes to you, not to me. I think that makes more sense. My apologies. Signed, new guy. This was > That is one of t…

> What is happening if you can't email your boss/upper on the regular like that ? In a 40 person startup or small company, sure. In a 400 person company, the guy at the top is a few levels removed from "your boss" to be emailing with "on the regular". OP had Jobs as his CEO for 20 years (hired in 1991, until Jobs passed in 2011), and says this was the only time Jobs directly emailed with him (of course, 400 people in…

> OP had Jobs as his CEO for 20 years (hired in 1991, until Jobs passed in 2011), and says this was the only time Jobs directly emailed with him (of course, 400 people in 1991 was the smallest the company would be during that time, it would only grow from there).

You're right, I had to dig into OPs history to find that. I take back what I said. He gets every pass he wants, and now it makes sense.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#167

Post by rlpb »

ubermonkey wrote: post #118
pkaye wrote: post #108

What if a new employee was named Steve Teve?

Heh. I have a somewhat related story. In the market we sell into, mergers, acquisitions and spin-outs are the norm. People shift employers all the time without changing offices. It's a whole Thing. USUALLY this is somewhat drama-free, and USUALLY there's not an issue with email addresses, but this is not a story about the usual case. Most places now seem to use the firstname.lastname@corp.com style of address. This i…

I imagine that certain people of a particular temperament might deliberately leave such a thing be, perhaps for their own amusement, or maybe because they consider it to say more about the company than it says about them. Is this individual such a person?

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#168

Post by Spooky23 »

ubermonkey wrote: post #118
pkaye wrote: post #108

What if a new employee was named Steve Teve?

Heh. I have a somewhat related story. In the market we sell into, mergers, acquisitions and spin-outs are the norm. People shift employers all the time without changing offices. It's a whole Thing. USUALLY this is somewhat drama-free, and USUALLY there's not an issue with email addresses, but this is not a story about the usual case. Most places now seem to use the firstname.lastname@corp.com style of address. This i…

I worked at a place where legal swooped in and banished reuse of email addresses for an odd long period (like 7 years).

That created problems with contractors as any interruption in service required a new address. So we had a few John.Smith183@example.com in the org.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#169

Post by scarface_74 »

Affric wrote: post #156
scarface_74 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs knew how to ship products people want. I have no respect for developers in a corporate settings who don’t ship.

Steve: what would this product be like if it were magical? Engineer: I don’t think we can build that with our current technology. Steve: I don’t give a fuck. You’re a nerd who is meant to like inventing. Do it. It’s really easy when we live in the world of the Mac, and the iPhone to say “Ah it was inevitable” but Steve’s approach to product is what got us here. He made sure that the GUI was computers, that capacitive…

> After launch, MobileMe was widely panned, full of embarrassing bugs. Jobs gathered employees in an Apple auditorium and asked them, “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” And when his team started to answer, Job snapped, saying, “Why the F doesn’t it do that?” He spent the next hour berating the group, saying they had tarnished Apple’s reputation and that they should all hate each other for having let each other down. He then fired the head of the team and replaced him on the spot. Steve wasn’t happy at all. He clearly felt very deep shame and took it out on his team”

https://medium.com/initialized-capital/how-founders-must-cha...

Can you imagine “Apple Intelligence” being this bad under Jobs?

Contrast that with Cook…

“where can we put more ad units that make the product worse”

“Let’s ignore Phil Schiller’s advice, the judge’s court order and make the experience of paying outside of the App Store as shitty as possible”.

“Let’s keep our base model Macs at 8GB for over a decade to save a little money and get people to pay for upgrades”

I really hate Tim Cook.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#170

Post by tverbeure »

philosophty wrote: post #105
vkou wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Of course Steve Jobs had character flaws and made mistakes but this meme that he was some kind of Stalin character sending people to the gulags is an ignorant joke. Steve Jobs was deeply loved and respected by his family, friends, and colleagues. People who knew him intimately, who lived and worked with him every day for decades in many cases.

IMO it makes more sense to judge people by their worst than their best behavior. A monster who's deeply loved by his family is still a monster. I didn't read "Small Fry" by Lisa Brennan-Jobs, but the picture painted in the reviews of that memoir is scathing and heart breaking. He was a terrible father to her and he knew it.
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