
What I Learned Negotiating With Steve Jobs - whbk
http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/80368150370/what-i-learned-negotiating-with-steve-jobs
======
incision
Every time I read something about Jobs I'm struck by how similar he is to
various assholes I've worked for over the years.

This scenario, pretty much every nasty behavior described in the Isaacson
biography, the recent salary-fixing emails - I've witnessed them all repeated.

It might seem crazy to entertain, but having seen first-hand that these folks
can consistently climb and succeed while being what most decent people would
consider scumbags - I have to wonder if Steve was just alpha-scum in the right
place at the right time.

~~~
abbasmehdi
"It might seem crazy to entertain, but having seen first-hand that these folks
can consistently climb and succeed while being what most decent people would
consider scumbags..."

One of my best friends is a psychiatrist at a large academic hospital. He
works with "corporate leaders" and top athletes (college level and above). He
says in his 5 years of practice, he has not yet seen a "successful" person who
does not exhibit a significant degree of sociopathic behavior. He goes as far
as saying that being sociopathic is an asset if you are trying to be
successful in any hyper competitive human endeavor (politics, business, sports
etc).

~~~
jckt
I think Bill Gates is a good counterexample. Microsoft was not the nicest
company around, but as a boss he seems pretty normal, even good. And I'd say
he's just as successful as Jobs, if not more. (Also difficult to imagine a
sociopath being a philanthropist like Gates).

~~~
shortsightedsid
Bill Gates' reviews were notoriously difficult -
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html).
I wouldn't call him a "normal" boss either.

~~~
jckt
I guess I meant normal as in not-a-sociopath. As another commenter said, Gates
was definitely intense. But then a lot of other people can be similarly
described (maybe not to the same degree, but someone like Linus is not exactly
known for being mild mannered[1], but he's definitely not a sociopath).

But thanks for the link though, I'll check it out. I must've suppressed all my
Gates-criticism for all the good he's doing now.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5107495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5107495)

~~~
snom380
Well, for one he also tried to push his co-founder out of the company while he
was sick in hospital. If he wasn't a sociopath at the time, he sure acted like
one.

------
oinksoft
People are saying that Jobs was being an asshole. I don't know much about the
man, but what he's doing here is intelligent negotiation, plain and simple.
The bravado of shredding the paper and loudly announcing the desired figure is
a dead giveaway that (1) the other details of the contract don't mean much to
him, and (2) the 50% figure means an awful lot to whoever else was supposed to
hear it.

You have to keep in mind what Jobs is trying to accomplish here. It's like a
kid loudly putting stuff away when their mom walks by, "yea mom, just cleaning
my room!"

The ruthless part is that Jobs would have no problem if she didn't pick up on
that and came back with the same contract and the 50% rate. I think that the
lessons in this post are valuable for negotiating with intelligent people.

~~~
lutusp
> A bunch of people here are saying that Jobs was being an asshole.

Well ... he was.

> I don't know much about the man, but what he's doing here is intelligent
> negotiation, plain and simple.

Jobs had the destructive habit of tearing people down for no reason,
preventing them from liking either themselves or him. I knew him personally
and I saw this behavior any number of times, behavior that had no possible
positive outcome.

In this case, Jobs could simply have said, "This is completely unacceptable,
but I'm sure you'll find a way to meet my legitimate requirements. I'm
available next Thursday if you think we can come to an agreement." You know --
like a normal person.

In the Isaacson book, Jobs is accurately described as a clinical narcissist,
and I can confirm than from personal experience.

To those who think Jobs accomplished what he did _because_ of his behavior, I
say he accomplished what he did _in spite of_ his behavior. Obviously we will
never know, this cannot be science, but Jobs went through life burning
everyone down, filtering out everyone who wasn't a born narcissistic enabler.

~~~
jckt
> filtering out everyone who wasn't a born narcissistic enabler.

Do you mean that there instances where he really listened or
liked/respected/etc someone because they had similar narcissistic tendencies?
I was under the impression that people like him tend to hate people like
themselves -- a narcissist who thinks he's the best is at greatest odds with
another narcissist who thinks he's the best.

~~~
vacri
lutusp means the archetypal 'yes-man', the person who openly admires anything
you do and only ever agrees with you, reinforcing your self-esteem, 'enabling'
your 'narcissism'.

~~~
jckt
Ah, okay, I get it now. I completely misunderstood lutusp's sentence.

------
joosters
_At first I did not understand Steve’s needs_

Yes, because he didn't bother to explain them. _He_ could have been the one to
explain the need for the magic 50% - just think how that could have made their
meeting productive and useful - but he didn't. It was only through her contact
that this was discovered. Basically, Steve Jobs was being an asshole.

~~~
6d0debc071
They might have been in it together. If he got fifty percent gross, that was
great for him. If she almost got away, then the other guy goes after her and
gets the face-saving fall-back position.

~~~
kenrikm
Indeed, Steve may have sent him to deliver the message that it needed to
"look" like 50%. However, If you read Panic's experience with Steve, you'll
see he was generally an asshole when it came to negotiation.

Problem is, that's exactly what Apple needed to deal with the music industry
and exactly what it needed to deal with the wireless industry and exactly what
it needs now to deal with the cable industry.

Except... he's not here to fight the good fight against the cable industry,
and based on the rumors I've heard Apple is having troubles nailing down good
terms with the content providers.

------
ghaff
The last item on the list:

>Understand the needs of the other person

Is a really important part of negotiation. Nothing to do with Jobs
specifically. Don't assume that needs and desires are symmetrical in a
negotiation. Sometimes they basically are. But when they aren't, it opens the
possibility for win-win scenarios.

And oldies but goodie (and short) book, "Getting to Yes" talks about this.
Well worth the read. (And, when I say short, I really do mean very short.)

~~~
Mz
"Getting to Yes" is researched based and, yes, a quick read. It was one of the
required texts for a college class I had on "Negotiating and Conflict and
Management." The other was "The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator." It is also
research based but much meatier. I highly recommend both.

------
evanmoran
The world is full of assholes and yet there is only one Steve Jobs. If you are
thinking of emulating him, I say stick to his better sides: understanding the
industry, positioning, marketing, branding, public speaking and of course
product design.

~~~
Zelphyr
Wholeheartedly agree. After the Isaacson book came out I read story after
story of "entrepreneurs" who had decided to emulate him in all the wrong ways.
They chose to ignore the fact that in addition to being a complete dick a
goodly part of the time he also had the ability to inspire fierce loyalty in
people and I'm sure it wasn't by being a dick. If he saw you as valuable
(e.g.; Jony Ive) then you got treated better.

That said, in my experience, you'll get WAY more out of people if you treat
everyone with respect if and until they do something to cause you to lose that
respect. And even then you're better off having a polite but firm attitude.

------
dmourati
"Make it look like fifty percent." That one sentence made all the difference.
In one instant, Heidi immediately understood what she had that the other side
wanted. In her case, it was an initial app on a new platform. More than the
money itself, it was being able to deliver on a previous promise to get a
50-50 split.

It can be difficult to understand your negotiating partner's reasons but
having an ally sure helped in this case.

------
andyidsinga
so what i learned from this is that the developers did not actually get 50%
but something that sounded like 50%.

i know a dev at a startup who was employee number 2 and wanted a certain % of
the company ( like 2 or 5 or something like that ). anyhoo, he was haggling
with the founder about this and the founder didnt want to give him what he
wanted but finally relented. later, when signing paperwork, he found that the
% the founder relented to was actually a % of a newly created employee pool,
and not the whole company.

needless to say, the dev was pissed and had little trust in the relationship
from that point forward.

~~~
dmourati
Rookie mistake. Read Venture Deals: [http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-
Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalis...](http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-
Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616)

~~~
fragsworth
That venture deals book is about founders negotiating with VCs, and probably
mentions the "rookie mistake" of the founders getting stuck with paying for
the option pool.

We're talking about something different here - a potential hire joining a
company and asking for "X% _of the company_ ". If the company agrees to this,
then the legal document better not say you got X% _of the employee option
pool_. That kind of shit is obviously going to ruin your employee's trust,
because it's extremely fucking shady. I would immediately get the impression
that the company/founders are big scammers.

~~~
dmourati
The book is about VC period. Authors switch sides in perspective throughout.
The rookie mistake, covered at length in the book, was not knowing the
difference between the cap table, employee options pool, and fully diluted
shares. See, e.g., Appendix A.

------
jmomo
Are there any known allegations or just flat-out known instances of Steve Jobs
getting physically abusive with any of his employees or in the workplace
environment?

It's obvious he was verbally and emotionally abusive person and he was
generally an all-around asshole, but I've never heard of him getting physical,
and that sort of surprises me.

~~~
analog31
Physical and psychological abuse are morally equivalent.

~~~
chrisdone
Morals tend to come from a body of ethics. It seems like what you're saying is
"I think they should be considered equivalent" and therefore if you were to
propose a set of morals that some society would adhere to, being mean to
people would constitute property damage or something. Of course, that's
bonkers, but you should distinguish between what you think should be the case
and what is.

~~~
prutschman
Downplaying emotional abuse as "being mean" is disingenuous.

~~~
chrisdone
I don't think so, it's all mental and non-physical. That's the point.

------
lotsofmangos
It makes you wonder how good his reality distortion field would have been
without the vast dick-mitigation cloud that bubbled around it. Jobs owes a lot
of his success to some very nice people.

------
BigBadBionicBoy
Pretty much the MO for dealing with anyone with an inflated ego.

Make them feel like they're right and make them feel like they always get
exactly what they want.

~~~
jbeja
And then?

~~~
bra-ket
F*ck them in the year (c)

~~~
jbeja
How?

~~~
bra-ket
in the ear

------
PhasmaFelis
> _What I Learned Negotiating With Steve Jobs_

I read the headline and thought, "that he's an asshole?"

Then I read the article. I was right!

------
disputin
That wasn't a negotiation, that was a demand. Dan'l did the negotiation.
"People are not often as clear as Steve was" \- he wasn't clear at all. He put
on a performance for the developers, and Dan'l was the person who had to
clarify what Steve wanted.

------
danieltillett
Great lesson here in how to deal with face. If done well this can provide the
party unconcerned with saving face a real advantage in the negotiation
process.

------
fiatmoney
Some people enjoy throwing their weight around and winning even relatively
meaningless concessions, which marks them as high status. This can make it
easier to win meaningful concessions at the margin, or to turn "not asking for
concessions" into "you owe me one".

Robert Ringer has some pretty apt descriptions of this type & how to deal with
them in a couple of his more popular books.

~~~
ghaff
With all due respect, I think you and others are missing the point here. This
wasn't so much about Jobs "throwing his weight around" (abrasive style
notwithstanding) but about him having an externally committed number that it
was important to him and to others at the company to have met. Structuring the
deal in such a way that this objective could be achieved opened a path to a
negotiation that could satisfy both sides.

~~~
fiatmoney
You're right, the point of the article was to reflect on her, not on Jobs. But
that doesn't mean we can't analyze his behavior.

Presumably the number was "important" in an absolute sense because a number
that high represented a fair amount of money, or at least taking margin from
the publisher, because of the super-high quality of the software (remember, he
made the promise trying to flatter the development team). Instead, the deal
was structured strictly worse (less transparent revenue stream, same amount of
money - and I'd be surprised if it was actually the same amount of money).
Because he made a grand gesture as a status move, first to his team, and then
to his vendors.

There's no way in which "make an outrageous promise, make an outrageous demand
to fulfil that promise, accept a strictly worse settlement that saves face"
reflects well on _his_ end of the negotiation.

"He wanted to be able to tell everyone he got what he wanted."

------
Udo_Schmitz
This article has another story from Heidi Roizen which may offer some
perspective (seventh story „A Friend In Need“):

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2012/10/03/untol...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2012/10/03/untold-
stories-about-steve-jobs-friends-and-colleagues-share-their-memories/)

------
huxley2
Is it just me or does it seem like the new cool thing to do is talk about how
much of a prick Steve was and how amazing Woz is?

No one is perfect.

~~~
lutusp
> Is it just me or does it seem like the new cool thing to do is talk about
> how much of a prick Steve was and how amazing Woz is?

It's now new for me -- I've been saying it for years. After a brief exposure
to Jobs in the late 1970s when Apple was a new company, I refused to work with
him thereafter. I turned down a number of job offers from Apple over the years
because I knew I would have to work with Jobs, or near him, or some
approximation thereof. Unacceptable.

Some people found it possible to work with him, but IMHO that marked them as
born narcissistic enablers.

~~~
huxley2
Oh. Well that's fair. You actually met him. So you can make a judgment. I'm
sorry to hear that.

I just find it a bit annoying how people that never met him find it cool to
dog him. I've found that among people that actually met him they either looked
up to him and saw him as a bold and charismatic character or they hated him
with a passion.

~~~
lutusp
> I've found that among people that actually met him they either looked up to
> him and saw him as a bold and charismatic character or they hated him with a
> passion.

That's a common description of how people react to a narcissist. Consider Jim
Jones (the French Guyana Jim Jones, the poisoned Kool-Aid Jim Jones) -- his
followers thought he was the greatest, and it seemed as though they would die
for him. Oh, wait, they did die for him. But others saw him as dangerous.

Consider David Koresh. Same blind devotion among his followers and complete
disgust elsewhere.

My point is that a narcissistic enabler is as deeply twisted as a narcissist,
but with a different focus.

More here:
[http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus](http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus)

~~~
phil21
Not saying you're not correct, it sounds like from your, and many other
stories this is generally pretty accurate.

However, for this particular story? I honestly would have loved to work
with/for someone who would just cut the bullshit, stop with the nice words,
and just tell you exactly where you stand. If that means tearing up a contract
and swearing at me, that sounds wonderful - it would not hurt my feelings in
the least. If it did, I'd quickly get over it unless it was obviously personal
vs. business.

Can that be done without being an asshole? Yes, of course. However, I haven't
really seen it in action. I've generally either been around 'assholes' who
seem to get things done via a blunt style I enjoy, or 'nice guys' who get
steamrolled and thus churn out a shit product as they are more concerned with
feelings than results.

------
rdl
Wow, I'd forgotten how bad the economics of boxed software were.

~~~
keithwarren
The irony here is that Steve would eventually go on to put the final nail in
the coffin of the boxed software world with the App Store. Sure people were
starting to use web based software and yes other stores existed before the app
store but he created the tipping point.

~~~
Intermernet
This is slightly revisionist. The App Store is really just a centralized
portal for software purchase and download. People were purchasing software
online and downloading it well before the App Store.

~~~
rdl
IIRC, it had become the standard for high-end, engineering, server, unix
software by around 2002, but App Store really did do a pretty good job of
replacing boxed software in the $20-300 range outside gaming (which Steam
probably did first).

~~~
markdennehy
You mean "App Store did a really good job copying a standard practice in the
software world to a specific domain that Steam was doing a really good job in
already, and though brand and lock-in, managed to survive where on pure merit,
it wouldn't have".

~~~
rdl
No, Steam was never doing a good job of selling apps outside gaming, and still
doesn't.

------
JustARandomGuy
_I had to make the business make sense financially. I just needed to make my
15% look like his 50%. To do so, I reduced the nut to split by first deducting
the cost of packaging, of technical support, the salaries for some developers
on my side of the business to implement fixes, and when I still couldn’t get
the math to pencil out, I added a $6 per unit_

Out of curiosity, is there an example contract text that demonstrates how to
do this? Is it as simple as saying "You get 50% of the gross, but I'll deduct
this, this and that from your share"?

~~~
sumedh
Check out Hollywood Accounting.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-
holl...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-hollywood-
accounting-can-make-a-450-million-movie-unprofitable/245134/)

