Sculley: Apple’s Big Mistake Was Hiring Me As CEO | Hacker News Reader

Sculley: Apple’s Big Mistake Was Hiring Me As CEO

cultofmac.com

59 pointsajdecon27 comments

This headline makes for a misleading soundbite. The context is that Sculley is saying that Apple's biggest mistake was making Sculley CEO instead of Steve. The board "wasn’t prepared to make [Jobs] CEO when he was 25, 26 years old."

Thankfully that kind of thinking has changed in today's tech world.

He's also very clear on why he was not a good choice for CEO.

Has that kind of thinking really changed though? Apple was already a sizeable company with real revenue making real, physical products at that time.

Outside of online businesses, do you really see a lot of young CEOs?

That's an interesting point, and my question is why is there a distinction to be made between a hardware company and a software company in terms of management? I think that for various reasons related to barriers to entry and maturity of market, young people aren't founding hardware companies today like they were in the 80s, it may be difficult to compare. However it's pretty clear that young entrepreneurs command much more respect today from investors and boards than they did even a decade ago.

I don't believe the distinction is necessarily along the lines of software / hardware. It's more likely along the lines of "founding and running a new, small company" vs. "operating and growing a large, profitable company."

I think there are some things about dealing with tangible products that make businesses harder.

Look back at the dot-com bust. There were a lot of businesses that started and failed because they didn't have experience in the distribution of physical product, etc. (Peapod and Pets.com come to mind.)

If you're making stuff, then you've potentially got more fixed costs than you do than if you're running a software business. Those fixed costs alone can put you under.

In addition to worrying about software, Apple had to worry about supply chain, inventory, logistics, etc. And, unlike the Compaqs and Dells of the world, Apple was not in the business of making commodity hardware.

In any case, I think Steve was too busy in those days being a micromanager for the Macintosh team to even think about running the company. Don't forget he spent a lot of time alienating the Apple ][ team, who was responsible for most of the company's revenue at the time.

Getting fired, running a relatively unsuccessful company (NeXT) and nurturing a company into massive success (Pixar) probably gave him more valuable experience than if he had somehow managed to stay at Apple in the first place. And for all we know, the world would have never had the opportunity to see Toy Story or the Incredibles. Clearly, I see Job's firing from Apple as a win for the world. ;)

Also keep in mind that while at NeXT, they switched from a hardware and software company to a software company (and so did Be, which was the other company Apple considered buying).

This is a good summary, and I agree that NeXT contributed a lot to what Apple is today.

I don't understand your final sentence though... To whom are you referring when you say "They switched from being a H/w S/w company to a S/w company" ?

I thought that both NeXT and Apple continued to produce their own machines and software.

NeXT stopped making hardware a few years before Apple bought them, and was renamed "NeXT Software Inc".

I think that this says a lot about John Sculley's character. He has the strength to admit the realities about Apple. I find it surprising that so many former-CEOs are unable to admit the obvious.

I used to own his book Odyssey which describes his view of the world in 1987.

I have read a number of interviews with Sculley over the years, and it seems he has the wisdom to understand that he will be remembered as "the guy who fired Steve Jobs", and this has brought about a certain humility not seen in most ex-CEOs from major companies.

And contrary to the usual simplified narrative, Apple was quite successful with Scully running it:

+ they built the Mac from a toy computer into a real platform

+ the "sales and marketing" was top-notch with brand-loyalty singlehandedly kept the company alive for years

+ the company did some great R&D producing huge wins like QuickTime

+ he correctly understood that Apple was locked-out of the broader PC market, but had a shot at dominating handhelds

Plus the the consensus view in ~1998 was that Sculley had failed Apple by not moving MacOS to Intel and licensing it out to PC vendors. I imagine very few people hold that opinion today - as Sculley said, the company ran according to Jobs' basic business plan.

  And contrary to the usual simplified narrative,
  Apple was quite successful with Scully running it

From article I got an impression that these were benefits of Jobs' "methodology".

Even Steve Jobs was not trusted by his board because of lack of "experience". Those with experience tend to always overvalue it and rarely see their own limitations.

But those without experience tend to undervalue it.

Getting turfed from Apple was the best thing that happened to Steve Jobs. If you read the folklore, he was bit of an enfant terrible, and I'm of the view that the experience of running NeXT and Pixar gave him the insight to turn around Apple.

I'm not nearly convinced that Apple would be the same company it is today if Steve Jobs had not been forced out.

Agreed 100%.

My emphasis was on the fact that even Steve Jobs was not trusted by the board of Apple because of lack of experience. Being turfed from Apple might have been the best thing that happened to him but I don't think it was the best thing that happened to Apple. The company almost died. So, again, without diminishing the value of experience, I think those who have some, tend to overvalue it.

And again, I'll say that it is also true that those who don't have any experience, tend to undervalue it.

Your statement and my statement are not mutually exclusive.

The same goes with education. Those who have one can overvalue it. Those who don't have one can undervalue it.

Given that he is such a micromanager, I am not sure Steve Jobs would have made a good CEO at the time. Apple was already huge at the time, and as the head of a large company you need to be able to see the entire picture (not just your favorite corner of the picture), as well as be willing to delegate. These things require experience, the taste of failure (sometimes), and maturity. Steve was always brilliant, but I am not sure he was wise enough to be a CEO at 25. Apple was already much more than a garage startup at the time.

The guy you have to get to the first level usually isn't the same guy you need to get the second level.

I do wonder how Apple would have turned out if Spindler didn't become CEO. That's when things really started to go downhill.

You call it micromanagement, I call him having high standards. I don't think he acts any different now: all the designs and advertising has to be approved by him, design report directly to CEO, other stuff gets delegated. As for the large picture, I think Jobs gets it much better than most of other CEOs.

>Those with experience tend to always overvalue it and rarely see their own limitations.

Then they are doing it wrong. The single most valuable thing I've learned from experience is where I'm most likely to fail.

I'd like to have been a fly on the wall for these infamous board meetings where Jobs and Sculley began to move apart. There were probably more idiosyncratic lessons there than any of the biographies or interviews lead on.

Iirc, some of the inside stories on that topic are covered at folklore.org.

It would be nice to see these guys mend their relationship before it's too late.

I admire his humility. I believe it's Jim Collins (Good to Great book) who describes these types of CEOs as Level 5 leaders. I don't know Sculley's career, but maybe he would have been more successful being in an industry he was familiar with?

The best comment is definitely:

"What about the Newton?? I actually bought one. I still can’t believe that I did."

In hindsight one could say a 28 year old Jobs could have handled CEO after what we've seen him do in the last decade. It seems more likely however, that the lessons he learned in the 90s at NeXT were essential, not to mention the engineers and codebase used later in OSX. Sculley's humility is admirable, but maybe Jobs really wasn't ready.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com