It's not at all clear that he ever wrote a single line of code at Atari. He was on hardware testing, so definitely had to learn his way around electronics, but probably didn't code. Especially with Wozniak doing the heavy lifting for him on several occasions. See here for more detail: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/steve-jobs-atari-empl...
My impression of Jobs from reading his bios was that he was a top tier bullshit artist. The type of kid that would get another kid to do their homework, but would present it to the class so convincingly that nobody would know better. This was essentially how he got by at Atari with Woz doing all the coding for him.
Sometimes persuasive people are also (annoyingly) gifted. (a joke)
We have such a false dichotomy built into our culture where the brilliant engineer types are unable to communicate their ideas with precision, zeal, persuasion, and charisma.
I think it is fair that we distrust only charisma. Many people prey upon this.
Still, I could hold up at least four personal friends and three former coworkers that blow the doors off any such assumptions.
Several have worked through up and around Silicon Valley, but others have found other paths, including bureaucracy.
Is it hard for me to believe that Steve Jobs fits that pattern? Quite the opposite.
His infamous “reality distortion field” is the definition of bullshit, but it turns out that the right kind of bullshit can be turned into a trillion dollar company.
It can be useful to keep these ideas separated in at least one sense. Harry Frankfurt characterizes a bullshitter as someone who doesn’t care about truth at all. Jobs was not that kind of bullshitter.
Jobs often disagreed with people about what was attainable. Bending the perception of truth is not the same as denying or not caring about truth.
Jobs held core truths, ie testable claims, such as “design matters” and design could differentiate Apple and make it wildly valuable. He was largely correct.
Jobs had a track record of delivering. So his visions often did map on to reality. In this sense, the reality distortion field served as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Frankfurtian bullshitters, OTOH, don’t care if the truth catches up to them. To them it’s all just words you say for convenience.
disclaimer: ex Apple / like (not love — love is a word best preserved for human relationships) Apple products / strive to be generally skeptical and discontented with everything
I agree with your comment/ assessment. I just read Guy Kawasaki’s “Wise Guy” and he amongst others describes Jobs as this perfectionist. He was big on getting details and polish right.
He also described that working at Apple and under Jobs as scary. If you didn’t bring your A-game you would be fired rather quickly.
You calling having a vision and making people believe it is BS? It turns out it is actually opposite of the definition of bullshit. sent from my iPhone.
