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Comment by swampthinker | Hacker News Reader

“Very rarely did I see him become completely unglued. It happened. But mostly he just looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice, ‘You are fucking up my company,’ or, ‘If we fail, it will be because of you.'”

If I had read this quote 2-3 years ago, before trying to found a startup, I would've thought that Jobs was a crazy asshole. While the latter point is still up for debate, I can now completely sympathize with how he felt in this moment.

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Acting like that to your employees is a quick way to make them disappear. Apple was Apple, nothing was going to make them leave, no matter how much of an asshole Jobs was. I would listen to a CEO/Managers tirade once, before I started looking elsewhere. It's only a job.

Good. If someone (like Jobs) want to create the best product(s) out there, either you Be Better, or find somewhere where anything less than the best is good enough. Shape up or ship out.

That's not how the world works. Number one reason for employees leaving, is management. Just because it worked for Apple, absolutely does not mean it works for all companies. Else that would just be the norm, and we wouldn't be talking about it. Being a tyrant, and ruling with an iron fist, does NOT work historically.

What everyone forgets when they're trying to talk about how to be as effective as Jobs is that yes, he was a tryant ruling with an iron fist, he was a crazy asshole, etc, but he was also right, almost all the time. He knew what he wanted and he knew what would work and he knew what what in his power to create, and he made sure it got created. People try to replicate his management style without having that last quality.

If you're a madman tyrant asshole and your product is OnLive[1], you're just a madman tyrant asshole with a failed product because you didn't realize that your company's problems are far outside your scope of control.

If you're a madman tyrant asshole and your product instantly destroys two of the only three major smartphone OSes on the market at the time, you're Steve Jobs.

[1](I'm just picking on them as a failed startup, I have no idea what their CEO's management style was.)

Otherwise known as survivorship bias. Jobs was an asshole etc who happened to turn out ti be right. It's virtually impossible to know in advance which asshole will be proven right and which won't.

More specifically, he wasn't right because he was an asshole or tyrant. I've run in to folks who worshipped at the Jobs alter, and adopted his personality, in the thought that this leads to success (one person basically said it in so many words - 'it if worked for him...').

Jobs' legacy on the behaviour of so many future companies will be an interesting one, because some people only looked at that one side, and ran with it.

As somebody who used to be like that: startups/businesses are hard enough without burning employees out and people hating you. Your job is to remove negative factors, not create them.

This happened within Microsoft too, a lot of engineers who aspired to be Dave Cutler thought that they should start by acting like him.

He was an asshole that happened to be right several times in his career. First with Apple, then with Pixar, then again with Next and Apple. Your are being disingenuous by trying to paint it like he was just lucky.

I'm not saying he got lucky, I'm saying it's obvious he was right in hindsight and impossible to tell in foresight.

Being correct thrice is not proof that he was not lucky, after all, there's a man who was struck by lightning 7 times through no effort or genius on his part.

I'm not saying Jobs was not smart - but chance and luck was a huge factor in his successes. He wouldn't have had his come-back had Apple bought BeOS rather than Next.

"Being right" doesn't absolve acting like an asshole. I think people stayed because they found their jobs satisfying, engaging and meaningful. If you only have an occasional withering interaction with the wizard of Oz, that's probably OK, if everything else is good.

> etc, but he was also right, almost all the time.

And he would sometimes defer to people he trusted even if they diametrically disagreed with him. He _really_ didn't want to do an App Store and wasn't ever convinced it was a good idea until it was launched, but he saw that Forstall wasn't going to give up on the idea so he relented.

Yup... on top of that, this is the same person that he fired for disagreeing with him on the design aspects of these apps. Forstall was convinced that people weren't going to embrace apps unless they had an analog parallel that people could see as a bridge between what the technology could do and what already existed in real life. Jobs (Edit: maybe not, but a higher-up at Apple), on the other hand, wanted people to figure out on their own what the technology was capable of and skip all the cartoonish skeumorphism. I think you can objectively say, in hindsight, that Jobs was right even there.

PS. Yes, I know that Forstall left Apple after Jobs' death but Jobs and Ive pretty much saw eye to eye on the design of Apple products. (Edit: Removed "Steve famously hated skeumorphism.")

This is completely incorrect. I was at Apple working on iOS during this time period and helped implement and optimize many of those skeuomorphic UIs. Steve was a huge proponent of skeuomorphism.

One example is the iPad Contacts app. Originally it was a simple list of contacts like you'd find in Outlook. This was changed to the "little address book" UI that looked like a leather-bound address book much later in the process because the original UI wasn't "fun" enough.

If that's the case, then I'm mistakenly attributing that decision to Steve but it was definitely a major part of the reason that Forstall was removed from Apple. I worked at Apple too when Steve was still there and I remember there being a shift right around the time of the iPad release to move away from skeumorphism as "people don't need to be convinced" to use tools by making them feel like real life. There were still layovers like the contacts app but new apps that were being created were all ditching the real-life look.

We're all just trading second-hand gossip here, I suspect, but according the official account [1] Forstall was laid off because he didn't play well with the top management. He was maneuvering politically within the hierarchy in a way that Cook did not condone, and he could no longer be protected by Jobs. The Apple Maps fiasco probably had a lot to do with it, too.

(Unfortunately, I think they fired the guy who, among all of them, was the most like Jobs, and I think Apple has suffered as a result.)

To say that he was fired for skeumorphism is insane. Jobs was responsible for that stuff.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-why-i-fired-scott-fo...

Amen... It must have been Jony that hated the skeumorphism. I just remember a very heated debate and, frankly, my memory tends to conflate different events together when they're similar. Steve sided with Jony in a lot of design arguments so when then big change away from skeumorphism came, I seemed to remember Steve agreeing that, while it was great for initial adoption of the platform, computers were mainstream enough to not need that analog appeal. I'm probably wrong, but seeing the rapid shift away from it at Apple makes me feel like it wasn't an isolated incident/debate.

> This was changed to the "little address book" UI that looked like a leather-bound address book much later in the process because the original UI wasn't "fun" enough.

Apparently the iCal stitching was copied from leather seats on Jobs' private jet! You couldn't make this stuff up[1].

1. http://www.cultofmac.com/189707/steve-jobs-himself-is-respon...

> Mark Bramhill: It meant nothing. Chrysler even admitted that the majority of it came from just outside Newark, New Jersey — not Corinth. The term was a marketing lie, meant to evoke feelings of old. Somehow, this seems fitting for Find My Friends. The leather made something so conceptually futuristic a little more familiar, even if it was nonsensical. It was a reassuring callback to an old aesthetic. And of course, where would the CEO of Apple find a reassuring, comforting texture?

Dave Wiskus: According to legend, it was the exact leather and stitching on his private jet.

http://www.macintosh.fm/transcript/1

I agree - this is important, and seems to get missed often. Another important difference between Jobs and every other would-be tyrant CEO is that Apple was creating truly new, innovative, and important products, and doing so with the highest quality and taste. When the CEO of Consolidated Megacorp tries the same behavior, but does so in the context of their typically rotten products and/or services, they get the derision from their employees and from society at large that they deserve.

Anyone of particularly high quality is capable of finding work elsewhere without much difficulty, so high-quality employees are actually less likely to put up with crazy tirades.

In other words, if you want to hire and retain the best talent, try not to be so much of an asshole.

This "my way or the highway" attitude is how companies turn into shitty little fiefdoms filled with incompetent losers lorded over by a bunch of goons.

Anyone of particularly high quality isn't going to be happy with 90% of the work available elsewhere. When you're at the top, you don't want to be managed by scrubs.

That's a bold claim. There are plenty of high performers who would rather be managed with dignity by a "scrub" than be berated by an genius asshole.

No, if the employee keeps not reaching his potential then it is right to call him out on this. Do this only if the employee is not carrying his own weight when you know he is capable of more, otherwise just fire him. Of course, if your manager is being an abusive asshole then leave to another company.

Also, if you have to do this more than once then just fire the guy.

I agree, never take abuse from anybody.

Sitting someone down personally, and explaining the situation with respect. Is a lot different then screaming at someone, telling them they are the single point of failure, swearing and calling them out in front of their peers.

I know what you are saying, but reality is reality. He was an asshole to everybody. I don't like assholes but he definitely got things done.

He got things done, because he actually knew what he was doing, but happened to be an asshole. For every one of those, there is a million other assholes that will sink the ship.

Of course, there's a place for calling someone out in front of his peers, too. Part of the art of leadership is to do that when necessary (because if not, one's failing to do what's necessary), but only when necessary.

You're fighting back even though you seem to agree with user837387. In order to facilitate continuing to argue, you seem to be shifting the goalposts so that you can continue flagging the behavior as bad behavior:

OP said: "looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice"

Your edit: "screaming at someone, swearing and calling them out in front of their peers"

> I would've thought that Jobs was a crazy asshole

When the device on which he's bet the company is still misbehaving an hour before the critical keynote demo, it's not too terribly hard to understand how someone would use this kind of language, harsh though it be. Jobs was Jobs, of course, and whatever else could be said of him, I have never gotten the impression that he had a lot of patience for people or prototypes which he did not regard as being up to snuff. But this is a context in which perhaps it's harder to blame him than in a lot of others.

I think any anyone who has worked with others can sympathize, but that's still not okay to say to someone, and there's not very much chance that it's entirely true. Especially at new startups, the founders are the primary reason for failure.

However, I do concede that this kind of language motivates a certain kind of employee in desperate situations.

Extremes are always bad. Jobs was just lucky and now he becomes the Asshole Jesus. As if we wouldn't have enough of them already out there.

I think people misunderstand Jobs and the asshole component. He was extremely driven and passionate, not unlike an artist, and was highly temperamental.

Yet at the same time he was not 100% asshole 100% of the time. He had a kinder side that was less often reported, the circumstances often highly personal and less newsworthy.

The reason people tolerated his outbursts or his general dickishness is because they saw what he was doing and they respected his vision. Being a dick may have helped him at times and hurt him at others, but it's just how he was. Everyone else seeking to emulate him on those terms is going to be an insufferable dick because they're missing the other elements.

Yeah, ask Lisa Brennan-Jobs about his "kinder side". Ask Steve Wozniak. He spent his whole life throwing people under the bus and using them to get his way. He was a manipulative, terrible human being, and it's frankly zero surprise to me how much of the Hacker News community idolizes him.

because they understand most people are complex and not either assholes or nice/kind people, his close friends/colleagues don't seem to have a problem and remember him every year.

Please see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13361752

The only reason her name is "Brennan-Jobs" is because they achieved some degree of reconciliation, so I'm not sure why you'd pick that example.

Relationships are complicated, especially between lovers and co-founders. Wozniak has a lot of axes to grind, but he's also not going to piss all over Steve just because of those.

If you read the account from the Pixar side of things, his other multi-billion dollar company, he had a whole different attitude towards engaging with that team. Apple was his baby, his entire life, while Pixar was a business venture.

He ignored his real responsibility to her for many years. He stole from Wozniak. Whether they achieved reconciliation or not is irrelevant to my point; we forgive people for the wrongs they've done to us for all sorts of reasons, but that doesn't erase the wrongs done. He had a habit of only caring about people while they were useful to him, and that is, in fact, a huge stain on his character, whether or not people in his life accepted it.

I think it's generally accepted that he's not all good, and like many, not all bad either.

I'm sure there's a littany of other grievances large and small but on the whole he's not predominantly a bad guy.

Just as we shouldn't make him out to be some kind of saint who could do no wrong we shouldn't vilify him for the many mistakes he made. The way you're beating on this drum sure sounds a lot like what he did was so monstrous it overshadowed his work.

He's no Roman Polaniski, Woody Allen or Bill Cosby where the transgressions are so severe you'd want the person shunned, their work permanently stained by their horrible actions. He was a dick, he was difficult, he was emotionally demanding and verbally abusive, for that he'll always be guilty, but as far as anyone's been willing to divulge he never crossed that line to something violent or irreparably dark.

The fact that tech believes in visionaries - in people who are unique such that their shitty behavior must be excused, for years, so that their "work" gets done - is the main problem with tech, frankly.

He was exceptionally difficult to work with. He didn't rape or kill anyone. He didn't sexually abuse people. Seriously, get a grip.

The problem with tech is that behaviour way, way worse than what Jobs ever did is given a free pass. The problem is not Jobs.

I don't really think it's debatable. Jobs was a crazy asshole. No need to hedge the assertion with all the evidence.

>> ‘If we fail, it will be because of you.'

I don't understand how anybody could take this seriously. I mean, one of the hallmarks of Apple was its focus on secrecy. How could one person make a product fail when 90% of the people working on a product had no idea what they were actually working on to begin with?

The flip side is that if they succeed, it was because of Jobs.

I really wonder what the turn over at Apple is, and if it was higher among employees that were not upper management but had to deal with Jobs.

Thankfully I am in no danger of finding out about Apples work environment first hand.

For a product to succeed, you need a lot of different pieces to all go right. So even though you personally may not have full visibility on all the pieces, if you mess up the one piece you are responsible for, you may indeed mess up the whole product.

He was a perfectionist and an asshole; you can be a perfectionist without being an asshole. It's hard to overcome the fact that employees mostly aren't interested in perfection (with good reason--it's not like most of the benefits of perfection accrue to them). But perfection is valuable. When you've got something that is the product of dozens of groups' work, everyone letting one or two things slide because it'd be a lot more work to fix them can mean a pretty compromised end result.

It's not just a "way of feeling"

(>"I can now completely sympathize with how he felt in this moment.")

It's a way of communicating.

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