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

27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

inc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 287 posts

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#91

Post by thereisnospork »

hef19898 wrote: post #84
jimnotgym wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all makes sense for knowledge workers, but what about the rest of the world? In a supermarket chain you need 1000 people following the exact process developed by a small team of superstars at head office. Sometimes you will get someone who is good at convincing the others to stay on process, they get to be managers. IE the smarter staff rise up. This is quite different to your example. Perhaps the corporation is…

This hero worshippong always puzzles me. All real world examples, from certified sport super stars to actual rock stars, show us that the proverbial employee rockstar is a myth. No Messi, Ronaldo or Mbappé can win a Championship or the Champions League on their own. Nor can Brady win the Super Bowl without a team. Every rockstar has a team of song writers (there are exceptions to that so), producers, marketing and to…

>Nor can Brady win the Super Bowl without a team.

I'm pretty sure you can run whatever analytics you'd like and they'd all say that (prime) Brady is more than worth 100x the salary of the JAG qb3 on the practice squad.

The skill curve for athletic and knowledge work is steep and tall. Measuring it outside of games is the hard part.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#92

Post by tucnak »

shagie wrote: post #49
billy99k wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Their boss looks down and sees Director managing 30 people and getting amazing result X, where X is 90% the effort of the one super star." This is interesting because it was my experience in school as well. In most group projects, 1 or 2 people would carry the rest of the group.

You have encountered Price’s Law. https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/ > Price’s law says that 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.

[flagged]

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#93

Post by anonreeeeplor »

whatshisface wrote: post #48
glitchc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that's how the world works most of the time. Superstars also know it and are used to it from early childhood. They are expected to carry the load and equally importantly, the team is expected to listen to them. It works like this in all walks of life, because simply put, human beings are not equal in ability. Things break down when the team and management stop listening. That's when the superstar actually g…

That makes sense until you consider that the world (and any team) is "sprinkled" with a lot more narcissists and know-it-alls than geniuses!

I personally have known several people. They are not narcissists. They are literally 100x talent. One of them built out a half dozen hit games, doing all the art and programming for one employer which represented half the companies profit.

Then he left, started a 30 person company, got frustrated, quit and built another game entirely from scratch doing all the art direction and sold millions then retired.

One person.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#94

Post by anonreeeeplor »

bornfreddy wrote: post #59
whatshisface wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense until you consider that the world (and any team) is "sprinkled" with a lot more narcissists and know-it-alls than geniuses!

It still makes sense. The group that listens to these people instead of real superstars (assuming it has any) is at disadvantage.

If I mentioned the company, and you would recognize it, you would understand the catastrophic non performance of this company for a decade.

All the old management are still in place despite several ceo changes and it has become the poster child for failed big company.

you can even read the glass door reviews. Thousands of posts say the same thing I am saying: The bad people gang up on the good people and that’s why I left.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#95

Post by Jare »

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #93
whatshisface wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense until you consider that the world (and any team) is "sprinkled" with a lot more narcissists and know-it-alls than geniuses!

I personally have known several people. They are not narcissists. They are literally 100x talent. One of them built out a half dozen hit games, doing all the art and programming for one employer which represented half the companies profit. Then he left, started a 30 person company, got frustrated, quit and built another game entirely from scratch doing all the art direction and sold millions then retired. One person.

What a rollercoaster of a life.

[Edit: I was trying to make a joke reference but after reviewing the facts, no it doesn't look like the person referenced was Chris Sawyer of Rollercoaster Tycoon fame. He could fit the description though]

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#96

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

coldtea wrote: post #71
mettamage wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you ask them about this discrepancy and how they view it. Personally, I find it weird, but wonder how they'd justify the 1.5x expense.

Companies are full of weird cargo cult like that. Having a ssalary cap on certain positions, but paying top dollar for external consultants doing the same is very very common.

Most companies are status-based, not value-based. The primary goal is to maintain status differentials. Pay is one of many tools used to enforce status hierarchies.

As an external consultant you are - to some extent - outside the hierarchy, so the usual rules don't apply.

When companies get really big and dysunctional they start to treat their customers as if they're the bottom of the hierarchy. Which is how you get all finds of corporate outrages.

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#97

Post by hef19898 »

thereisnospork wrote: post #91
hef19898 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hero worshippong always puzzles me. All real world examples, from certified sport super stars to actual rock stars, show us that the proverbial employee rockstar is a myth. No Messi, Ronaldo or Mbappé can win a Championship or the Champions League on their own. Nor can Brady win the Super Bowl without a team. Every rockstar has a team of song writers (there are exceptions to that so), producers, marketing and to…

>Nor can Brady win the Super Bowl without a team. I'm pretty sure you can run whatever analytics you'd like and they'd all say that (prime) Brady is more than worth 100x the salary of the JAG qb3 on the practice squad. The skill curve for athletic and knowledge work is steep and tall. Measuring it outside of games is the hard part.

I didn't say anything about salaries, did I? Which team so do you think would do better:

- Brady at his prime in a team of highschool amateurs

- the back-up team of, I have no real idea about american football so feel free to pick a better example, the Cowboys

What do you think?

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#98

Post by aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA »

tucnak wrote: post #92
shagie wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have encountered Price’s Law. https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/ > Price’s law says that 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.

[flagged]

> Americans need to stop making up pathetic "laws" on the go.

Americans?

“Derek Price, who was a British physicist [...]”

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#99

Post by FullyFunctional »

cyberpunk wrote: post #35
mettamage wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you ask them about this discrepancy and how they view it. Personally, I find it weird, but wonder how they'd justify the 1.5x expense.

Contractors can be billed to a project, it’s much easier to pass with the finance dept than justifying why one new hire should get 4x what someone else with the same job title gets.

Contractors are easier to hire and much easier to fire than permanent employees. I've had both good and absolutely terrible experience with QoR of contractors, but IMO the biggest problem is the loss of institutional knowledge when the contract ends. No amount of reports makes up for the warm body in the room that can say, "actually, the reason for this is ...".

Re: 27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process

#100

Post by bornfreddy »

yodsanklai wrote: post #38
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #3

Corporations, at their root, are an arbitrage on the fact that other corporations follow the bell curve. The entire goal of salaries and “teams” in my experience, is to ENSURE that high performers get diluted and averaged in with mediocre performers so the company can pretend the high performers don’t exist. This was my experience in (large co). I have seen situations where a single IC is dragging a division of 30 pe…

> That has been my entire career. Never seen it go differently. In my "big tech company", there's a thorough (and I think overall fair) evaluation process, and a very high performer can earn a significant amount of money, e.g. 10x the salary of a junior. People are also strongly incentized to deliver through bonuses and stock refresher. I'm not denying that what you describe exists in some (most?) companies, but ther…

Ok, seriously curious - how does this evaluation process look like, at least in broad strokes? I haven't yet seen one that would make incentives aligned, but you got my hopes up. :)
Post reply on HN