
For Stanford grads, Jobs's commencement speech in 2005 was life-changing - grellas
http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_19076067
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pgroves
While I totally agree with this speech, it also seemed a bit odd coming from
Steve Jobs. Sure, he lived his life that way, but it took thousands of Apple
employees doing exactly what he wanted to fulfill his vision. His success came
from being an uncompromising task-master as much as being an uncompromising
visionary. Take away either of those factors and he wouldn't have made the
impact he did.

As far as I can tell, this advice only applied to people who weren't in the
same room as him.

(I'm hesitating to hit submit on this comment - please regard this as a
criticism of Steve Jobs the force of nature not Steve Jobs the person.)

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jballanc
There's a quote I can't find now but it goes something like: "A good leader
convinces the people to fulfill his vision, a great leader guides the people
to fulfill their vision". Steve was very much the later.

I started working for Apple at the Apple store. I later moved to Server
Engineering. When I first arrived in Cupertino, the one thing that struck me
was that the engineers at Apple were leveling harsher criticism at OS X and
the rest of Apple's software than I had ever heard before. Even the most
ardent Windows or Linux fanboys couldn't hit as hard as these engineers.

So many people seem to talk about "Steve the task-master". In reality, his
true talent was picking people that would be as obsessed with perfection as he
was. I suspect that the random report you hear from a "former Apple employee"
complaining about Steve as some sort of tyrant were the result of the handful
of times that the hiring process didn't go according to plan (it happens). My
experience was largely that, as you went up the chain of command at Apple,
managers weren't demanding more work from their underlings, but less. In other
words, it was much more common to hear "if you're not happy with that feature
then cut it and move on" than "I'm not happy with this feature, you need to
refine it some more"...

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pgroves
Touche, jballanc.

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RexRollman
Does Stanford really own the copyright to the words Steve spoke on that day? I
can understand them owning the video itself, but the words too?

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mfringel
[IANAL] He was invited for what was effectively a performance. Stanford
probably has a standard copyright agreement for performances at the venue
(i.e. the stadium), much like a football game.

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exit
it's weird that everyone they spoke to seems to have "found it", six years
later. or at least, not one said they were "still looking, haven't settled".

~~~
stretchwithme
well, that's the author filtering reality.

In real life, there are people still lost and others who think they've found
it, but who won't find out until later that something else is what they were
meant to do. And some who never will find it.

But none of that makes for an article that puts everything in a pretty box and
ties it up with a shiny ribbon.

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stretchwithme
Great speech.

Learning to trust your gut and your self is critical.

Or perhaps, it is learning not to trust it is probably why people get lost.

We start out in life trusting ourselves. But we are taught and conditioned to
not trust it.

Please avoid doing that if you're raising a child. Allow your child to explore
and make mistakes, to train their own gut with experience.

That doesn't mean you never make demands upon them. Life makes demands and you
can't prepare them for it without doing the same.

But you can't make every decision for them and spare them of consequences of
mistakes. You have to protect them from permanently hurting themselves to a
degree while they develop, but at some point, you have to push them out of the
nest and let them fly.

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Lambent_Cactus
True story. That speech was a major factor in my decisions to leave legal
practice and later to found my own startup. Jobs' words that day have had a
major effect on my career.

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dpapathanasiou
Transcript and video here:
<http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html>

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bignoggins
Great speech. I graduated in 2005 from rival school Berkeley and we had Eric
Schmidt. It was fascinating to see how the two of them would duke it out in
the 6 years following my graduation. Eric was also a great commencement
speaker.

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tocomment
Is there anyway to get this in audio format so I can listen to it in my
automobile?

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kristofferR
[http://www.archive.org/details/SteveJobsSpeechAtStanfordUniv...](http://www.archive.org/details/SteveJobsSpeechAtStanfordUniversity)

~~~
stretchwithme
Thanks for that.

