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Think different about Jobs

james.cridland.net

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Re: Think different about Jobs

#91

Post by jonhendry »

Tichy wrote: post #5

I've read only parts of the books, but I get the impression I only get part of the story. It describes his unpleasantness, but at the same time it describes how lots of people were enchanted by him. The book doesn't explain how that is possible. So I take it with a huge grain of salt.

The 'hero/asshole roller coaster' is a widely accepted description of what it could be like working for Jobs.

On the other hand, there are plenty of people who worked for him for decades, and people who worked for him, left, and then returned.

I suspect part of it was learning how to deal with Jobs and his tantrums, part of it was being talented enough to spend more time as a 'hero' than an 'asshole', part of it was feeling that Jobs was trying to achieve something significant and thus the expected effort was worthwhile, and part of it was finding ways to stay out of Jobs' sight when necessary.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#92

Post by podperson »

I think there's a difference between being pleasant and being good and the writer of the linked article appears not to. A lot of good people aren't especially pleasant (Richard Stallman, much as I disagree with many things he says, might serve as a nice example). Jobs certainly seems to have been unpleasant in many ways, especially when he was young.

As far as I can tell, Jobs is guilty of three major sins in the book:

1) He screwed Woz on the Breakout deal. (Well-documented.) He did not screw Woz on the Apple IPO, however, and made him a very rich man.

2) He behaved abominably to his daughter Lisa's mother, but tried to make up for it later. Lisa's mother comes across as a dissolute user (e.g. she cons Lisa into signing over a house Jobs had given her to live in but bought in Lisa's name, and then sells it to go traveling with her guru). We don't know if Jobs had reasons for what he did, but Lisa chose to live with him.

3) He screwed Kottke out of equity in Apple during the IPO, deciding that his contribution was insufficient. This seems pretty unfair based on what we learn (which isn't much) in the book.

That's it, as far as I can recall. There's probably a few minor things, but those are the ones that stuck with me. Aside from that there's a lot of screaming, shouting, and whining, but it's basically pretty much a story of an incredibly dedicated guy trying to make great products and not really caring about money.

(How is Jobs supposed to have used Ives? By making him rich and giving him a huge amount of power?)

If you wrote the life story of pretty much any businessman, I think you'd be unlikely to find fewer immoral acts.

He also did some really mean things to some of his friends early on, but -- at least in most cases -- he owns up to them and tried to make amends. This is not like, say, Bill Gates who pretty much screwed everyone he did business with at some point and rationalizes it all away. But hey, he's curing malaria now so all is forgiven. (Bill Gates also comes across as an asshole, not to mention unhygienic and smelly, in various biographies.)

Re: Think different about Jobs

#93

Post by jonhendry »

csallen wrote: post #73

Human communication is a funny thing. We possess fragile egos and staggering amounts of pride. Consequently, we take great offense if even the simplest of statements are misworded (regardless of intention). Consider the difference between, "Give me the salt", and "Hey, would you mind passing me the salt? Thanks." We constantly pollute our speech by adding phrases whose only purpose is to prevent offense. And anyone w…

"Is it really the end of the world because Steve Jobs told you that your shitty design was shitty?"

Especially if you then went on to make a truly great design.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#94

Post by jonhendry »

atdt wrote: post #15
jarcoal wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly right. Companies do not get ahead by having mellow pushovers at the top. People having been talking a lot about how he stole all of the design credit from Ives. This might be the case, but I'm willing to bet you that Ives would be the first to admit that Jobs helped him unlock his true potential.

Taking credit for other people's creative work is a shit thing to do. Whatever benefits Ive may have drawn from the relationship aren't relevant. Daddy doesn't get to beat the kids just because daddy puts food on the table.

I'm inclined to take Ives' complaint with a grain of salt.

After all, as the face of Apple design, Ives might be getting some amount of credit for designs that his underlings have made. He might not be seeking it, but that's how it's working out.

Ives is pretty much the only designer at Apple who gets any credit at all, at least in the media. And that's been the case for years now. He hasn't exactly been laboring in obscurity while Jobs sucked up all the credit and adulation.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#95

Post by jonhendry »

sipefree wrote: post #51
andrewcooke wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you really think that "anyone who has not been an absolute saint their entire life" is a equivalent to "Devoid of any kind of feelings towards anyone else, he shouts, screams, cries and sulks his way through his petulant life"? because i don't. i think there's quite a difference. everyone can be an arsehole sometimes, sure. but that doesn't excuse those that are consistently unpleasant. there's a clear difference. so…

> Devoid of any kind of feelings towards anyone else, he shouts, screams, cries and sulks his way through his petulant life Sounds like full-on Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Various people who knew Steve have also said that he must have had this. As far as I can see, it's probably true. I don't think it's right to attribute malice to the man if it's the case. Neither is it right to insist that someone be prevent…

"Sounds like full-on Narcissistic Personality Disorder."

And/Or some OCD and some kind of autistic spectrum disorder, combined with early success which probably encouraged or reinforced some things that a regular person would have to learn to avoid doing.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#96

Post by Apocryphon »

nirvana wrote: post #63

Isaacson's book is a hatchet job, with many errors, and some downright dishonest statements. It is a shame that Jobs cooperated with that hack. In numerous passages, Isaacson will quote Jobs saying something perfectly truthful[1], and then follow it up with a claim that Jobs is lying. Most of the time, he doesn't provide any evidence that Jobs is lying, just the assertion, because, as Isaacson is careful to tell us m…

You can recognize that a great hacker may also be a detestable human being.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#97

Post by Apocryphon »

wallawe wrote: post #57
theshadow wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The "bad" qualities are what made them effective. If they didn't have them, you would never have heard of them. Please justify the above statement. How could you possibly know that? What is to say that these people would not have gone to achieve even greater heights if it had not been for their bad qualities? There is something incredibly depressing about this attitude that pretty much states that it's okay to be a…

Ex. 1: People would go the length of the world making sure that they accomplished every minute detail of what he had asked to perfection. Had he not been such a hardass and callous type person, I highly doubt things would have been done in the time frames and to the scope that he required. It's the tragedy of success in his circumstance. Take the bad with the good.

He could have done that without screwing over Wozniak. He could have been a perfectionist without acting petulant.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#98

Post by philwelch »

kiba wrote: post #81
nirvana wrote: post #63

Isaacson's book is a hatchet job, with many errors, and some downright dishonest statements. It is a shame that Jobs cooperated with that hack. In numerous passages, Isaacson will quote Jobs saying something perfectly truthful[1], and then follow it up with a claim that Jobs is lying. Most of the time, he doesn't provide any evidence that Jobs is lying, just the assertion, because, as Isaacson is careful to tell us m…

Honestly, I don't really care about how good Apple products are or how innovative are. I don't use them, I don't hate them either. It's just not for me. My beef with apple is how they felt entitled to control the devices that apple made but consumers own, making them unhackable. When I buy something, I own it, period. I should be able to reverse engineer anything on the market, because I obtained the copy. I don't gi…

It's interesting how people attack Apple by championing the freedom to make things, and then continue to attack Apple for the way they make things.

Speaking very broadly, Apple aren't hackers, they're artists. Michaelangelo's intention wasn't to let the Pope knock himself out altering the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

And if you really do want to alter an iPhone--well, you can. It's not designed to be easy, but there's no real legal or physical barrier to you doing so. To most cell phone users, Android's openness doesn't mean they have freedom to change the software on their phones--their carriers lock it down for them. It only means that they get a shittier phone, thanks to those very same carriers and their ability to bundle crapware.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#99

Post by 5hoom »

ethank wrote: post #88
kiba wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any case, Apple is more hostile to hackers and developers than any other platform I seen in the mobile world.

You haven't been in mobile long then.

Spot on.

There was barely an indie developer scene for mobile before the iphone.

Re: Think different about Jobs

#100

Post by philwelch »

spacefungus wrote: post #18
moxiemk1 wrote: post #4

>> But what worries me is the amount of stupid businessmen who’ll be copying Jobs’s behaviour. (I say “businessmen” on purpose, since I’ve yet to encounter a businesswoman, on any level, who treats people in an unpleasant way). Recognizing that I say this from a white, cis-gendered, born to highly intelligent (if not at all successful) parents perspective, I don't think that comments like that are appropriate. First,…

This is completely irrational and irrelevant. A misogynist is someone who hates women and/or girls. He's saying he's never encountered a bad business woman, which is not hatred at all under any circumstance. He's a man writing about a man, so the gender of pronouns shouldn't mystify or bother you. And "those seeking to better their own image while perpetuating a problem" isn't any form or category of misogynist. See…

While in normal discourse "misogynist" means "someone who hates women and/or girls", in formal academic feminism a misogynist is someone who disagrees with the feminist dogma. It's not difficult to spot third-wave feminists: usually by the time someone uses jargon like "cis-gendered" (which is Women's Studies for "doesn't suffer from gender identity disorder") you're well above 90% odds that you're dealing with some type of left-wing identity politics wonk. Interestingly, "misogynist" itself is a high-probability marker as well. It would be interesting to run a Bayesian classifier and find out what the observed probabilities actually are....
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