
Steve Jobs on how to hire, manage, and lead people [video] - bringtheaction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo
======
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.

~~~
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.

~~~
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux)

------
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](https://youtu.be/rQKis2Cfpeo?t=2m6s)

~~~
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.

~~~
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.

~~~
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...](https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Winning-Creative-
Battle/dp/1501260626)

~~~
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.

~~~
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.

~~~
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](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...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Hide_Under_This_Desk.txt)

------
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.

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

~~~
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.

