
Steve Jobs at MIT Sloan School of Management (1992) [video] - LiweiZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-9Fd2mEnI
======
nickgrosvenor
Listening to this talk, you get a sense of how much more intelligent he was
than he may have even gotten credit for. All the talk about his temper and his
stealing of engineers ideas, an imperfect boss, etc, sorta gives the
impression that he wasn't as smart and he was more of a salesman, but holy
shit, he was incredibly intelligent, and a real thinker.

~~~
luckydata
Some of the smartest people I've met work in sales. You don't have to be an
engineer to be smart.

~~~
jammi
The problem is that the _average_ salesperson is pretty ignorant, even about
the probuct he's supposed to sell and the target audience to sell to.
Encountering a _great_ salesperson is a rare occurrence in life, encountering
a more or less average one is very common.

~~~
neonate
Same with programmers or anything else.

~~~
kingkongjaffa
The problem is the baseline STEM disciple looks on the baseline biz/marketing
graduate with disdain like they took an easy route out.

'proper' Engineering (MECH/AERO/CIVIL/EEE) is full of memes about this
mindset.

CS is just as bad.

Most decent engineers loose this mindset after freshman year but many go on to
see them selves as the MVP department of whatever business.

In some ways I think Startup culture fights against this because it's really
obvious at small team scale how different skill sets are needed.

~~~
Retric
The absolute best in any field including fast food cook is probably as
intelegent as any other field. However the average really can be meaningfully
different based on self selection. HR for example really does not attract the
best and brightest.

Sales is an outlier because compensation for the best can be really good. So,
it's got a large group of very talented people and many far less so.

------
vshan
"When we were learning about manufacturing at Mac, we hired a Stanford
Business School Professor at the time named Steven Wheelwright, and he did a
neat thing. He drew on the board a little chart, first time I met him. He
said, you can view all companies from a manufacturing perspective this way.

"You can say there's five stages-- one, two, three, four, five. They have all
these things. And stage one is companies that view manufacturing as a
necessary evil. They wish they didn't have to do it, but damn it, they do. And
all the way up through stage five, which is companies that view manufacturing
as a competitive opportunity for competitive advantage. We can get better time
to market, and get new products out faster. We get lower costs. We get higher
quality.

"And in general, you know, you can put the American flag here [puts it under
1], and put the Japanese flag here [puts it under 5] [Laughter] [Applause].
And that's changing, however.

"By the way, just going back to software for a minute, I often apply this
scale to computer companies, and how they look at software. See, I think most
computer companies are stage one. They wish software had never been invented.
I put Compaq in that category. And IBM is maybe stage two, and things like
that. And I think there's only three companies in here [pointing at 5] and
that's us, Apple and Microsoft, in stage five. We start everything with the
software and work back."

Wow. I think this is a great way to look at how companies look at ML/AI: You
have Facebook, Google, MS, Amazon trying to use it as a competitive advantage,
whereas I'm sure there are some companies (medical?) that wish these systems
were never invented.

This also shows why you would want to be at companies that look at software as
a competitive advantage: as an engineer you are the profit centre and not the
cost centre.

~~~
antoniuschan99
Alan Kay which Steve Jobs quoted said if you're serious about Software you
should build your own hardware.

I think they're both important. It's also interestng to note in this video he
says that hardware has no competitive edge. But that was 1992. Now it has
flipped, software has less competitive edge than hardware.

~~~
sah2ed
Context matters.

Jobs was repeatedly referring to _system_ software in this talk, a category
distinct from _application_ software.

System software + own hardware = competitive advantage

Application software + own hardware = ?*

*Most likely a world of pain and heavy losses.

------
denzil_correa
> “I think that without owning something over an extended period of time, like
> a few years, where someone has a chance to take responsibility for one’s
> recommendations, where one has to see one’s recommendations through all
> action stages and accumulate some scar tissue for the mistakes and pick
> one’s self up off the ground and dust one’s self off, one learns a fraction
> of what one can,” Jobs said. “You do get a broad cut at companies, but it’s
> very thin.”

> “You never get three-dimensional,” he said. “You might have a lot of
> pictures on your wall, you can say ‘Look, I’ve worked in bananas, I’ve
> worked in peaches, I’ve worked in grapes.’ But you never really taste it.”

His view on Consulting is pretty interesting. Any consultants here who'd like
to give the other perspective?

[http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/steve-jobs-
talks-c...](http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/steve-jobs-talks-
consultants-hiring-and-leaving-apple-in-unearthed-1992-talk/)

~~~
scarface74
I agree with his view on consultants from my own experience. I've never been a
consultant, but in the last 10 years, I have been a "job hopper", but only
because companies refuse to give market based raises and the best way to get a
"raise" is to get a new job.

~~~
jonbarker
I've met consultants who have described it as sort of 'addictive' for people
with ADD, mainly because they get to feel like they are in the middle of some
big drama, for a short time, too short usually to really own the problem, then
the engagement is over and they go on to the next thing.

------
doomlaser
I pulled out a section of this talk the other week that I thought was
especially brilliant: his description of "Technological Windows of
Opportunity" — when enough trends converge onto a radically new
platform/experience _and_ the economic costs of the technology align to make
sense for a company to deploy and become the widely adopted platform in that
window

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJX476dDFVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJX476dDFVc)

The Lisa was too early. So was the Newton. So was the Next Cube and
NeXTStep... (which of course now is iOS)

~~~
ghaff
A huge percentage of ideas aren’t bad ideas but they’re not at the right time
because people aren’t ready for them, complementary technologies aren’t mature
enough, they solve a problem that isn’t a current market priority, etc.

~~~
doomlaser
You can find plenty of articles in magazines in the early 1990s talking about
the handheld internet connected device (that nobody could succeed with until
the iPhone).

The Mac itself was too early for wide adoption. The first Mac had a tiny
memory footprint and no hard drive. CPU and GPU technology needed time to
speed up and shrink in size and cost. Apple survived on Apple II sales for
years after the Mac was introduced and iterated, and nearly suffocated from
mismanagement until Jobs returned and the iMac launched — Windows 95 was right
on time.

Here's an Apple video about conversational voice-based digital assistants...
from 1987
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0)

The Valley is littered with husks of companies that had the right vision
before the technology was ready (e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic)).
NeXT was almost one of them.

~~~
scarface74
The Mac wasn't just "too early" it was overpriced.

The popular narrative that Apple struggled from 1984 until 1997 isn't true.
Apple was doing fine between around 1987-1994. It was vying for the #1
computer seller in the early 90s with HP.

Two things happen in 1995. Apple made a lot of low end computers and not
enough high end computers and Windows 95 was good enough.

~~~
doomlaser
It was overpriced _because_ it was too early. The components to deliver the
GUI experience weren't sufficiently commoditized yet.

In 1995, the entire product line was confused, and the then-CEO had opened up
the platform to commodity cloners, robbing Apple of its vertical market and
hardware margin.

~~~
scarface74
The Mac had ridiculous margins compared to PCs by 1987 - especially for color
Macs.

Jean Louis Gassée (founder of Be) was the main executive of Apple who went for
short term margins instead of going for market share.

I got my first Mac in 1992 after owning an Apple //e for years. For the price
of my Mac LCII - 68030-16Mhz with slow built in graphics, and a 512x384 12"
monitor that wasn't compatible with most Mac games, I could have gotten a much
faster 386, a sound card, and better graphics, much cheaper. Then Apple even
cheap out more and had a 16 bit bus instead of the 32 bit bus. The Mac used
68030 processors that were used by other workstations, SCSI chips that were
widely available, etc.

~~~
doomlaser
Yes, they managed the company terribly in the years after Jobs left (with the
exception of the alignment with IBM and Motorola for the Power architecture
and chip transition). Apple had something like 5 different CEOs in 8 years
before Amelio decided to buy NeXT and bring Jobs back into the fold.

~~~
scarface74
Sculley wasn't a bad CEO. He was Steve Ballmer style CEO. He knew how to
profitably manage a company but he had no vision. Under his leadership, he
brought Apple from the brink of extinction in 86, led the transistion to the
PPC, the PowerBooks defined what a modern laptop should be and between 1989 -
1992, Apple was at it height. Scully would have been a better CEO than all of
the CEOs that came between 1993 and the return of Jobs.

There are very few tech companies that successfully pivot into new areas and
can transistion when technology changes that are not led by their founders.
Just like "only Nixon could go to China", only Jobs could make the famous deal
with Microsoft in 1997.

~~~
doomlaser
but then there was Spindler and Amelio. Though Spindler handled the 68k->PPC
transition, and Amelio did pull the trigger on Next over Be and brought back
Jobs.

------
zer0faith
I never watched a Jobs talk until now. I always thought he was an asshole
based on what others had said. Shame on me. But now I've got a very different
take. This guy was in a league of his own. He may not have been the best
programmer, manager, salesman or other various roles he held but he was smart
enough to know failure paves the way for success. I was moved by his way of
conveying a complex message in a simple saying is priceless. It is a shame he
is no longer with us.

~~~
matco11
You should listen to the commencement speech he made in 2005 at Stanford
[https://youtu.be/D1R-jKKp3NA](https://youtu.be/D1R-jKKp3NA)

------
pcurve
I'm amazed at his ability to deliver this type of presentation with such
fluidity. Granted, this is most likely amalgamation of his daily talks and
thinking that he internalized, but in order to formulate them, he must spend a
better part of his day just thinking.

------
axelfontaine
One aspect which really struck me was his diametrical opposition to Amazon's
famous "disagree and commit" core value. Very interesting to hear the counter
argument.

------
olivermarks
Job's read and perception of where things were going is very impressive, hard
to think of anyone today who could be this eloquent and persuasive...

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Not sure I agree here, but he was a CEO who was simultaneously in this
underdog position but also playing it really well. The refreshing thing about
this is that he's relatively open about talking about his thoughts for the
future and the strategy of his company. Most CEOs (including Jobs at a later
stage) are much more apprehensive about talking openly. He turned his futurism
into a marketing move, a bit like Elon Musk uses his vision, goals and
trajectory as a marketing move.

That's basically the only reason I like to listen to the big VCs, because
they're actually terribly open about their thoughts unlike virtually all CEOs.
Because they also use their vision of the future as a marketing move. Someone
mentioned Naval for example, that's no coincidence I think, angel/venture
investors cluster quite high on my list of people talking openly about their
perception of where things are going (regardless of whether it's a correct
perception or not).

~~~
olivermarks
I was probably hard on Naval just now - IMO Jobs created what is today the
most successful company on the planet. VC's are great at placing other
people's bets and sounding convincing about it, not in the same league...

------
forapurpose
I wonder in what directions and how much Jobs' thinking about management
developed since 1992. He had been fired from Apple, partly because of his
management practices. Certainly, he learned things in the 'wilderness', and
learned things after he returned.

~~~
doomlaser
This would have been around the time he negotiated a gigantic deal with Disney
for Toy Story at Pixar, after selling them Pixar's hardware and CAPS software
for digital compositing — used to great effect in the _' Disney Renaissance'_
era (it was first deployed in this opening shot for The Rescuers Down Under
(1990):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjkdOAjtJ1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjkdOAjtJ1k))

------
raghavkhanna
"We won't see another operating environment for computers, because it's
extremely hard to fund a professional sales force to educate users with an ASP
of around $500"

It's amazing how well this insight/prediction holds after 26 years, the only
other comparable OS/OE today is linux, which didn't rely on the funding. Makes
me think if/how another leap in computing software will happen.

~~~
abakker
Well, iOS, right? or Android? or are those not "Computers" ?

If I had the money to bet, I'd be betting on AR as the next major paradigm,
though. I think the idea of OS changes a lot when you get rid of the "slab of
glass with a terminal" model. If computers are fundamentally ubiquitous, then
what an OS does will need to be quite a bit different. I'm not sure it
replaces a legacy computer, but I genuinely hope to have AR be a completely
alternative option for most applications.

If I had to guess where the funding for that salesforce will come from, I'd
guess: Softbank, and other mega-VC funds. if you do successfully create the
next wave forward for computing, and you can provide the systems to enable it,
the rewards are likely commensurate. I think this is why everyone is so
interested in AR. Magic Leap is the darling, but Google, Apple, and Microsoft
all agree that this is a critical turn, and are putting in the dollars to win.

~~~
grecy
> _Well, iOS, right? or Android? or are those not "Computers" ?_

iOS _is_ NextStep, and Android _is_ Linux, so in that way what Steve said
holds true, given that Linux wasn't developed commercially.

------
grecy
"The best code is the code you don't write"

This really rang true for me when I started developing with WebObjects (from
Next). In the first week I was blown away how little code I had to write and
how much was done for me. I knew the theory of a "Framework" and I think to
this day many Libraries are called "Frameworks", but working with a real one
is a game changer.

------
baxtr
So fascinating. 70 minutes, not a single slide.

~~~
copperx
Just like most University lectures in the country. I don't think that is good
or bad in itself.

------
kbos87
One thing that stood out to me is how much of what he talked about is still
true and still playing out decades later. The fundamentals of technology
businesses and the dynamics that occur really don’t change all that often.

~~~
shanghaiaway
Wait until you realize that they never change, and apply to all industries in
slightly different flavors.

------
fishcakes
Interesting to think about why this reality didn’t come to pass. Ben was
clearly right about the opportunity market being huge and i think it’s timing.
Without having thought too much about I think he underestimated or couldn’t
compete with Microsoft. Having cheap wintel PCs everywhere made next
irrelevant.

~~~
danielbarla
The points Steve makes in the early parts of the session were quite visionary,
but when he got to the hardware parts, I guess it's quite easy to say in
retrospect what they got wrong.

What's interesting, however, is that he does discuss this from several angles
(my interpretation / memory below), namely that a) the hardware angle was a
way to get people to use the software, b) a purely software venture couldn't
sustain funding for the level of marketing required to break into the market,
c) software seems to be moving slower than hardware (? - I guess that's the
80s / early 90s for you) and d) there's still a juicy hardware business that
would be left off the table, if it were a software-only venture. So, it was a
fairly well researched and opinionated bet, that just didn't pay off. I guess
by tying the success of their software to their hardware, they ended up
sealing its fate.

