Steve Jobs' daughter Lisa's biography describes cold Steve | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs' daughter Lisa's biography describes cold Steve

news.com.au

This submission of an excerpt from the book was flagged to death, but I think the excerpt is worth a read.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17670525

And there was another yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17666649. Unfortunately it's clear that HN is incapable of discussing this substantively; the comments are basically "boo steve" and "fuck you, yay steve".

While we all need to be reminded of this occasionally, the exact same thing happens here any time a polarizing figure is discussed. RMS, Linus, Gates, Ellison...

I’m rather surprised to see a statement from a mod about a post with fewer than 15 comments. I hope this is a reflection of mod frustration and not personal feelings about Jobs.

It's not a secret that Jobs was an extraordinary business man but a pretty lousy human being. I think this is a quality needed for many tycoons of industry. Most biography's paint these people poorly, Musk, Ellison, Gates, Bezos even Page and Brin are all painted in this light, yet still praised.

If I'm reading you right, it sounds like you're saying that a quality needed for one tycoon of the tech industry was to disavow his paternity and then subsequently treat his daughter as if she was not a real part of his family. I've been an admirer of Jobs in the past. I think there is a real problem in our professional culture of people taking the wrong lessons from him. I'd be interested in any rationale for how his treatment of Lisa Brennan-Jobs was necessary, or helpful, or even acceptable.

I don't know that I've read anything painting Gates, in his personal life, in anything but a pretty flattering light. He was a tough competitor in business, but he retired and seems to have genuinely and sincerely dedicated his life and fortune to the betterment of the world in a way that few others in our field have. In fact, what he's done post-Microsoft has led me to reconsider his conduct while leading Microsoft. Certainly, I don't think it's fair to compare him to Jobs.

I meant it more as I believe you'll find more CEO's, founders, etc... of 'megacorps' having sociopathic personality traits, where they value results over having empathy for others. I believe it takes that kind of person to drive a megacorp to the places we see Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc... I dont think it's a needed quality (maybe?) but one you'll find more often than not in these positions.

This single example of Jobs is just one example of the type of person he was, did this affect Apple's success? No, but there are plenty of other example of Jobs being a pretty horrible person to drive Apple upward and onward. (and it was absolutely unacceptable, Im definitely not saying this behavior is good, or can be overlooked.)

Gates was largely not a great person until he retired and refocused his life (imo, as I stated in the first post all my perceptions come from books, interviews, etc....).

My point really is most of these people that business and consumers aggrandize and herald as revolutionary leaders are less than good people when judging them for their humanity.

This is one more reason why I think Frank Herbert's comparison of the corporate hierarchy to the feudal hierarchy is apt. In both hierarchies, leaders in a situation where they are high performers are almost always morally grey. Our progress is chiefly that our leaders, at both the national and local level, once resembled villains in Game of Thrones. Now, our national leaders resemble James Bond villains. [1] Corporate and local leaders resemble villains in Grisham books, just with a lower murder rate. At the corporate and local levels, lives are still destroyed, but not necessarily with literal bloodshed.

[1] -- Even Obama resembles a James Bond villain, with his exploding missile sky robots. He's just one of the good looking, smooth ones. Trump and Putin are a different kind of Bond villain.

I believe Jobs in particular had some undiagnosed and untreated lifelong psychological difficulty; his intelligence allowed him to function in spite of this but at a great cost to the people around him.

One of these is unlike the others.

> Musk

Musk participates in disaster relief, education and The Giving Pledge.[1]

> Ellison

Ellison participates in The Giving Pledge. [2]

> Gates

Really?

> Bezos

Bezos supports the Dreamers (after some pressure, yes). [3]

> Jobs

Jobs shut down Apple's philanthropy department when we returned to Apple in 1997.[4]

[1]: http://www.borgenmagazine.com/elon-musks-humanitarian-effort... [2]: https://associationsnow.com/2014/09/larry-ellison-teaches-na... [3]: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/jeff-bezos-first-big-charit... [4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/yes-y...

Philanthropy is not the only metric when considering if someone is a good person.

And admittedly I have no first hand knowledge into any of these people, only information provided from books, interviews and biographies so my impression of these people may not be accurate at all.

> Philanthropy is not the only metric when considering if someone is a good person.

And a biography is?

It would paint a more complete picture of who they are. Better yet, a personal diary or collection of letters (an autobiography gives too much room for the author to lie).

You can be an asshole of a human on some scale and still be a philanthropist. Human to human interaction has little to do with giving to charity.

It can also be purely rehabilitation for the image, as in the case of Alfred Nobel and his prize. How many people know about the Nobel Prizes? How many know how Nobel made his money?

That, combined with stories about Jobs' parking habits and medical line-jumping paint a pretty clear picture.

I pity Jobs and those who were around him.

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