Quote: "Even Steve Jobs wasn't Steve Jobs initially. He only outed himself as a giant jerk after he had a company that could afford to have a huge turnover, and he had a pile of minions that hero-worshiped him no matter what he did."
This isn't true. I knew Steve when he and Steve Wozniak were starting Apple, in the late 1970s, and he (Jobs) was always intolerable -- it wasn't something that came out after he acquired power. I couldn't stand working with him, so, even though people at Apple asked me to stay, I wouldn't. (I eventually worked with Apple on various software projects, but not at Apple.)
Steve Jobs had the worst interpersonal dynamics of anyone I have ever met. All that proves is that being perpetually rude and having terrible people skills isn't a deal-breaker in corporate America.
I'm not questioning your judgement of Steve's personality. But it surprises me that person like Steve can be so successful. Moreover, how did he recruit and manage so many world class developers and designers? Not once. But thrice - Apple, NeXT and Pixar. What made Steve so successful when everyone who has worked with him thinks he was a jerk!
I read his stories at - http://folklore.org/ And he looks inspirational as well as jerk. But most of these stories are around creation of Mac. By that time, Apple was quite successful. I'm genuinely curios about how did he manage to recruit first 10 employees if he had terrible inter-personal skills.
I can't speak to the recruiting of staff in the early days of Apple or NeXT, but many of the "world class" people at Pixar got involved before Jobs purchased the company.
But he had the sense to bankroll and not meddle. He had the courage to let Lassiter, Catmull and Co. to run things their way, which has produced some of the finest story telling and animation of the last 100 years. Did he assemble the team? No. Did he help them achieve greatness? I think Pixars portfolio speaks for itself...
Not sure where I said what he achieved was easy, but feel free to keep putting words in my mouth.
Your comment was insinuating that the success of Pixar's portfolio was somehow a testament to Jobs. Would it really have been any different had they gotten funding from a completely different source? You even said he didn't "meddle", so other than a financial investment, any credit awarded him for the quality of their work should be minimal.
There are plenty of things he can and should get credit for -- we don't need to retroactively add more.
Get over yourself. Your glib dismissal (incorrectly) assumes that Jobs' contribution was merely financial and therefore completely without merit. My comment was that his bankrolling of Pixar, as well as the foresight not to meddle where he wasn't needed, helped them achieve great things, for which he deserves some credit. He also handled the business end - negotiations with Disney etc - that gave Pixar the audience. Since Lassiter has pretty much said that without Jobs the would be we're they are today says it all. Too many are far too quick to dismiss what he man achieved in a relatively short time.
> But most of these stories are around creation of Mac. By that time, Apple was quite successful.
No, not true. Remember that, at the time of the Mac's introduction, the chapter just ending included the sad stories of the Apple /// -- a terrible design and very bad decision on Jobs' part -- and the failed design of the Lisa computer, an obvious Mac predecessor that just didn't work out and another bad Jobs decision. This means the Mac introduction would likely make or break Apple.
The Mac introduction was the turning point for Apple. Had it failed, Apple might also have failed.
> What made Steve so successful when everyone who has worked with him thinks he was a jerk!
That's easy to answer -- chance. What are the chances that someone with terrible interpersonal skills will happen to be colocated with a time and place of technological inevitability? Let's say that chance is p (p = probability). Not an easy number to compute but very small.
Now how many opportunities (n) exist for such a juxtaposition? That runs into the tens of thousands to the millions, depending on which criteria we accept and how much time we allow.
Let's say for the sake of argument that the probability p (for a perfectly unsuitable person to be at the right place at the right time) is equal to 10^-6 and the number of opportunities n is equal to 10^6. On that basis, the chance (c) for exactly one such occurrence is (using the binomial theorem):
The probability for one or more successes in that same scenario:
c = sum(nCk p^k (1-p)^(n-k),k,1,oo) = 0.63212
Not at all unlikely. People who describe Jobs as a twisted but essential genius, and assert that it's the only possible explanation, don't understand probability.
People who believe in proving 'technical inevitability' via probability don't understand shipping a product, from conception, to funding, development, and marketing.
People with genuine vision inspire others to lift their work above mediocrity; to look beyond themselves at a broader vision of the world.
If all it took to ship great products was consensus decision making by smart, highly technical people, then we'd have had be year of Linux on the desktop by now.
> People who believe in proving 'technical inevitability' via probability don't understand shipping a product, from conception, to funding, development, and marketing.
Let me turn that argument around. Every example of a company, employees, management and corporate style, and other similar issues, are subject to probability analysis, and probability explains and/or influences more issues than most people realize.
Interpersonal skills are not a one-dimensional quantity. You and the OP are saying Steve Jobs was terrible at making people happy. That's different from making people do what he wanted, an area in which he was far from terribly unskilled.
Have a good enough idea and a vision of how you can accomplish it, and you can find those 10 people regardless of how mean you are.
After you succeed, you'll have thousands of people chomping at the bit to be associated with you, even if you're an asshole. Success makes everything okay, just like failure makes nothing okay.
> Have a good enough idea and a vision of how you can accomplish it, and you can find those 10 people regardless of how mean you are.
Steve Jobs didn't have the ideas. The ideas came from others -- Xerox PARC, Steve Wozniak, Jef Raskin, others, and to a lesser extent, me. But he did know how to sell other people's ideas and get people passionate about them. Promotion was his talent. He was the Willy Loman of the late 20th century.
> I'm not questioning your judgement of Steve's personality. But it surprises me that person like Steve can be so successful. Moreover, how did he recruit and manage so many world class developers and designers?
Because he attracted insecure people who would work their asses of on his ideas? That's my theory.
Reading about Steve Jobs, one can find he exhibited psychopath traits, and it's known this kind of personality fascinates some people, who are then willing to follow almost blindly, even if they are shouted to or treated badly (in fact, this reinforces the bond).
Just look up how many famous psychopaths in jail receive letters from all around world of people who worship them, would marry them, etc.
Thanks! Now that the psychologists have succeeded in getting my Wikipedia page deleted (I'm a longstanding critic of the practice of psychology), people will be less likely to know that.
My understanding is that, over time, the absence of an English article results in the removal of the translated versions, for English-speaking article subjects anyway. True in this case for the French and Japanese versions of the article.
But the German article, which hasn't been removed, has significantly different content, so it will probably persist.
No, that is emphatically not the case. The Wikipedias for each language are completely separate, and maintained by different volunteer communities, sometimes with substantially different practices.
EDIT: I don't see any record that there was an article about you in the French or Japanese Wikipedias... what were the article titles?
I have no good evidence for it, I just heard it said. I shouldn't have repeated it without finding out.
> EDIT: I don't see any record that there was an article about you in the French or Japanese Wikipedias... what were the article titles?
Had they existed, they would be titled with my name -- and they don't exist. The Japanese CareWare article mentions me, in text that is a near-match of the English version.
There's another reason I shouldn't be saying these things, apart from the fact that I didn't bother to verify them first. There are psychologists in Japan also, and they might adopt the same strategy as the English psychologists. :)
What I learned by criticizing psychology is that its followers react in much the same way as religious true believers -- sanctimonious and very emotional.
As to the reaction to your criticism this might help:
I had to go and read /building_science before I knew what you meant. It was a nice surprise to find that you are very passionate about the differences in scientific rigour that everyone in science knows about. It was a nice surprise because you present yourself in a similar way to scientology nutjobs and other anti-science activists.
To be more effective sound less like them (yeah, yeah, it's not "fair". so what, this is about pragmatism) and drop the hard line between "not scientific" and "scientific". You aren't afraid of explaining complex concepts obviously so explain that there is not a hard line and that this is a spectrum with multiple factors and the relative importance of those factors.
This isn't true. I knew Steve when he and Steve Wozniak were starting Apple, in the late 1970s, and he (Jobs) was always intolerable -- it wasn't something that came out after he acquired power. I couldn't stand working with him, so, even though people at Apple asked me to stay, I wouldn't. (I eventually worked with Apple on various software projects, but not at Apple.)
Steve Jobs had the worst interpersonal dynamics of anyone I have ever met. All that proves is that being perpetually rude and having terrible people skills isn't a deal-breaker in corporate America.