HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I hate to be that guy, but I believe that many line managers & middle managers aren't honestly needed in knowledge work at a certain level of self-managing ICs with a common vision. It's increasingly rare to find "good" managers among the bad. The good ones tend to find new jobs or get promoted and continue to climb the ladder. The bad ones? They also get promotions to take over the good ones jobs and they stay around forever.

They get in the way majority of the time. They try to make decisions for their own self interests rather than empowering their teams to make the best ones possible. They don't say no to things, but rather use it as yet another opportunity for a "quick win". They get offended easily and have fragile egos with blunt feedback. Literally the opposite of every characteristics of a "good manager".

Many people in these roles are classic examples of narcissism and nepotism. Nobody has ever humbled them before or questioned their confidence that can easily be seen as an authority figure in most developer teams. I'm sad to be saying this, but I don't think many developers stand their own ground against these types of people and they should. Teams should be able to vote out their bad managers because it is so apparent on certain teams that there's a bad manager.

Even with decent managers on a team, you still hardly get anything meaningful done. You can spend years on things that have little to no impact externally, but will be praised internally because of the "hard work" done even at the cost of morale and questioning ICs saying "why are we still doing this?". Good managers should see through this bullshit and get the team to self-direct course by talking to everyone and getting a sentiment for a new common vision.

Bonus: Steve Jobs thinking most managers are bozos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo

⬐ veganhouseDJ

Totally agree.

There are also these ridiculous dynamics to the system that a new incompetent manager can burn a department to the ground and then get another promotion for rebuilding the department to 25% of what it was before they burned it down.

What is missing is a type of null hypothesis to judge the manager against. Would the department actually be better off if we paid them to watch Netflix?

This is probably something deep in human nature though when it comes to money and business because it is almost the definition of Keynes animal spirits. A spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction. We just don't like the idea of inaction when it comes to business and money.

⬐ thenerdhead

You're describing the Dilbert principle. A joke on the Peter Principle and yet serves very true in my experience as to "put people in places where they cause the least amount of damage".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle

⬐ torginus

I have a generally darker outlook. Based on my experience, I don't share the notion that being 'good' in any meaningfully productive sense (technical, personal, organizational) leads to better career odds.

In my experience, a lack of spine, a sturdy gaslight, a talent for office politics, and and utter lack of care of the people beneath you is what's conducive to a successful career in management. The majority of managers I encountered had these attributes, and built successful careers on them, while ignoring real world concerns and frustrations to the point they literally had no idea what the people under them did exactly.

Conversely, the people that did care, that pushed back against unfair expectations, that did champion meaningful change were not as apt at playing office politics and often drew the short straw when a shakeup happened.

I could list numerous horrible archetypes, but the most common one I encountered was the Yes Man - when upper management comes up with a new idea, he nods eagerly and pushes it down the throats of the team members, ignoring their protests, and when the idea inevitably fails, he blames the team for not being enthusiastic enough. When his bosses move the deadline forward, he gives the thumbs up, then tells the team that they are going to have to work just that much harder.

His bosses love him since they feel that this guy 'gets' it, it's a joy to work with him, when other middle managers grumble at their ideas, he just jumps into action, this guy is a real go-getter, clearly has potential.

⬐ thenerdhead

Do we work at the same company? This feels too real.

Take a look at the most lasting, highly successful open source projects used by most companies today.

They have something in common:

- Full-time software engineering managers? 0%

- Full-time product managers? 0%

- Full-time project managers? 0%

- Committed engineers focusing in implementation working on flexible time schedules: 100%

The true inefficiencies that managers spend their careers looking for, are right there in front of the mirror.

https://youtu.be/rQKis2Cfpeo?t=114

⬐ pinkfoot

They also all share not having to make payroll every 30 days.

⬐ 29athrowaway

They certainly help your ability to make payroll every 30 days.

Some open source projects are sponsored or backed by foundations, and contributors do get paid.

This is what Steve Jobs has to say about project managers: https://youtu.be/rQKis2Cfpeo?t=116

⬐ ec109685

Isn’t that about managers in general?

⬐ 29athrowaway

It is about preconceived notions about what project management should be.

I think many practitioners of Scrum would fall into what Steve Jobs described in that video as bozos.

⬐ captainredbeard

Scrum is riddled with bozos.

⬐ winrid

Well that hits home pretty hard. I didn't know Steve Jobs did these kinds of interviews, thanks.

⬐ 29athrowaway

Another gem: Steve Jobs on sales and marketing, https://youtu.be/-AxZofbMGpM?t=21

Completely in agreement. Hire a bad leader when the company is growing and you risk one year later to have the whole company infested by all sort of people that you would not like to have around (managers included).

Some companies completely screw up themselves because of this. Startups usually do not think about this early enough and when the founders realize what is going on is too late and the company culture is screwed.

My favorite Steve Job's video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo

⬐ cakes

Especially if you witness it as an employee and run it up the chain as far as possible and it gets ignored.

Having had good and bad in my career has saved me from realizing that this was happening and that I shouldn't sit idle but if I'm not idle and do something it becomes extremely disheartening to watch this happen (and then I leave when it becomes apparent that nothing will be done and I'm miserable under my manager)

⬐ ChrisCinelli

In a company with these kind of problems, if you try to run it up the chain, it usually gets "captured" very early on from allied powers of the bad guy. In a healthy company with the right "antibodies" in places, a bad apple has more chances of being caught before it spoils the whole bunch.

⬐ maroonblazer

I like his comment at about the 2:06[0] mark where he says "They knew how to manage but they didn't know how to do anything..."

However...a dynamic I see happening in my professional world is that the 'how' of doing things is changing so rapidly that managers aren't able to keep up and so might find themselves in a position where when they first started managing they were an expert in their domain but over time the domain has changed so much that their expertise has fallen behind. At that point I think a manager can still have value by performing classically managerial tasks:

- setting/reinforcing/communicating the vision (as Jobs notes in the video)

- recognizing great work by individuals on the team (both within the team and across the org)

- minimizing uncertainty within their span of control/removing 'blockers'

- providing autonomy to their staff

- facilitating collaboration

- striving for fairness and transparency in management decisions

[0]https://youtu.be/rQKis2Cfpeo?t=2m6s

⬐ cptskippy

I have only once worked under a manager who could actually do my job and it had plusses and minuses. I wouldn't say it was a better or worse experience than being under a non-technical manager who exhibited all the traits you mentioned.

The problem however is that no one I have ever worked under embodied all of those traits.

⬐ erikb

that's why often you have architects and managers together leading teams. The architect is an engineer working at the blueprints/source code. The manager coordinates communication channels, team defined goals, integration with sales, etc. If I need a raise or sit in another office, I talk to the manager. If I need a different API, I talk to the architect.

⬐ hnrodey

> managers aren't able to keep up and so might find themselves in a position where when they first started managing they were an expert....

Reminds me of this. The value is in the audio but the animation is entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmdLcyES_Q

⬐ Bahamut

I should note that these are things good leadership does in general, not just management - it also applies to technical leadership as well as management.

⬐ PeachPlum

Sometimes you're leading, sometimes you're managing but you should know which is which.

Just like sometimes you're mentoring, coaching or teaching.

⬐ CoolGuySteve

Ya even at Apple during the end of the Jobs era, Bertrand Serlet, the head of software engineering would go through top and find processes that he thought were using too many threads (instead of lib dispatch) or using too much memory.

At that stage Snow Leopard was already a year behind schedule for what was meant to be a free maintenance + performance release.

So I’d agree that it cuts both ways. A good manager knows to trust his employees.

⬐ yuhong

I wonder if Craig was really involved in this: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=83...

⬐ Waterluvian

I had a manager recently say not to use a new flask server to host a tiny one client config wizard, but to use the existing one (elsewhere in code base that hosts a customer facing Gui), severely concerned about memory usage.

I feel like sometimes managers create abstractions in their mental model rather than simply relying on their engineers to perform that role at a much greater level of detail. So to this individual, web server == heavy.

⬐ hi41

In every video of Steve Jobs he comes across as one with incredible confidence. I learnt that he dropped out of college and it amazes me to see him exude such confidence. I grew up in India and was constantly told to "shut up and sit down" because I am not qualified yet. I got my bachelor's degree and still feel like I am nothing. Did Steve Jobs get his amazing confidence because of the cultural difference in USA where people are careful not to insult someone. Due to the number of times I have been told to shut up and sit down, I have not gained confidence to speak against power and to lead. I always look at confident people like Steve Jobs with jealousy. May be some of the members of HN can help me here.

⬐ toast0

There is a cultural difference, but not insulting isn't the key thing. The key thing is that in the US qualifications aren't sacred. You may be dismissed if you share your opinion and you have little experience; however, if you share facts and results, those will be (generally/ideally) judged on their own merits, not on yours. So instead of shut up and sit down, it's put up or shut up.

You can see this in school culture: is the goal of school to get the stamp at the end, and you might get some knowledge in the process; or is it to get knowledge and you might get a stamp at the end.

You can see it in interviews: do you hire someone with ten years experience, or do you hire someone who can solve your whiteboard problems.

This culture of results mattering more than experience may come from the US history of being very spread out with a lot of people moving around. If some out of town person comes in looking for work and says they've been doing something for 10 years, it may or may not be true -- you ask them to show you how they can do whatever it is, and decide based on that; the truth of the background doesn't really matter.

This doesn't hold true completely. It's harder to get a programming job without a degree, but it's not impossible. It is impossible (or darn near) to get a job as a medical surgeon without an appropriate degree and supervised training, though.

⬐ srtjstjsj

Jobs didn't get respect because shared facts and results. He got respect because he had extreme confidence and bluster, and no problems lying to people and bullying people, taking credit for their work, AND having good taste.

⬐ seltzered_

There’s likely some cultural difference, but can’t read too much into these videos. There’s always going to be a feeling of “imposter syndrome” when comparing yourself to folks in videos or ted talks. And then when you meet them in person you realize they have fears, days where they have no confidence.

Steve’s confidence can come at a cost too though. Steve was part of imposing work anti-poaching agreements so employees couldn’t easily switch jobs to certain tech companies. There’s also plenty of untold stories of Steve yelling at employees and making them cry. While I overall like Apple and would love to work there, it’s worth asking...

What else is behind the video? Are there people who’ve been hurt by Steve? Do you want to be that personality?

As far as handling your own confidence, it comes with time. I’d recommend learning to take some impromptu debate, a dance class, etc. to be around people more. Particularly outside circles of friends that belittle you.

⬐ hi41

Thank you, seltzered!

⬐ staunch

Steve Jobs spent his entire life working on, and talking about, personal computing technology. How many world class experts lack confidence in their area of expertise? It almost doesn't make sense to ask.

Very few people will ever put in the kind of effort and time that Steve Jobs put into his work, and so they shouldn't ever expect anything like his level of expertise or confidence.

⬐ emmelaich

That's ironic because Steve Jobs travelled to India and found his confidence.

⬐ nnd

According to Isaacson biography, he went to India to find a guru, then failed at that attempt and return back to the states.

⬐ gcb0

I think you should have read that comment as a joke, which was pretty good and on point btw.

⬐ tooltalk

There are no used-car sales folks in India? The father of Mac, Jef Raskin, had this to say about Jobs:

"While Mr. Jobs's stated positions on management techniques are all quite noble and worthy, in practice he is a dreadful manager ... He is a prime example of a manager who takes the credit for his optimistic schedules and then blames the workers when deadlines are not met," he wrote, adding that Steve "misses appointments ... does not give credit ... has favorites ... and doesn't keep promises."

I think Jobs was incredibly lucky that he was always surrounded by smart, humble people, such as Woz. Raskin was less tolerant. You say confidence; some say arrogance. Some admired him for that; others just didn't care; it seems.

⬐ EpicBlackCrayon

Was he truly lucky or did he have a knack for picking out smart, humble people?

⬐ abraae

Gary Player: The harder I practice, the luckier I get.

⬐ tooltalk

what smart, humble people did he personally pick? Jobs and Woz were high school buddies and what bonded them together was their knack for pranks. Later in early Apple days, Jobs hired Sculley who eventually recognized Jobs's immaturity and fired him later on. Most important members of Mac projects were also hired by Raskin, not Jobs. Further Raskin approached Jobs and Woz when they were operating out of garbage and Jobs tried to terminate Raskin's Mac projects multiple times and fire him. Jon Ive has been with Apple since 1992 and Jobs had nothing to do with his hiring.

⬐ None

None

⬐ sprafa

Steve probably had a strong inclination towards narcisism. There's not much you can do there. If you read about his behaviour at this time and at later times from the Isaacson biography, he was clearly not a great person to be around a lot of the time.

He was lucky enough to rope in a genius - Woz - to make a computer he could sell brilliant - thanks to his narcisism, maybe - and make 100 million out of it. From then on he almost destroyed two companies - Pixar and Next - until he learnt how to run one properly at Apple 2.0

⬐ gcb0

being born rich he was the one living with and learning from the people telling others to shut up all the time.

don't confuse the tech world in the USA today with the one at jobs time.

⬐ richard___

Yes. Culture plays a big role. The media you consume, the cultural leaders you hear speak, will affect your view of the world. Will you see the world as something malleable that you can change, or accept that you were destined for a low place in an hierarchy and there's nothing you can do to change it.

Ego - narcissism - a desire to prove oneself because of feeling less than others while young - these are the dark and necessary motivators to feeling invincible and confident and that you can make your ideas reality. How arrogant must an entrepreneur be to believe that he can defeat and conquer multibillion industries?

Here's the secret though. There is no secret- there is only your fear of being laughed at and ridiculed and failing. People like Steve Jobs aren't confident because they try to be confident - confidence is a side effect of being stubborn and desperate. You are desperate to succeed because of the dark motivators I described above. You are stubborn because you desire success desperately, and will keep knocking your head against the wall until you achieve it. If you push your stubborn-ness and desperation to the extremes, eventually one day people will look at you speak, and think you were always confident and always powerfully-centered and in control. But they are just seeing the symptoms of a lifetime of failure and desperation and stubbornness that has finally begun to turn around.

What I am saying is - to be confident - be honest with yourself. If you want to be great, expose yourself, look ugly and feel insecure, but be stubborn in pursuing your honest desire to be great and do great things. Confidence will be gained by trying to do exceptional and weird things long enough until you realize you can achieve them.

⬐ hi41

Thank you, Richard!

⬐ WalterSear

https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Winning-Creative-Battle/dp/15...

⬐ nnd

Great book, read it many times, but what's the relevance here?

⬐ WalterSear

Resistance

⬐ beebmam

Wow, I'm shocked at how religious these people are about their ideas. There's a lot of statements that many in this video make that have no serious evidence behind them, beyond their own experimental analysis.

When I was younger, I watched an interview with Richard Feynman where he described how exceptionally difficult it is to truly know something. I wish more people took that approach when it comes to their own workplaces.

⬐ closeparen

Unlike human behavior, laypeople don't typically have default/traditional views about physics that they'll act out unless convinced otherwise. Extreme skepticism is adaptive when you are pursuing truth. Extreme skepticism only of the ideas you're not already acting out is less adaptive when making operational decisions.

⬐ rafiki6

It is only human to be over confident in our own stupidity. Rarely do we know it's even stupidity.

⬐ castle-bravo

Can you point to something said in the video that isn't true or that you disagree with? If people believe passionately in something, is that grounds enough to discredit their belief?

⬐ sk_0919

If that religious behavior led to products that people loved, is it really wrong to be religious about it? What's the alternative? Believe that you can't truly know anything and not build anything worthwhile?

As I've grown older, I've come to believe that holding strong opinions and being decisive is extremely important and impactful. It comes with the caveat though that as soon as you find you're wrong, you need to be able to change direction and not cling to your disproved beliefs.

⬐ hashmal

> holding strong opinions and being decisive is extremely important

it is, and yes you can be wrong. but it's being strongly opinionated that matters, not being right (assuming you don't confuse that with just being stubborn). Many "meh" projects are just due to not being able to make strong, bold choices.

⬐ dpweb

I feel Jobs is exactly right and facinating how relevant this still is today.

However, the idea of employees as fanatical followers always struck me as too cult-like. I’d bet with superb vision and organization (managements job), and deep skill and insight (workers job), you can get the results without the fanaticism.

Maybe that aspect is just played up for thr media.

⬐ jimnotgym

Having recently watched the Steve Jobs film, I am inclined to ignore his advice on this, like I will skip his advice on parenting.

The only piece of good advice for someone in the position of a young Steve Jobs is to find a friend like Woz who actually knows how to do something.

⬐ kakaorka

Would you mind telling me which of the Steve jobs films is the one you’re talking about?

⬐ m52go

Off-topic, but in the video: the signatures of every team member were inscribed inside the casing of each computer? That's mad cool. Had no idea they did that.

⬐ cromulent

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Signing_Party.tx...

⬐ srtjstjsj

Shortly afterward, Jobs banned the practice of putting programmers' names in the "About" UI of the software, so that all the credit would flow to Apple, the company with his face on it.

⬐ nihonde

I still have one of those cases. It was my first Mac.

⬐ stmw

Yes, that was also done for the Apple IIgs, I think.

⬐ nicolas314

They also had pictures of the team in ROM. You need to activate the debug switch and then jump to the right address. Shown here: https://youtu.be/wiTlRENwbXM

⬐ vfulco

The survivorship bias in these vids and articles is overwhelming. Spend any time in corporate america and you'll see that the "success" stories are often run behind the fancy public veneer, by tyrannical megalomaniacs who give not a whit for their employees so long as the cog remains working hard for the machine.

⬐ borplk

Most of the similar materials are like that.

You could give the transcript of these interviews to a Mr-nobody-Joe-Schmoe and have them say it. And no one would care, if not laugh to their face.

It's 90% about who says it, and maybe 10% about what is being said.

⬐ PeachPlum

It's not even secret sauce.

Pick up most management books and you'ok see the same.

Jack Welch's version was "get the right people on the bus and then decide where to go"

Lou Gestners is "culture is not part of the game, it's the only game"

⬐ curtis

Steve Jobs was really bad at a lot of things, but it seems that there were some things he was really good at. One of those things was recruiting really talented people -- Wozniak and the original Macintosh team for some early examples. I think it's possible that the quality of your team in many fields is so important that a lot of other stuff that seems like it should make a difference to the effort doesn't actually make a big one.

⬐ maxxxxx

I think one of the main things is that he instilled an "elite" mentality in the team. My best experiences have been where I was working in a tight knit team where everybody respected it each other and had high standards for new people. The worst experience is when management treats you like a cheap, replaceable commodity.

⬐ yeukhon

I had a really really nice manager. He's technical but he admits he isn't catching up with the current technology landscape quickly, especially in his role he didn't have to be hands-on at all. From time to time he'd said to me "I don't see myself adding any values" because he felt "he didn't know what he should be doing".

However, he was a very nice people manager. He listens well, and he treats his team well. He would protect me even when I disrespected and frustrated the whole chain of commands (well they all respected my history of great contributions but they just weren't happy with the way I was acting - probably due to my mental illness).

But my manager kept me under his arms, and would rely on the engineers to run the technical show as he sat in the backseat listening during meetings (he would step in if needed to keep "politics" out).

Often you don't get both "very technical + very good people manager" type of manager, so if it were up to me I'd pick a people manager who is great at communication and have respects for his/her engineers to do their jobs without tight oversight. If the team isn't able to resolve a technical decision, then it is the manager's time to become an arbitrator: let people cool down, break down the problem and then discuss options.

SJ's advice on not micromanaging is probably the only thing I can agree on. Don't micromanage, but make sure everyone knows you are the manager, and everyone on the team deserves to be kept informed by one another. There shouldn't be a "I am working on a ticket but I will update you when I am done in a week."

That was me. Don't be the old me. It was toxic, no matter how successful I was technically.

⬐ colin_mccabe

Counterpoint: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

⬐ LeeHwang

I hope Tim Cook watches this, because my respect for apple is tanking.

⬐ drdeadringer

May I ask why is your respect for Apple tanking?

I'm far from a "fanboy" on Apple; I am curious.

⬐ None

None

⬐ Walkman

Because the quality of their every new product is shit.

⬐ castle-bravo

Are any of their products even new anymore? It looks like the MacBook Air hasn't changed in four years!

⬐ DRW_

It hasn't - they don't intend to update it either. For now, the newer Macbook and Macbook Pro 13" (without touchbar) are intended to be the 'newer' Macbook Airs.

To ask 'are any of their products even new anymore' is a bit odd though.

⬐ srtjstjsj

It always was. Beautiful, elegant, shit:

http://machmachines.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bomb.jpg

⬐ randomsearch

Software quality is tanking, for one- yesterday the phone crashed during a call. Never happened to me on any phone previously.

⬐ jimnotgym

Smartphones are just not designed for phoning people anymore. they are designed to make you better consumers. Web browsers, Apple Store, I-Tunes etc. I have a Samsung and it has serious lag around opening up a keypad to dial a number. Seriously? It's like they didn't test 'just making a call'

It was much easier to just make calls on a 3310, in fact Siri is not a patch on the 1930's concept of asking a lady at the exchange to patch you through.

⬐ otalp

The myth that software was excellent under Jobs is just hat - a myth. I mean, iTunes was commissioned by Jobs, as well as many of early, clunkier iOS versions(no notification centre until much later, no copy/paste in the original iPhone, etc.

⬐ wl

Jobs didn't commission iTunes. He bought it. It used to be known as SoundJam MP.

⬐ gcb0

that's even worse as he could see plain as day the product they were investing in. with a commission you may claim it was a failed vision implementation

⬐ wl

At the time, SoundJam MP was the best music player on any platform. Early versions of iTunes were pretty awesome, too.

⬐ flavio81

The young Steve Jobs was fired from the company he founded, because of being unbearable to his team, not to mention internally sabotaging the Lisa team (and contribuing to the failure of the Apple III by very stupid frivolous decisions.) See "folklore.org" for first-hand account.

The initial success of the Apple computer i'd atttribute more to Wozniak for knowing what the hobby computer should be. The original macintosh wasn't a sales success and sales only took off after Steve was fired and the business strategy was reviewed.

The "version 2.0" Steve Jobs that returned to Apple was an improved person, but I simply wouldn't take any advice from the younger SJ.

⬐ rm999

Yeah this was my first thought. This video feels a lot like a lesson on how not to build a great tech team.

Apple was a super-hyped company in the 80s with a very successful IPO, so hiring the best wasn't exactly difficult for them. Instead, it feels like they were filtering out people who may have brought diversity of thought and perhaps helped them avoid some of the critical mistakes that led to the failures of V1 of Apple.

⬐ denzil_correa

Curious - what part of what Steve Jobs says in the interview doesn't make sense to you?

⬐ hateduser2

THe premise of this video is that what he says is interesting because its steve jobs whos saying it.. theres that authority built into it. It makes sense to attack his authority as a response to this video, thats not fallacious I don't think. Most of what hes saying isnt backed up by evidence (I mean that hes not citing stats, not that the science falls against him), even if some of it makes sense.

⬐ gscott

No what he is saying is if you have passionate people then they will rise to the occasion.

The evidence is to find companies with a lot of people who hate the company but work for the paycheck and see if the company is successful or heading to the dumpster. Then find companies built by HR who puts only the employees with the best fit into positions and see if they are heading to the dumpster (because HR weeds out the passionate people who have weak or poorly written resumes) I would say yes to both.

⬐ Pica_soO

Humans like safety, humans like success, steve jobs seemed to have save success, so the fallacy goes, that by being a behavioral copy cat, i can become a save success.

If you are afraid and think by behavior copy pasting you will solve this problem, instead of going the hard way, of analyzing risks and doing the actual blood, sweat and tears involved with risky moves - you are already set up to fail. Bonus Points on spectacular failure, if you also do the very same moves in a niche that already has a huge company set up in it.

⬐ fredgrott

not to mention not understanding how to price tech products by the Apple Computer TOp staff

⬐ autokad

they were talking about that one girl as an unlikely manager, but she had an mba from stanford

⬐ wyclif

An unlikely manager of technologists. She wasn't an engineer.

⬐ autokad

thats more of a recent thing, and more of a google thing. i was going to say I dont know the route apple took, but then again we do know, they did the norm: MBA.

Either way, at any company in the world just about, taking a stanford mba (even at google) is not a unlikely success story.

⬐ valuearb

Debby was the controller for the Mac project, like a CFO, which meant pricing and planning production and the factory. She ended up becoming CFO of Apple and a CEO of a Tektronix spinoff later in her career.

Of Jobs she said, “He would shout at a meeting, 'You asshole, you never do anything right.' It was like an hourly occurrence. Yet I consider myself the absolute luckiest person in the world to have worked with him."

⬐ srtjstjsj

I think she was a woman.

⬐ staunch

He was fired because he gave up control of his company and for no other reason. Founders don't get fired because employees find them unbearable or sabotaging. Those employees get fired or quit...unless the founder gives up control and then loses an internal political fight.

The sentiment among most early employees was that Steve Jobs was like a good coach: you hated him at the time but look back proudly at what he pushed you to accomplish.

There was no Apple Computers at all without Steve Jobs, and definitely no commercial product like the Apple II. Wozniak had no independent ambition to create a company whatsoever. Wozniak played a vital role but primarily as a perfect catalyst for Jobs.

The Macintosh saved Apple and the foolish "young Steve Jobs" is the only reason it was a great enough product to do that. Jobs did not even have control over pricing or sales of the Macintosh, and so blaming his flawed "business strategy" makes no sense. The people that fired him lived off his work for a decade, and did none of their own work at all.

Yes, Jobs had some growing up to do, and firing him probably did help him do that, but the idea that he was a fool that became great is a total myth. He was always great, as can be seen from the work he did.

⬐ alexbeloi

>He was fired because he gave up control of his company and for no other reason.

Gave up control or lost control?

>Founders don't get fired because employees find them unbearable or sabotaging. Those employees get fired or quit...unless the founder gives up control and then loses an internal political fight.

see Kalanick, founders don't get fired because of employees, they get fired because of they can't keep their board loyal to them. This was the case with Steve Jobs as well.

Jobs' return to Apple in 1997, he made sure that 4 new board members were appointed[0], which you can be sure were loyal to him first and foremost.

He lost control of his company the first time around, learned from his mistakes and corrected. There is no need to glorify his early mistakes, they don't diminish his accomplishments.

[0] http://money.cnn.com/1997/08/06/technology/apple/

⬐ serge2k

> Founders don't get fired because employees find them unbearable or sabotaging

yeah, but he also fucked up the business.

He was a terrible person and a lousy leader. A "good coach" gets the most out of the team and leads them. Steve was coach who yelled and screamed and browbeat them to a losing season.

It's worth noting that he wasn't fired. He was moved into positions with less and less power until he finally quit.

⬐ ghostcluster

> He was fired because he gave up control of his company and for no other reason.

That's not true. The Macintosh in its early years was severely underpowered and expensive, and the Apple II hardware was driving the revenue of the company.

Jobs wanted to shift all the marketing spend onto the Macintosh as well as drop the price to below cost, and caused a crisis with the board of diretors who ended up firing him.

Jobs had the same problem with overambitious hardware at NeXT. They couldn't even sell enough NexT machines to universities and the enterprise because they were still expensive to produce and underpowered, and had to stop making hardware and lay people off.

Moore's Law didn't catch up with the vision until the mid 90s, and luckily he and NexT's operating system were brought back into the fold at Apple then.

⬐ drieddust

> Moore's Law didn't catch up with the vision until the mid 90s, and luckily he and NexT's operating system were brought back into the fold at Apple then.

This is exactly what people don't understand. Jobs had a dream computer and he was adamant on making it. First time he got fired because of it. Second time he became immensely successful because of the same dream.

This is case of perfect hindsight. It's easy to think he was great because second time around he became crazy successful. Nobody is willing to admit that he was repeating the same strategy and failing at it until luck worked in his favour. His rehiring at Apple when NextStep was failing. And then at Apple he got John Ive and team. And finally evolution of technologies like powerful and efficient processors, touch screens, high density storage etc allowed that dream to be realized finally.

⬐ srtjstjsj

He and his company was the first one to bring many great things to the mass market, because he was constantly pushing ahead of his time. NextStep was most of the core of Mac OS X. without NextStep, Mac OS X and the hardware that ran it would have flopped

⬐ ghostcluster

Apple could have bought BeOS, or used their Linux distribution as a base for the next Mac OS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux

Steve Job's view on management shares similarities to what you have described and I think from my experience I agree with this outlook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo

"The greatest people are self managing, they don't need to be managed. Once they know what to do they will figure out how to do it. What they need is a common vision, and that's what leadership is. Leadership is having a vision, being able to articulate that, so the people around you can understand it, getting a consensus on a common vision."

"We were in stage where we went out and thought, Oh! We are going to be a big company, so let's hire professional management. We went and hired a bunch of professional management but it didn't work out all well. Most of them were bozos, they knew how to manage but they didn't how to do anything!"

"If you are a great person, why would you want to work with someone you can't learn anything from? You know what's interesting? You know who the best managers are? They are the great individual contributors who never ever want to be a manager but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is gonna do a job as good as them"

⬐ candiodari

Well that's the big secret that's mostly secret because nobody wants to know it:

Programmers/developers are only effective if either the developer himself or enough people in the team have sufficiently deep domain knowledge.

That means you can only write accounting software if you are an accountant, in addition to a developer. You can replace "accounting" with anything else you want.

Software developers don't want to hear this because it means that being a developer is near useless : it allows them to express themselves in code but ... they have nothing to express.

Accountants don't want to hear this because it means no generic software developer (or firm) can deliver on the software they want.

The real bad news for software devs is this : you'll do a lot better as a bad developer with expert domain knowledge than vice versa. This is why Excel sheets and VBA macros can run for decades when great and easily maintained software cannot : the knowledge they were written with is what makes the difference.

Of course both situations are what you constantly see in the real world. Software developers just making software that doesn't support the function it was written for, and really, really badly written pieces of crap software that work amazingly well.

⬐ goialoq

This says that the most successful people in the the business-software space are people who have domain knowledge and software skills, and write software in their domain. And those people do quite well, dominating their various industries (Lexis-Nexis for law, for example)

⬐ gozur88

>That means you can only write accounting software if you are an accountant, in addition to a developer. You can replace "accounting" with anything else you want.

That's overstated. You don't have to be a full-blown accountant; you just have to have enough accounting knowledge to do your job. I worked at a funds company for a few years and I didn't know anything about the business when they hired me. But the amount of domain knowledge I had to learn to be effective in my little area wasn't that difficult to pick up.

>The real bad news for software devs is this : you'll do a lot better as a bad developer with expert domain knowledge than vice versa.

Nobody is going to thank you for producing software that would have been great if only it worked the way you intended.

⬐ candiodari

> That's overstated. You don't have to be a full-blown accountant

Nope, ideally, you should be better than your average "full-blown" accountant.

> Nobody is going to thank you for producing software that would have been great if only it worked the way you intended.

Look there are minimum levels of competency for a lot of things before you can do anything. In similar fashion, you also need to be able to walk, or at least get around, have some modicum of how to run a business (even if you're just a TL), ... and so on and so forth.