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Comment by pweissbrod | Hacker News Reader

Rapid switch between charming and aggressive. Creating an environment where you surround yourself with sycophants. Punch downwards at employees working for you to assert and maintain your power while projecting you aspire for "higher standards". Set unrealistic expectations to see which folks will work nights and weekends to your order.

^^ Managers take note. These are excellent traits to climbing the corporate ladder. Just be a dick without looking like a dick.

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You can only do that if you're Steve Jobs. The chances of someone ever working on a product that's going to define an industry are infinitesimal.

If I got a chance to work on the iPhone in 2006, yeah I might put up with a lot of crap. If all I'm doing is writing yet another software as a service CRUD app and I have an insufferable manager - I'll jump ship so fast it will make their head spin.

On second thought, thier head won't spin, they will put out a rec the day I submit my letter of resignation and forget I existed in three months.

> You can only do that if you're Steve Jobs. The chances of someone ever working on a product that's going to define an industry are infinitesimal.

I don't think you have to necessarily be that influential to have at least part of the same power. In other words, I suspect there are mini-Jobs all over the place. The sad part is I think you can get a long way without much influence at all, as what keeps people around isn't how influential or amazing you are, but how much they perceive you to be, and some people are finely tuned producers of bullshit.

I read somewhere in a list of"ten ways to tell your manager is a jerk" that one of them was "your manager compares himself to Steve Jobs".

I try and remember that, though likely not often enough.

Does the rule work for Steve Jobs himself? Maybe it does, actually!

I worked for someone who had most of those traits. However, he wasn't Steve Jobs. When I last looked at his LinkedIn, he had a long string of positions which had lasted 12-18 months until (I presume) reality caught up with him at each.

The problem likely is that he can continue to do this basically forever, and probably even get promoted along the way.

I have seen just this happen. I don't know how someone as basically incompetent as my former boss could do it, but he was made an IT manager for a huge government department, in spite of the IT department at my workplace having the worst reputation in town.

In the case of the guy I worked for, he was charming in half-hour increments and technically decent, and good at seeing new project opportunities. But bad at planning, sharing credit, and basic decency.

> I'll jump ship so fast it will make their head spin.

Sure, you do. Many people don't. There was this thread on Amazon today which tells me people put up with many, many abuses. Fertile ground for others to follow Jobs example.

There's a book I remember reading - I can't remember, but it may have been The Dictator's Handbook - which talked about how this is a common management pattern in authoritarian dictatorships (although typically somewhat more extreme in its implementation). The dictator ends up weeding out most people of exceptional talent and competence, but it consolidates his personal power. Bad for the state when it faces a crisis, but good for him personally. Easy to see how this applies to senior management at a public company.

(See current US goverment for a worked example)

(For the convenience of people reading this thread decades later: geden was talking about Donald Trump and his government)

> Easy to see how this applies to senior management at a public company.

Or any organization I've been in, some non-profit some for-profit, none of them public.

True. Any organization in which the incentives for an executive to increase or maintain their own power within the organization trumps the incentives for them to work for the benefit of the organization as a whole.

So why did it work so well for Jobs? Perhaps because in the tech industry, you have a high frequency of the rare combination of incredible talent in a profitable industry combined with social/political non-talent, so people feel stuck where they are, or love their work so much they don't care if they are unfairly treated?

Look at open-source, for example. People with little money, often in poor countries, giving away software that generate $billions in profits for already wealthy people.

Jobs said that what he learnt at Pixar was to hire and trust great people.

I think there is a big difference between people who try to act like Jobs and Jobs himself.

> Jobs said that what he learnt at Pixar was to hire and trust great people.

Given what we now know about John Lasseter, Jobs' record on implementing this advice was decidedly mixed.

What do we know about John Lasseter now?

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16687192/pixar-disney-an...

Most of the largest open source projects' contributors work for tech companies and are sponsored by the companies.

for benefit of other readers, I think that's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17062782

It is, thanks for linking.

I've had 15 odd positions in my career. I have no trouble bailing and everyone who stays can continue being miserable. It's not uncommon to hear from past teammates that they should have left sooner. Best time to find a job is when you already have one.

When it smells like poop everywhere you go, look under your own shoe.

There's a lot of shitty companies. Particularly in sfbay.

My personal take is there's not a shortage of engineers, there's a shortage of not-shit workplaces.

It's not always about the environment being bad. It's often the environment being bad for you.

After awhile, most companies go from new and shiny to sticking with the same technology (it doesn't make business sense to always chase after the tech of the week) that is not where the market is going. You have three choices - either fall behind the market, learn on the side, or change companies. I choose to change companies.

Second issue is that wage stagnation is real and most companies don't do market adjustments and the meager yearly raises start getting out paced by the market. The easiest way to get a raise is by changing jobs.

...where you'll find you're walking across a field of cow patties.

I just get paid very well and like moving up.

I'm not blaming the victim. Yeah I can say that living in a major metropolitan area with an in demand skill set where it is easy to change jobs. But not everyone has that optionality.

Eh, I’ve seen it work well at the director level too, at least for a while until the VPs figure out that you’re the problem, not everyone under you. Sometimes that takes years though. Strategically throwing those who oppose you / see through your BS under the bus is elevated to an art form in corporate America.

One of the things that made Steve Steve is that he recognized and actively sought out influential products to be associated with.

It's portrayed very well in the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. Wozniak says it's an accurate portrayal of personalities, unlike movies glorifying Jobs. One of my favorites is the scene where Gates and Jobs meet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG4DvM0wxdk

pirstes of silicon valley is in many ways a better movie than the ones that came later, and Noah Wile as Steve Jobs was phenomenal in my opinion.

100% agree! :)

Even Bill Gates in his AMA said its reasonably accurate.

Yes, it's a common pattern: "Steve Jobs was great! [anecdote about a time he was cool to someone he wanted something from]."

My reaction every time: Yeah, we already have a term for someone who's nice to those that they want something from, and who mercilessly leverages their power against everyone else. It's called ... "not nice".

CEOs happen to want something from some people quite often too.

I can tell you from personal experience that while it feels good and like the moral high ground, punching upward doesn’t work out much better.

Having read a few Jobs biographies I don't think the late Mr. Jobs surrounded himself with sycophants. I think he sought actual talent and capability to perform. The fact Apple didn't implode - rather the opposite - indicates this was the case.

Wait, are we talking about Steven Jobs or Elon Musk? Because, lets be honest here, they're both cut from the same cloth. And yet, the tech crowd reveres Musk but is pretty split on Jobs.

I think pretty split on both.

We just had someone leave our company because many people gave the person bad internal reviews because of this crap. And many left before that. You have to be delivering in spades for this to work.

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