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The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

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Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

#61

Post by stcredzero »

vectorpush wrote: post #52
stcredzero wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A generation of people are going to try really hard to emulate a cult status figure's personality but at the end of the day that's all it really is: a bad fidelity copy. Reminds me of what happens when I use Pandora. Instead of revealing a bunch of bands I like, Pandora gives me a bunch of bands that sound like bands that I like. Don't imitate. Attune yourself to value.

> Pandora gives me a bunch of bands that sound like bands that I like. That's a feature, not a bug.

If it's a feature, it's a freaking annoying feature.

Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

#62

Post by rotw »

brandall10 wrote: post #33
nsns wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe is very childish behavior, infantile even, but I believe you are right about Jobs being like that, and I think this might explain why he was so good at making toys adults crave like children. But we shouldn't idolize someone like that, IMHO, this isn't healthy conduct. Even if he has made a lot of money during certain periods of his life, it does not vindicate his behavior or make him a proper role…

Who said anything about money? He changed the game multiple times in multiple industries, and had his greatest successes as he was fighting death. If you compare his net impact vs. actual wealth he was a pauper... and esp if you look at his stake in Apple, as the majority of his wealth was from Pixar/Disney. There are too many 'responsible adults' wallowing in mediocrity who more than anything else actually drag the…

To put it bluntly, Google is happy-clappy hippie wonderland in comparison to Apple, yet there are no stories of the top echelon being absolute cunts to each other. Success is not reliant on dictatorship. You don't have to be a horrible person to be honest, you don't have to be a tyrant to demand and foster excellence.

Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

#63

Post by stcredzero »

victork2 wrote: post #3

I have read Steve Jobs biography and this is definitively a cautionary tale and a great warning for anybody, but for other reasons that stated in this article. I am no Apple fan, as a matter of fact I don't like the look and feel of their product but I gained a great admiration for Steve Jobs because he seemed like a man in immense suffering. I'm not talking about the obvious physical pain of cancer and all his crazy…

...I gained a great admiration for Steve Jobs because he seemed like a man in immense suffering

Russian? Hungarian?

it seemed pretty obvious that he was missing something in his life and he probably never found it.

Does it seem that he was in some sense, "alone?"

But he's the paragon of the self made man, in the Ayn Rand sense...

Many of Ayn Rand's characters seem to me to be tortured or somehow alone.

Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

#64

Post by stretchwithme »

The market is absolutely ruthless. It doesn't sugarcoat things for you or hold your hand.

Startups know this and act accordingly.

Large organizations do not necessarily know this or act accordingly. There are too many layers insulating people from reality. But they ability to scale processes and that's why they survive.

Steve pushed reality hard and got through more of those layers. And that organization can really execute as a result.

That was just one of his abilities.

Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

#65

Post by silvestrov »

imgabe wrote: post #43
nsns wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe is very childish behavior, infantile even, but I believe you are right about Jobs being like that, and I think this might explain why he was so good at making toys adults crave like children. But we shouldn't idolize someone like that, IMHO, this isn't healthy conduct. Even if he has made a lot of money during certain periods of his life, it does not vindicate his behavior or make him a proper role…

It is childish. I think it would be nearly impossible for a normal adult to act that way, because part of growing up and becoming an adult is learning to repress emotional outbursts like that and most people are not even going to feel very strongly about design details in the first place. The lesson is that design details do matter, and when you pay attention to them it has a cumulative effect that results in a much…

It's an USAism to think that "growing up" mandates "repressing emotional outbursts".

In many parts of Europe it's expected that grown men have emotional outbursts. Repressing them gives the impression of rigrid and cold humans which you should not trust.

Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

#66

Post by rotw »

padmanabhan01 wrote: post #29

This article is Bullshit. It is heights of insanity that a no name wired writer can just assume himself to be qualified to make judgements on someone who has had a huge impact (positive) on the world. I use an iPhone, iPad and a mac and I can vouch that my life is better with them than what I would imagine it to be without them. And what is the accusation? that he bullied a few? for making hundreds of millions of liv…

From the article:

> Jobs has become a Rorschach test, a screen onto which entrepreneurs and executives can project a justification of their own lives: choices they would have made anyway, difficult traits they already possess. “Everyone has their own private Steve Jobs,” Sutton says. “It usually tells you a lot about them—and little about Jobs.”

This isn't about Jobs being good or bad for the world. It's about his managerial legacy. Essentially, nearly every account of Jobs' life devolves into a hagiography, espousing subjectively his deeds, trying to fit them into a theology of sorts, which distorts generations of entrepreneurs' views of Jobs. Many misread him being great because he was an asshole, but overlook the fact that if he was right, it's because he was right that the product succeeded. Not because he was an asshole.

Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

#67

Post by imgabe »

silvestrov wrote: post #65
imgabe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is childish. I think it would be nearly impossible for a normal adult to act that way, because part of growing up and becoming an adult is learning to repress emotional outbursts like that and most people are not even going to feel very strongly about design details in the first place. The lesson is that design details do matter, and when you pay attention to them it has a cumulative effect that results in a much…

It's an USAism to think that "growing up" mandates "repressing emotional outbursts". In many parts of Europe it's expected that grown men have emotional outbursts. Repressing them gives the impression of rigrid and cold humans which you should not trust.

It is very American, but I think we get it from the English. They of the stiff upper lip.

Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

#68

Post by herval »

datalus wrote: post #42
brandall10 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about money? He changed the game multiple times in multiple industries, and had his greatest successes as he was fighting death. If you compare his net impact vs. actual wealth he was a pauper... and esp if you look at his stake in Apple, as the majority of his wealth was from Pixar/Disney. There are too many 'responsible adults' wallowing in mediocrity who more than anything else actually drag the…

Ah the American conquer, might is right arguement. No wonder your country ranks pretty high on the misery scale... There's more to life than "dominating" industries. Edit: I should qualify this a bit more. If it does make you happy to basically have no life outside of a career, then go for it. Everyone's happiness is something only they can answer for themselves. Some people can tolerate being lonely, and I'm pretty…

According to the book, he used to take quite a few vacations with his family and be at home with them a lot... Why did you conclude he was a lonely person?

Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

#69

Post by cageface »

In the ten years I worked at Pixar I had the pleasure of seeing or hearing a couple of Jobs famous tantrums first hand. At least in Pixar's case, they always seemed childish and destructive to me.

Meanwhile, Ed Catmull, the CEO, commanded the instant respect of absolutely everybody in the company despite being unfailingly polite and soft spoken because we all had such enormous regard for his intellect and maturity.

Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?

#70

Post by mitsche »

silvestrov wrote: post #65
imgabe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is childish. I think it would be nearly impossible for a normal adult to act that way, because part of growing up and becoming an adult is learning to repress emotional outbursts like that and most people are not even going to feel very strongly about design details in the first place. The lesson is that design details do matter, and when you pay attention to them it has a cumulative effect that results in a much…

It's an USAism to think that "growing up" mandates "repressing emotional outbursts". In many parts of Europe it's expected that grown men have emotional outbursts. Repressing them gives the impression of rigrid and cold humans which you should not trust.

I don't think the OP meant it that way.

To me part of being a grown up includes the ability to act with reason and tact under great distress. I've managed to do this once in my life when I was attacked by a good friend in a very harsh way because of complex reasons, and our friendship might have ended right at that point if I had let my emotions get the best of me.

I once had a boss who had an emotional breakdown almost every day at the office because things weren't going as he expected them to. He did not inspire me to do good work. He just instilled a fear in me that syphoned energy away and kept me from fully focusing on my work.

It was depressing, really. I will never know what Steve Jobs was like to work with, but I don't think I would have liked working for him, although he obviously got some good stuff out of his people.

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