Comment by stagger87
8 years ago
This is a typical situation for most companies. I've been in the position of the "trusted engineer" several times where conversations with customers can very quickly change the direction of engineering. Fortunately, in all of those situations my boss wasn't an asshole. Honestly, all these recent stories about jobs really just paint him in a negative light.
There is a missing piece of complexity here and other comments regarding "asshole" behavior.
The story recounted here is a concise demonstration of some aspects of leadership — decisiveness, fairness of discussion, and as mentioned the confidence to steer a large company.
But in these stories the means by which those aspects are demonstrated are colored by toxic masculinity. The rage with which Steve is attributed, the combative or abusive belittling he was known for & demonstrated here is the the very same toxic interpersonal dominance normalized by mass culture as essential male behavior.
There are emotionally supportive ways of doing exactly what Steve did. Perhaps his success could have been even greater had he executed what seems to have been an innate wellspring of leadership ability with a supportive disposition.
To be honest, all of that is considerably less frustrating than the kind of passive aggressive bullshit I generally see it’s place. I’d rather have someone be honest and yell at me than engage in passive aggressive nagging and slithering around behind my back whining about things. It doesn’t seem realistic that the default fallback in the absence of “toxic masculinity” is “emotionally supportive”.
lol this is the first time I've heard toxic masculinity used seriously
It is stupid phrase. Men dont have exclusivity on toxicity. I’ve known plenty toxic people of all sexes. There is danger to accepting these kinds of terms that are associated with malformed world views.
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Not disagreeing with you, but unless I misunderstood something, it seems Jobs sided with John because it was obvious that the design they were going for with MacOS Graphics was wrong, and Jobs was pissed that the Apple engineer tried to defend it. If you ask me that's a perfectly reasonable scenario to get pissed.
Except we have no idea WHY the engineer was trying to defend it. He might've been told previously by Jobs himself that their solution was "the" solution and that they wouldn't entertain alternatives.
Imagine how the conversation could've gone if the engineer had agreed with Carmack and Jobs didn't. "Well, yeah, that approach could be better...". Jobs would've probably cut him off for not towing the company line and fired him.
THIS. there are countless stories of this happening inside Jobs' Apple. In fact it was a well known ploy that to get something contentious approved you presented it to Jobs who immediately torpedoed you, then let him stew on it until he later presented your idea back as his own.
>> Honestly, all these recent stories about jobs really just paint him in a negative light.
Not really. That's not my interpretation of the story at all. People who judge others for being a jerk in isolation lose the fact that it often comes with the territory of being a visionary or extra-effective at their job.
Sure, it'd be great if Jobs was nice. It'd also be nice if your middle manager who knows your dog's name and loves his family was as smart as Jobs. But skills are finite and scarce, and almost no one develops them all, a lesson many D&D players learn immediately after rolling a character.
Jobs was a dick. But that was the price. If someone is a dick and half as smart and effective as Jobs, yeah, that's a negative. For someone like Jobs, Carmack (plenty of stories about him that are "negative" as you say, I might add), and other 4+ SD talents, it comes with the package. Expecting otherwise is folly.
Talent allows some people get away with being jerks. If you think talent and bad behavior go hand in hand, you should meet some new talented people.
Do they paint him in a bad light? I guess they all seem to match up to my internal image of who Jobs was. They don’t make him look worse, they just confirm how bad it was.
I guess I kind of assume everyone knows Jobs was insufferable at this point.
Can you clarify your point here? That Jobs shouldn't have listened to John?
Jobs could have made his point without shouting, i.e. being an asshole.
That’s not really as effective though. Sometimes you need to be an asshole to get your point across. Civility will make you look like a weakling and you will be continually passed on promotions.
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Definitely. And my real issue with Jobs is more the ripple effect. So many people read stories of Jobs being an asshole and think, "Oh, this is how you success." Ignoring the many assholes who weren't as brilliant or as thoroughly lucky.
Look at Theranos, for example. The CEO was practically a Jobs impersonator. From the turtlenecks and the air of brilliance to the controlling, abusive, and secrecy-oriented behaviors. How many people fell for the fraud? And I can't count the wantrepreneurs I've come across that had similar theories.
> thoroughly lucky.
Jobs made a huge success 3 times:
1. the Apple II
2. Pixar
3. return to Apple and transforming it from 90 days to bankruptcy to the biggest corporation in the world
You can ascribe one of the above to luck, but faced with all three, Jobs was just that good, and made his own luck.
You have to be able to separate the things that were good about Jobs (e.g. design sense, marketing instincts, etc.) from what was bad (i.e. being an asshole).
It's the difference between being effective and being Cargo Cult Steve Jobs. Far too many baby entrepreneurs try to mimic Jobs' behaviors, but fail to couple it with any sort of skill or good taste.
This is a false dichotomy. I already said he's brilliant. But that doesn't mean that he wasn't also very lucky.
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1. Wozniak 2. Lasseter (and others) 3. Ive
His success was being involved with people with genius and vision that were willing to put up with his shit.
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Look I see your point and I agree. However, having worked in a number of big companies I am really at a loss as to what is the right way to coerce a number of humans into the "right" direction. I have sat in meetings where ignorant executives have blabbered on and on about nothing because the company and CEO felt it was important to hear everyone out. This works if everyone at the table is knowledgeable and able to swallow their ego. You get people making ridiculous statements like we need to replace our database that runs the whole organisation. I have also worked in a company where the CEO cut people who were blabbering short, mostly rightly but rudely so. I think the two approaches have a time and place. There is probably no need to be rude but I don't know how one cuts someone off without being rude.
What if there were right ways that don't involve coercion?
What if we can't find them because we let coercive assholes run amok, seizing advantages and damaging people in ways that make it hard to create non-coercive structures that are also highly creative and productive?
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There's a line beyond which Jobsian behaviors will ruin the productivity and happiness of the Woz. Holmes/Kissenger and friends flew over it and landed in "scientists are being forced (and encouraged) to lie to keep their jobs," territory.
I googled her images after reading your comment and it is so funny to notice the impersonation.
Also, every C level guy(also middle management wannabes) impersonates Jobs.
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A Jobs impersonator...but without the talent, taste for design, passion for products, or virtually any other positive quality that he had. IMO Holmes has more in common with Jordan Belfort than Steve Jobs.
I think Elizabeth Holmes belongs in prison. However, I read her bio and she was a genius on par with Jobs.
> However, I read her bio and she was a genius on par with Jobs.
In short, why do you believe that Steve Jobs was remotely close to being a genius, and what made Elizabeth Holmes do to lead you to believe she also met you definition of a genius?
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Honest question:
Is raw intelligence or wisdom more important for success in biotech? It seems to me that raw intelligence is useful when studying systems that are either designed rationally or can be understood easily from a mathematics perspective. On the flip side, I think experience is important when dealing with biology which is often messy and not easily understood because so much is still unknown and everything is the result of an accumulation of random variations.
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Genius isn't enough. In fact, it can be a detriment in the right (wrong?) environment resulting in stunted emotional and social development. The problem with geniuses is that they tend to think their aptitude is enough to grant them magical ability to be correct. It takes experience and humility to learn that it's not the same, but a life of being pampered and put on a pedestal limits the genius' opportunity to learn this life lesson.
The self-serving genius is roughly equivalent to the pychopath. Once you begin to look for these antisocial behaviors among so-called geniuses you'll see a frightening pattern.
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>I read her bio and she was a genius on par with Jobs.
What were either of them geniuses at exactly? Psychology?
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For breaking what law(s)?
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> Honestly, all these recent stories about jobs really just paint him in a negative light.
These tend to coincidentally crop up every year just before a WWDC and the September iPhone drop.