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?
#2If we're still talking about him half a year after he's gone he must have gotten something right. I think something that techies don't see is that Jobs real gem is Pixar, a company that Lucas couldn't make work and a company that became Disney's animation studio. My bet is that as these devices go from being cool gadgets to the mundane that Jobs will be remembered for those Pixar films which will seem charming even if their technique is crude next to animation in the year 2032.
Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?
#3I 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 diets ( we share something in common ) but mentally he seemed like a sad sad person. I don't want to do bar stool psychology but it seemed pretty obvious that he was missing something in his life and he probably never found it.
But he's the paragon of the self made man, in the Ayn Rand sense and people ( especially here, where there's something approaching a cult ) look up to that and as soon as they encounter problems they imagine themselves in the shoes of this man and try to act tough... or act Steve Jobs.
If there's one paradoxical lesson that should be taken from his biography it is that you should never to listen to anybody that tells you how to act, don't try to fit in a mold, even in the mold of a great man, because you fundamentally don't have the same substance and thus you won't come out the same way: ie successful nor happy. Be your own man, forge your own mold and challenge the statu quo.
Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?
#4If we're still talking about him half a year after he's gone he must have gotten something right. I think something that techies don't see is that Jobs real gem is Pixar, a company that Lucas couldn't make work and a company that became Disney's animation studio. My bet is that as these devices go from being cool gadgets to the mundane that Jobs will be remembered for those Pixar films which will seem charming even i…
No one doubts that he did some things right, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he mistreated nearly everyone who helped him make Apple the company it is today.
He should have been fired when he couldn't get along with anyone at Atari and he should have been fired the first time he ever called anyone a "shithead" at Apple.
I've worked for an abusive boss before, and no amount of success can excuse the fact that as a supervisor and as a human being he was a complete failure.
If someone thinks that I am being unreasonable, consider the fact that I have a disorder that basically acts as a get out of jail free card for me to be a total dick to everyone, yet I still find the time and energy to be respectful to everyone whom I work with, peers, subordinates, and even my abusive former boss.
Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?
#5If we're still talking about him half a year after he's gone he must have gotten something right. I think something that techies don't see is that Jobs real gem is Pixar, a company that Lucas couldn't make work and a company that became Disney's animation studio. My bet is that as these devices go from being cool gadgets to the mundane that Jobs will be remembered for those Pixar films which will seem charming even i…
And yet, I remember seeing an article here on Hacker News where one of pixar's first employees said Pixar was not great because of Jobs, but in spite of him
Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?
#6If we're still talking about him half a year after he's gone he must have gotten something right. I think something that techies don't see is that Jobs real gem is Pixar, a company that Lucas couldn't make work and a company that became Disney's animation studio. My bet is that as these devices go from being cool gadgets to the mundane that Jobs will be remembered for those Pixar films which will seem charming even i…
He certainly built multiple successful companies, but he's not the only one who's done that. Few people have done what he did with Apple the second time—that's what he got really right, in terms of why people are still talking about him so much—turning the company around not just into success but into a behemoth, but if you want to know how he did that, I'd look at what changed. He was always an abusive manager/colleague, yet that didn't make Apple in the early 80s or NeXT in the 90s dominate their markets in the same way Apple of the last decade did with the iPhone/iPad. The vision, the timing, the perfectionism... none of that depends on also being a colossal jerk.
Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?
#7It seems to me that being dictatorial and downright mean only works if you are right about whatever you've decided to be dictatorial about. So when Jobs dropped that iPod prototype in water to prove that it could be smaller still, this helped the iPod's success largely because Jobs was right about the smallness, not because he berated his engineers. That ability to be right about what people wanted, not his apparently capricious and unpleasant demeanor, is why we still talk about him a year after his death.
Incidentally, it is also the difficult to reproduce part of his success.
Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?
#8In my opinion the success of Apple with the more recent products is the only reason most people tolerated his shitty behaviour. It is easy to stay positive when everything is going so well.
Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?
#9It seems to me that being dictatorial and downright mean only works if you are right about whatever you've decided to be dictatorial about. So when Jobs dropped that iPod prototype in water to prove that it could be smaller still, this helped the iPod's success largely because Jobs was right about the smallness, not because he berated his engineers. That ability to be right about what people wanted, not his apparentl…
Well said. Let's not produce more abusive bosses who, when their "brilliant strategy" doesn't work, just think they have to berate their employees harder.
Re: The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?
#10If we're still talking about him half a year after he's gone he must have gotten something right. I think something that techies don't see is that Jobs real gem is Pixar, a company that Lucas couldn't make work and a company that became Disney's animation studio. My bet is that as these devices go from being cool gadgets to the mundane that Jobs will be remembered for those Pixar films which will seem charming even i…
And yet, I remember seeing an article here on Hacker News where one of pixar's first employees said Pixar was not great because of Jobs, but in spite of him
I remember reading that but if Jobs hadn't have taken a risk and continued ploughing nearly all of his money into Pixar it wouldn't be around today. I think I read that he put nearly all of his money into it, to the stage he didn't have much left, and at that point Toy Story came along.
I think the article you are referring to was about the actual movie making process. If Jobs had access to that side of things he would have exercised control over it and people like Lasseter wouldn't have been able to create the work they did.