
Jack Dorsey runs two multibillion-dollar companies without using a computer - NicoJuicy
https://qz.com/work/1419973/jack-dorsey-doesnt-use-a-computer/
======
ibudiallo
I can already imagine the inspiration videos on instatwitube that will be
published quoting this.

"You don't even need a computer to get started. Jack Dorsey, CEO of two multi-
billion companies, doesn't even own a computer, yet he is successful."

~~~
noufalibrahim
Your sentiments are close to my heart. The amount of "inspiration" peddled on
youtube, linkedin, and other sites is nauseating.

------
thrzzzoway
(Posting as a throwaway)

Jack is one of those socially awkward people who you see on the street with
their head glued to their smartphone. Is that actually better than being
someone who uses a computer at a desk, and then completely disconnects the
rest of the time?

Modern smartphones are more powerful computers than most capital-C Computers.
This is far more of a semantics thing than anything else.

Great headline though.

------
rhizome31
A smartphone is a computer.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
I'm increasingly only using my phone for everything, with a Bluetooth
mechanical keyboard for coding or typing. My PC is quickly becoming just a
gaming console and will probably soon be put into a car sim style setup then
my phone will be my only computer for everything else.

Nothing fancy phone wise, S7 Edge. It can take USB sticks, wireless keyboard
and mouse, and almost everything I do is just in Firefox or Dropbox.

~~~
SyneRyder
Surely you can't be reading all that code on such a small screen? I assume you
must be hooking it up to an HDMI monitor as well?

(But if so, I'm with you. I was using a Samsung DeX with my S8 recently while
my laptop was broken, and it's incredible how much it can do. I had my
Focusrite 2i2 USB audio connecting my S8 to my studio monitors, and even that
worked.)

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Yes sorry I dock to a desktop monitor via HDMI for coding at a desk, but
honestly I'd say more than half the time I'm fine just using the phone on its
kickstand case or mounted to the top of the keyboard with a bracket I made.

My eyes thankfully haven't degraded as fast as my hearing so far.

Being a wireless 60% keyboard it's quite small, so I can use this setup
anywhere I want just on my lap. It's very convenient.

~~~
WalterSear
What development environment do you use?

Edit - I realized you are probably using an online one.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Yup web editors and SSH with an Android app for server stuff or to do stuff in
VIM.

------
owens99
The most interesting thing about being in China is seeing how 99% of merchants
power their business with a Wechat/Alipay QR code printed on a piece of paper.
Not sure how Square missed that.

~~~
Chinmayh
QR codes have been available for a while. Square helped do payments through
credit cards. At that time payment via QR codes was cumbersome, and not
adopted. But I think it depends more on the consumers and local economy. US
was anyway using credit cards a lot. Asia preferred cash, for smaller
transactions.

~~~
est
You can pay credit cards with QA codes. You just don't need the POS device.

------
iliaznk
I bet he has a couple of assistants who use a computer for him.

~~~
awad
Probably, but that's par for the course. Nothing wrong with that per se given
his job responsibilities...

~~~
iliaznk
Absolutely nothing wrong, I agree, I'm just saying that there's still a
computer somewhere along the way.

------
village-idiot
Seriously, who cares?

First, the idiosyncrasies of the rich and powerful are way less important than
the amount of space given to them in the press, even for this extremely short
article. Very few of these "Jack doesn't use a computer" and "Tim Cook wakes
up at 4 o'clock" are actually useful, aside from the voyeur aspect. For all we
know Jack has some pretty brutal RSI and Siri is the only way that he can
actually type, or whatever.

It's pointless, is what I'm saying.

And with more snark: it's not like he's running all those companies _well_.
Twitter is a garbage fire that's probably propped up by bots that Twitter is
ignoring for their ad revenue. Everyone I know resents what Twitter does to
their mental health and wants to spend less time on it and talking about it,
myself certainly included.

~~~
loeber
Downvoted for writing a generally ill-considered response.

Regarding whether or not Jack Dorsey is running these companies well: Square
is up a nice 5x over the last five years. That's a $32b market cap now. It's a
big company. Their credit card readers are _everywhere_.

Twitter is more controversial, sure, but it's certainly been improved over the
last two years. I actually quite like using it.

~~~
metildaa
Edit: Two downvotes but no comments? Pretty lame downvoters today...

With regard to Twitter, what is being done to staunch the bleeding of users? I
stopped using it in favor of Mastodon, which is starting to eat into my Reddit
usage as of late. The ability to chat with interesting people who can hold a
high caliber conversation reminds me of certain subreddits & IRC to a degree.

~~~
goodstuff9
> today

------
ankurdhama
CEOing is about making business decisions, not inventing and creating stuff,
so why would you need a computer.

~~~
avip
Because one day, someone will send you an excel sheet.

~~~
dangwu
And someone will summarize it for you.

------
sologoub
Most work can now be done on an iPad Pro without much compromise (highlighting
stuff is still annoying, but oh well). With a little creativity, even decent
amount of coding can be done.

Note that with the iPad, Apple is doing everything they can to hamstring the
ability to code or replace the Mac.

Now expand your field of vision to Surface and Pixel Slate, and now you have
two fully featured computing devices that act like a tablet, but readily
convert to full on productivity machines complete with nice keyboards and
pointing devices. Both support external monitors (why on earth can I not use
airplay like this?!).

This hasn’t caught on yet, but for the average office user, and event many
developers, these tablets with external keyboards provide more than enough
computing power to get all of their work done.

For now I’m staying with my iPad, but Google has really made that choice a lot
more difficult with the Pixel Slate. Had I been less bought into the Apple
ecosystem, I’d be ordering it immediately.

EDIT: Forgot to mention eGPUs - if I could run a Thunderbolt3 eGPU on either
Surface or Pixel Slate, probably would have switched by now.

~~~
atomicnumber1
especially since it can run linux apps. But, their ui was pretty laggy in the
recent demos. You can't beat iOS in UI smoothness.

Edit: grammar

~~~
sologoub
Yeah, iOS is definitely very polished. Haven’t seen much lag though on
ChromeOS.

~~~
atomicnumber1
I don't know about chromeos in general, I was specifically talking about the
newly announced pixel slate. The hardware seems promising, not sure about the
software.

------
cntlzw
Steven Jobs ran a multibillion-dollar company wearing only black turtlenecks.

~~~
Jian-Yang
To be fair, he did also wear jeans. Nobody will take you seriously hanging out
in only turtle necks!

------
psergeant
I conduct so much business via my phone email, and have an assistant doing
most computer tasks. Wonder what would need to change to get me off a computer
fulltime

------
ziaddotcom
This makes sense given his origin story had a bunch to do with his burning
curiosity in dispatch systems coordinating across every level and permutation
of org charts.

I doubt he expected ever bike cops talking to a street sweeper to both be
carrying a laptop to make the dispatching work. So, between square and
twitter, it seems less hipster and more like using his products to their apex
intended purpose and the among the best way to find holes.

I can picture him thinking about their internal systems: "if a system like
this can work for hurricanes and 911, it can probably handle kanye ranting or
quitting twitter without me being chained to a laptop."

~~~
stuhinze
is this English?

------
jumelles
People have run companies without computers for _centuries_!

~~~
astrodust
People have run billion dollar tech startups without computers for centuries?
Tell me more, please.

~~~
dingaling
I'm not sure why 'start-up' is significant, or even accurate.

Standard Oil hit a market cap of over $1 trillion without computers. Maybe it
was a coal-industry-disruptor start-up...?

~~~
astrodust
Things moved a lot more slowly back then. News cycles were in terms of days or
weeks.

------
lostmsu
I bet he uses multiple, including his mobile.

