
Letter from Steve Wozniak to a high school student in Korea - yeonhoyoon
http://yeonhoyoon.tumblr.com/post/44682321591/letter-from-steve-wozniak-to-a-high-school-student-in
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danso
Woz is such a generous, stand-up soul that he should be famous for that alone,
even if he were just a mediocre engineer. The fact that he was also one of the
greatest hackers in his time is just a bizarre, but welcome anomaly of tech
history.

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enraged_camel
_You are recognized by your own skills and good work, and you don‘t have to
criticize others for not doing good work. Just worry about your own skills._

Wozniak is a very technically brilliant guy, and I have the utmost level of
respect for him. But the sentence I quoted above just shows that he's also a
stereotypical "nerd" in a lot of ways [1], in the sense that he has a very
poor understanding of how humans operate, both at the individual level and the
organizational level.

Specifically, just worrying about your own skills is not enough most of the
time, especially if you work in any kind of team setting where success
requires every team member to pull their own weight. If someone is fucking up
constantly and ruining your team's objectives and deliverables, you need to
let them know. You can be nice about it if you want, but if you actually care
about your work then you absolutely cannot "just worry about your own skills."

Heck, this isn't true for just companies. I think every one of us has had
group assignments in college where one person just didn't do the work or did
it incorrectly. Someone like Woz might have let it go, because people who are
taught by their parents to be "nice" tend to avoid confrontation due to the
unpleasant feelings it brings. But the right thing to do - both morally and
otherwise - is to criticize the person for slacking off and file a formal
complaint if they don't start performing.

In fact, now that I think about it, that's probably why he didn't call out
Jobs on it when he found out that Jobs screwed him out of $5,000 back in the
day. He just didn't have the confidence to fight wrongdoings, even when he was
directly hurt by them (granted, Jobs was Woz's polar opposite in the sense
that he had an extremely strong personality, one that would have crushed
Woz's). Also remember that when he built the first Apple computer, he wanted
to give it away for free because he was just a nice guy. It was Jobs who was a
lot more grounded in reality and convinced Woz that they needed to sell it for
money.

[1]I put it in quotes because I'm not using it as a pejorative.

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pagliara
I'm sure Woz has a fine understanding of "how humans operate", perhaps even
better than you or I. He has worked with some of the most important
individuals and companies in this industry.

Woz is not dumb. His point was that he chose to adopt this mindset on purpose.
He'd rather be the "average person joking all the time than a powerful
businessman stressing over work everyday".

By not calling out Jobs for screwing him out of $5,000, you can easily say Woz
was just avoiding confrontation. But I really think his whole mindset
transcends that. It just wasn't important to him. And that's how Woz lived his
whole life, simply focusing on the things that really mattered to him.

I have always been so impressed with how true to himself Woz was.

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ImprovedSilence
haha, it appears to me that woz was a better Buddhist that Jobs.

~~~
pauldirac137
Cannot upvote enough.

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wallflower
JL posted her interview of Woz on the Founders at Work website. It's one of my
favorites in the book (need to buy another copy, gave away my last one)
because you really get a sense of the pure hacker/engineering
genius/engineering spirit Woz is.

The floppy drive story is priceless.

<http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html>

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mhandley
I hadn't read that before - it's a really good read. Thanks!

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alexholehouse
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Woz is the catalyst that pushed me
into programming, and that is something I'm perpetually thankful for.

I should write him a note...

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jmspring
The Woz model - engineering as a fulfillment of curiousity is powerful. It is
often hard to make the leap towards understanding what to commercialize...

~~~
corwinstephen
Ever been quoted before? ^^ Worth quoting.

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gingerlime
_"You are recognized by your own skills and good work, and you don‘t have to
criticize others for not doing good work. Just worry about your own skills."_

Reading from inspiring people like Wozniak makes me wonder how to adopt such
advice.

I am wondering about that almost every time I review a pull request. How do
you deal with bad code, poor comments or over-engineering when you see it? Of
course you can be nice, but then code and product quality would end up
affected. How do you balance this thing?? The person being reviewed knows it's
not personal, but it too often becomes a battle of egos. I would be really
interested to find ways to become a better programmer by being nicer without
bending over or compromising on professional integrity. Any suggestions?

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obstacle1
> Of course you can be nice, but then code and product quality would end up
> affected.

Why? This attitude baffles me. You don't have to be a dick when reviewing
someone's code, terrible or not.

> The person being reviewed knows it's not personal

It absolutely is personal if you make it personal, i.e. start personally
insulting the author.

"How could you be so stupid to write this this way?"

"This is really idiotic code."

"Sorry, this dumb way of doing things is dumb, and I don't approve of dumb
things in my project."

All of the above are personally insulting comments. You should not make
comments like them if you value being civil.

There are plenty of ways to reject code without being a complete dick. For
example:

"This is pretty neat, but I don't think it fits in here because _________"

"I really appreciate the commit, but _________ doesn't quite work with _______
idea."

"This is a great start. Could you change _____________ to meld better with
________?"

All non-confrontational ways to say "sorry, this isn't good enough" while also
offering positive feedback.

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Lewton
I found both types of examples you gave insulting.

Obviously being called dumb is insulting, but being treated like a baby is
too.

What's so wrong with just saying

"This should be changed because ___"

"You should avoid doing something like this because __" ?

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zwischenzug
I always advise my staff to simply stick to the facts. Anything that can be
disputed will be. This results in statements like:

"I'd like this changed because I believe it's a mistake to use globals in this
context"

rather than

"You're/It's wrong to put a global here"

The difference is subtle, but important. It allows personal opinion to be used
without the debate being personal.

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gingerlime
That seems to be the direction I was looking for. It is subtle, but I see the
difference. What I noticed in your example is two things:

1\. The statement is framed as a personal viewpoint, rather than absolute
truth/fact. 2\. You not only state the problem, but also the intent or
direction for a fix.

I'll try to see if I can adopt something along those lines. Thanks.

~~~
zwischenzug
It's important to acknowledge personal differences while trying to see them as
separate from the people themselves. It's when the two are confused that
problems arise.

If you ignore personal differences, or don't understand that they're opinions
(albeit based on experience) you will fail.

That's therapy training for you :)

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dakrisht
Gotta love Woz. So humble, such a brilliant mind, a pure hacker at heart. Need
more guys like him and less turds like Mark Pincus (first one that comes to
mind).

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philh
> less turds like Mark Pincus

Does that sound like the sort of thing Woz would say?

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hkmurakami
Alas that's why there's so few beings like Woz.

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arjn
Love the Woz. A extraordinary combination of quiet genius, generosity and
humility.

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6ren
> ... never want to tell one story in different ways.

 _\tangent_ I know what he's talking about (spinning the truth), so the
following is not addressing what he meant, it's just that the bald statement
irks me so: when explaining something to somebody, it can be very helpful to
express it in familiar terms and concepts that they already understand. You
might need to customise the story for each person, and the change might be
much more than just a few words, but premised on entirely different concepts.

It's more like: you have a map and you know their intended destination. It's
not helpful to just tell them where they should be; nor even to just explain
one way to get there (one story). Better to find out _where they are_ , and
then give them directions in terms of that. (from my stint as an ugrad
tutor/demonstrator).

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sgloutnikov
Loved every word of that, great guy!

"The best things I did in my young years leading up to the early Apple
computers were done because I had little money and had to think deeply to
achieve the impossible."

On a side note, I think this is why more (and arguably better) hackers come
out of Eastern Europe/Asia.

~~~
digitalengineer
Yes having only "little money" forced Woz to really focus, think and
experiment. However, I'm sure living in the same neighbourhood/city as people
from IBM, Intel, HewlettPackard, etc wasn't bad either ;-)

~~~
sgloutnikov
Oh clearly! And how much easier it was back then to simply walk into HP for
example, and talk to these people directly.

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pshin45
I'm living in Korea right now and I'm fascinated as to how and why Woz decided
to reply to this Korean high school student's email, of all the emails he
could've replied to, and how often he does this for people. So random but so
awesome.

And what an amazing and thoughtful reply it was, especially considering how
lately Woz has become known more for being a loose cannon criticizing Apple in
the press, than for his (amazing) previous accomplishments. Not to mention his
portrayal in Steve Jobs' biography was less than glowing.

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austenallred
I think my favorite part of every Woz letter and email is how he signs his
name upside down. There's not much more endearing than the playfulness and
wonder that somehow conveys.

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simplon
yeah i saw that too.. thought it was really cool..

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pajju
Noticed the signature at the end, the sign of one of the greatest hackers of
our times.

Kudos sir.

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WillP
I'm impressed by how well the response was written. Every sentence seemed to
be written in a very unambiguous way. The phrasing may have been awkward, but
was very appropriate for a Korean audience.

~~~
pshin45
Good point, his email reply got me wondering how familiar he is with Korea and
whether he was deliberately tailoring his message for a Korean audience as
well.

He talks about not learning from books, not caring about what others think
about you, choosing a company based on how they treat you and not how "hot"
they are - These are all the complete opposite of what Korea values and the
way most Koreans live (book-learning, image-conscious, brand names over
personal satisfaction).

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kenkam
I could say the same thing for the culture in Hong Kong or China at large too.

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simplon
Singapore too..

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bluedino
_I didn't know anything about computer languages except—a friend of mine had
gone to MIT and, while he was there, he would Xerox pages out of books that
were good topics, and he had sent me a lot of pages back from compiler design
books._

I wonder if MIT knew about students sharing information with the outside world
40 years ago. If this copyright violation would have not happened, we'd be in
a world without Apple computer, or at least Apple BASIC.

~~~
cma
[http://www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/content/...](http://www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/content/index.html)

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beambot
_Computer apps are not to be judged by what they do or how well they do it.
Rather, it is more important that they feel natural to normal humans and they
are led to the right actions._

This statement makes me sad... but I cannot articulate exactly why.

Edit: I like the essay in general. It's very motivating. It would have been
great advice when in highschool.

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hobs
Its because like many nerds, you love to program, and you love THE program.

I find that many technical people actually find that while they keep solving
technical problems, the people problem never goes away with their software.

We treat people as idiots and act in condescending manners because we think
they are too dumb to use our software or computers in general, but the truth
is our software is dumb and a lot of us dont want to change it.

~~~
beambot
I don't think that's it... Woz talks about internalizing and owning his own
thoughts throughout the article, then implies that computer programs (that
presumably the student could / should build) ought to be tailored to everyone
else's mental models. It seems contradictory. I'd much rather hear something
like, "Build something you love using... that's easy for you to use."

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nnq
> The teller doesn’t feel that the truth about how they are and how they act
> is not good

...did the transcriber double negate this by mistake or is my head spinning
the wrong way?

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ars
Is the upside down signature in the original?

~~~
myhf
Yes, it's his normal email signature.

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pedalpete
Is there a better modern sage than Woz?

