
What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs - eggspurt
http://inventor-labs.com/blog/2011/10/12/what-its-really-like-working-with-steve-jobs.html
======
danabramov
Reading this reminded me of a post by Miguel de Icaza:

<http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Nov-07.html>

Basically, Miguel argues that Walter Isaacson failed, as did many who tried to
describe Steve Jobs recently:

>Whenever the story gets close to an interesting historical event, or starts
exploring a big unknown of Steve's work, we are condescendingly told that
"Steve Activated the Reality Distortion Field".

>Every. Single. Time.

>Not once did the biographer try to uncover what made people listen to Steve.
Not once did he try to understand the world in which Steve operated. The
breakthroughs of his work are described with the same passion as a Reuters
news feed: an enumeration of his achievements glued with anecdotes to glue the
thing together.

It's great to see a real account of working with him, minus the “magic” BS.

~~~
kamaal
After reading his biography by Walter Isaacson. I lost all respect I had for
Steve Jobs.

At the end of the book it felt like he rode on the successes of other geniuses
like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive and many others. His biggest advantage seems
to have be, that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 were made.

After that it was riding on others success and building cult of personality
around him.

Walter Isaacson sort of ruined it.

~~~
kybernetikos
This linked article is one of the first things that has made me think of Steve
in a positive light.

I'm generally fairly negative about him because 1. I have a natural aversion
to cults of personality and all that goes with them and 2. the Apple vision of
the world is about consumer products. I think this is exactly the wrong
direction for all of society ( _producer_ products are the future), and I
worry that if they ever 'won' or even came as close to winning as Microsoft
did for a while that there would be no place for me in such a world. No
plausible endgame for Apple is good for me (although they've done a lot of
good in breaking the stranglehold of windows and making the concept of other
OS more mainstream).

There's a little bit of 3. too, which is that most of what I've read of him
makes him come across as a bit of a nightmare as a person.

Anyway, this article felt very real, and just talked about a guy with passion
who left the CEO hat at the door. That would be a guy I could potentially
respect.

~~~
white_devil
> I have a natural aversion to cults of personality and all that goes with
> them and 2. the Apple vision of the world is about consumer products. I
> think this is exactly the wrong direction for all of society (producer
> products are the future)

But producers produce products for consumers to consume. You can't just
eliminate the consumer side of the equation. Without one there isn't the
other.

~~~
jamesjporter
> But producers produce products for consumers to consume.

Not necessarily. You can be a producer for yourself. I think the GP is arguing
that technologies like 3D printing and practices like home gardening will
flourish in the near future. Rather than buy stuff per se, people will buy
equipment and tools that allow them to produce for themselves the stuff they
would have bought.

~~~
white_devil
Sure, but in that case, you're a _consumer for the printer_ , and the more
useful it is, the more it will cost.

------
adventured
So what's it actually like working with Steve Jobs?

Half joking aside, it would have been nice if the author would have spent more
than 1/5th of the article actually talking about what he claimed he was going
to give insight on. Instead the author spent most of the article tooting his
own horn, which is fine, if that's what the title had indicated to expect.

~~~
bob-wagner
Exactly what I thought. Disappointed.

~~~
kenfromm
You don't know Glenn. He's a natural story teller and while proud of what he's
done, he recognizes that he's just one of many people trying to create
something that hasn't been created before. In reading into his comments of his
history with Steve, you're viewing him as intentionally pumping up his own
story. The truth is he's trying very hard to be honest with the listener as to
his comings and goings with Apple and with Steve.

He worked with him closely, then stepped away and came back. Multiple times.
By telling the story of this, he lets readers know that he wasn't always by
his side and that he left to try other things but circled back at different
junctures in his life and in Steve's.

Knowing Glenn and his successes and failures and talking with him over many a
margarita at Compadres (after long bouts of writing NeXTSTEP code with him),
the story brought strong memories and a very clear voice of different periods
and circumstances across several years. He shows an arc of ups and downs in
both careers and a lot of hard work and sweat that often didn't get notice
until many years later if at all.

Rereading the story, I don't get boastful at all. I get much appreciation for
being able to be on a pretty cool ride and being able to create some great
products. There's also disappointment in some hard work that didn't pay off.
But above all appreciation for someone who continually rolled up his sleeves
to get in the ring, take chances, and build something... or in this case tell
a damn good story.

~~~
smackfu
Yeah, but here's the only sentence that really talks about "what it's like
working with Steve":

"Steve would draw a quick vision on the whiteboard, we'd go work on it for a
while, bring it back, find out the ways in which it sucked, and we'd iterate,
again and again and again. "

------
cheald
Between this and the Safari story, I'm struck at just how deep Apple's
internal secrecy ethos runs. The idea that there is that level of dedication
to keeping a project hidden, not just from outsiders, but from almost the
entire rest of the company just blows my mind.

It certainly explains how they're able to keep projects secret for as long as
they do.

~~~
bitcartel
Is a culture of secrecy a good thing? Look at Apple Maps, it would clearly
have benefited from more eyeballs.

~~~
taligent
People overplay the Apple Maps card.

There was only ONE thing Apple did wrong with Apple Maps. And that was to not
license data far, far more aggressively.

The fact is that Google Maps as an app is buggy, lags terribly and clunky all
round. It's the high quality of the data that sets it apart.

~~~
look_lookatme
There is only ONE thing that a maps product absolutely has to get right, and
that's the data. It's the core of the whole product.

It wasn't just some unlucky team working that went down the wrong path and
produced a substandard product (Aperture or MobileMe), this was the outright
replacement of a product that almost all iPhone users consider a core feature
of their device and, at some point during their time with the device, depend
on to help them in a confusing situation.

~~~
timr
Yeah, well, maybe I'm the only one, but apple maps work fine for me. Massive
improvement over the old maps experience. Google regularly got a ton of things
wrong, even in urban areas like San Francisco, so I give Apple the benefit of
the doubt when it comes to minor mistakes.

Then again, this whole discussion _could_ be related to the fact that Apple
users are about 985% more likely to nitpick a product than any other group of
people on earth.

~~~
damncabbage
_Then again, this whole discussion could be related to the fact that Apple
users are about 985% more likely to nitpick a product than any other group of
people on earth._

Or just that it was vastly wrong in a lot of places that weren't San
Francisco. It was missing one of the two major train stations in Sydney for
crying out loud.

~~~
timr
Within a week of its launch, I used the product in three different cities and
multiple less urban locations on the east and west coasts. I had no major
problems.

I'm know there were problems with maps, but a lot of the teeth gnashing was/is
exaggerated drama. Google _routinely_ places silly things at the corner of Van
Ness and Market, because it has no idea where they belong -- you just don't
hear about it because nobody nitpicks Google Maps the way they did Apple's
launch.

------
kristopher
Two things that stood-out:

>"Many years later, when NeXT acquired Apple for negative -$400M"

and

>"We would "throw them into the cauldron", and stir it, and soon nobody
remembered exactly whose ideas were which. This let us make a great soup, a
great potion, without worrying about who had what idea. This was critically
important, in retrospect, to decouple the CEO from the ideas."

~~~
ErikAugust
"Many years later, when NeXT acquired Apple for negative -$400M" Very
interesting way to look at it.

~~~
nessus42
_> "Many years later, when NeXT acquired Apple for negative -$400M" Very
interesting way to look at it._

Really? I've always considered it the _only_ way to look at it.

~~~
fzzzy
Haha, me too. I've been saying it this way since it happened.

------
xd
"I think it was October or November of 1998" .. "The idea of "personal digital
media" was born." .. "Before then, very vew people had any personal photos, or
music, or home movies on their computers."

Wasn't this the same time digital cameras and relevant sized mass storage at
affordable prices started to become common place?

~~~
plunchete
I'm pretty sure that at that time I had tons of music (using winamp) and
photos on my computer (scanning was the way at that time).

~~~
veemjeem
You must've been somewhere nice that had fast internet. I think most people
back then had dialup, and downloading a single song would take at least 20
minutes on their 28.8k modem.

~~~
leoc
As mech4bg said, much or most of people's .mp3 libraries at that point had
probably come straight off CD. Napster wasn't even released until 1999, and
"Rip. Mix. Burn." was Apple's edgy new slogan of 2001
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ECN4ZE9-Mo> .

~~~
mortenjorck
Wow, that's quite a find. A rare artifact from the pre-iPod, pre-iTunes Store
tip of Apple's foray into digital media, and a strong piece from Apple's
agency at the time.

------
chernevik
Unanswered questions about Steve Jobs:

\- How did he hire? What traits was he looking for? How did he evaluate
technical ability? He seemed able to hire technical people able to stretch
through the conventionally accepted boundaries. \- How did he manage technical
people? He seemed able to identify those boundaries that could be pushed
through, and motivate people through them. \- How did he envision the
plausible technical possibilities outside the conventional wisdom? \- How did
he envision product possibilities enabled by the combination of those various
possibilities?

I get the love of design and focus on user experience. It's the ability to
find to that at the edge of technical possibility that seems unique to me.

------
mech4bg
Did I miss something here...?

"In 1991, I started work at NeXT, as Product Manager for Interpersonal
Computing. It was the internet, before there was much of an internet. We
called it Interpersonal Computing, but nobody paid attention until 5 years
later when the WWW was born."

The web existed in 1991, and Mosaic was launched in 1993. I first saw it in
1993, and it was a pretty big deal at the time. Have I misunderstood his '5
years later' statement?

~~~
leoc
1996 wasn't when the Web was born, but it is a lot closer to the point in time
when the Web and the Internet went mainstream. IIRC 1994 is often given as
that year, and even by 1995 it (famously
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_book...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_\(Bill_Gates_book\))
) wasn't obvious to everyone that they were now at the centre of computing.

~~~
csixty4
Yeah. 1994 is when I started seeing Zen and the Art of the Internet on the
endcaps at Crown Books. Late 1995-1996 is when I started seeing books about
the web given the same prominence.

------
rlu
Not to sound harsh but reading that was a complete waste of time. In the end
it came down to this:

Q: What is it really like working with Steve Jobs?

A: It wasn't magic, it was hard work, thoughtful design, and constant
iteration.

No way, really? Come on, I'm sure everyone on HN knows that this is true for
any product.

~~~
WayneDB
Also - Am I the only one who thinks that Apple's products aren't really very
good?

~~~
nollidge
Of course you're not. But that's not an objective assessment, and neither is
the opposite view.

Jobs still managed to create products that a significant chunk of humanity
_subjectively_ enjoys. That's not easy.

------
aviswanathan
Was expecting something about how tyrannical and ruthless an operator he was.
Pleasantly surprised by this article (not at his devotion to product), but by
the fact that he took his CEO hat off and participated in product as a team
member whose ideas could be thrown away like everyone else's.

------
sprash
So Apple basically was Steve Jobs. Time to ditch some stock.

~~~
cicloid
I think you should have said, "Apple is people working hard, iterating and
delivering." Many of those hard working folks are still at Apple.

If Jobs was Apple, there should still be some skunkworks projects left behind
to ship and the numbers are still favorable to Apple.

~~~
danso
Yes, but as the OP describes, the process involved much iteration and constant
feedback and energy from Jobs, not just a memo of what he wanted to see on
launch day

~~~
Firehed
I think the point was that Jobs was working with the teams as a contributor
more than a dictator. It very specifically pointed out that Jobs' ideas were
decoupled from his role as CEO (as were everyone else's) so there were just
lots of ideas, and the best ones stayed around while the rest were thrown out.

Perhaps Jobs started that process, but I'm sure it still exists with him gone.

------
carbon8
This sounds very similar to what I've heard from people who have actually
worked with Jobs, as well as the Steve Jobs described by Ken Segall in
Insanely Simple [http://www.amazon.com/Insanely-Simple-Obsession-Drives-
Succe...](http://www.amazon.com/Insanely-Simple-Obsession-Drives-
Success/dp/1591844835)

Segall’s description of Jobs includes an important additional component:
obsession with keeping things simple (hence the book title). Segall provides
numerous anecdotes of Jobs beating an idea with the “Simple Stick,” as he
calls it, and compares it favorably against his relatively frustrating
experiences working with other companies like Intel and Dell.

------
leoc
> The idea of "personal digital media" was born. This was Steve's vision, and
> why he put together the iMac DV, with Firewire and iMovie. We called it the
> Digital Hub strategy internally, to encourage you to put lots of personal
> digital media on your home computer.

Here is Jobs presenting the Digital Hub concept at Macworld 2001:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9046oXrm7f8> (See also
[http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/1...](http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/10/71956?currentPage=3)
) You can also see how the Digital Hub idea evidently influenced the layout of
the Apple Store [http://lowendmac.com/orchard/08th/roots-of-the-apple-
store.h...](http://lowendmac.com/orchard/08th/roots-of-the-apple-store.h..). :
the stands devoted to a particular kind of task, with appropriate gadgets
attached to a Mac.

------
jasonkolb
"It sounds kind of self-serving to say this, but he and I were a lot alike in
that way, and in that process"

It's interesting that everyone seems to come away with this opinion, I wonder
what it says about Steve's personality. I remember from reading his biography
that many of the people he ultimately had failings out with claimed the exact
same thing.

~~~
hilko
Ooh, that's a wonderful observation. I've known a number of people that I
would call 'Jobsian', based on my limited knowledge of him, of course. And in
all cases they were really good at making me feel just that way.

------
rjzzleep
i actually like it, it's basically the same that everyone else did that made a
successful product. iterate.

there's nothing magical about it. if that's what you look for, you will be
disappointed. he wasn't some kind of genius. he just tried out what worked and
iterated.

it's the same reason why macbooks looked so smooth, while stupid acer was
still putting fan ins on the bottom of the laptop until intel gave them
ultrabook designs. really? who would do that. clearly none at acer has ever
used an acer laptop for actual portable usage.

typed from my acer ultraportable with fan in at the bottom

------
suyash
What's news here? We already knew how much Steve Jobs loved to design
products.

~~~
vor_
The news is that there wasn't some "reality distortion field" cliche or temper
tantrum. It's an account of Steve Jobs that you rarely read: sitting down with
a team and iteratively designing products.

~~~
nikster
Indeed. No reality distortion fields or elevator firings or questions about
virginity. Then again, I suppose all those really crazy things happened during
his fist stint at Apple when he was young and restless.

------
noptic
Change the title OR the text. This was an interesting article about the cool
things he did. Steve Jobs was involved in this work but this is NOT what this
article is about.

------
Mordor
One wonders at what Tim Cook regards his true purpose with the "magic wand of
CEO"?

------
transitionality
So Jobs loved to micromanage. And it worked at Apple and at NeXT and at Apple,
because Jobs knew a thing or two about software. But micromanaging your own
cancer care doesn't work so well, does it now?

~~~
philwelch
Judging from the Isaacson biography, Jobs would have been fine had he actually
attended to the fact that he had cancer right away, rather than spending a
year ignoring it.

~~~
transitionality
He didn't ignore it, he wasted that year on alternative medicine voodoo. This
detail may not have made it to the Isaacson book, I didn't read it.

~~~
philwelch
It did make it into the book--Jobs mostly spent that year eating differently,
but it wasn't a major focus of his life and aside from the change in diet he
did more or less ignore it. If he obsessed over it as much as he actually
obsessed over things at times, perhaps things would have gone differently. But
it's clear that he did not.

~~~
transitionality
It appears the book glossed over what actually happened. Jobs worked with a
number of alternative medicine con artists, to no result, obviously. Obsessing
doesn't work when the methodology is wrong, and alternative medicine is the
wrong methodology for treating serious medical problems.

~~~
philwelch
Maybe I'm just glossing over it. The sense I got from the book was that he did
a lot of stuff with diet and alternative medicine, but he also refused to
focus on the problem until it was too late. One would hope that if he were
that focused on it, he would have changed his mind about treatment in time to
actually do something about it, rather than letting it sneak up on him for a
year.

