Steve Jobs Understands Team Building | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs Understands Team Building

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119 pointssant0sk133 comments

It's amazing how many successful business types like SJ or PG recognize that people are the most important thing, and still the majority of high level managers view people as completely interchangeable cogs.

OK, I'll bite: how many successful business types like SJ or PG?

I probably worded it funny, but I think both SJ and PG have said that people are the most important thing. They both have pretty been successful, yet the majority of company execs still think people are interchangeable cogs (except themselves of course).

In companies I have worked in the best performing teams always had managers who worked with an attitude that their people were important and not easily replaceable. This held true from programming teams to basic call center employees.

From my limited anecdotal evidence it's clear to me that people are not interchangeable cogs in the machine. Hiring similar resumes will not always lead to same results, but I'm surprised how many managers still think this is true.

still the majority of high level managers view people as completely interchangeable cogs.

I'd say it's more common to make people feel like cogs.

I always cringe when I hear the word "resource" instead of "team member."

It depends on what are you trying to do: if you want to change the world you need the best people, a sweatshop doesn't. If you hire great people and the job you have is not at their level, they'll run away anyway.

Excuse my stupidity, but who is PG?

Paul Graham, who created this very Hacker News you are reading now.

Axiom: The most important thing is not what's on the table, it's what's in the chairs.

This is what made interviewing at Apple so exciting recently. I didn't get this particular job (and plan to apply again), but the adrenaline rush from realizing that all the folks interviewing me were extremely bright, talented, motivated, and into their jobs was instantly addictive. It's very easy to understand why Apple works and how it keeps its people motivated.

Nothing personal, but you are highly confused about the real world. You will not be employee #10 at Apple and they will not value contributions as wanting to make a difference.

It's nice to think they will, but I so long as I have direct line to someone who thinks it's "different," I feel the need to tell you it's not.

I've held about 10 jobs in Silicon Valley. I can tell you, the environment at Apple was rather different, and my friends who work there paint a picture of their employment there that is indeed quite different from many other stories I've heard, and jobs I've held.

Is it the fear, the secrecy or the interrogations that stand out the most?

http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/steve-wozniak-spills-the-...

Fear and interrogations? What’s your evidence for that? The “fear” in the headline of the article is shameless editorialization, the author of the article and his source make no further references to fear or interrogations.

http://gizmodo.com/5427058/apple-gestapo-how-apple-hunts-dow...

http://gizmodo.com/5319275/report-iphone-leak-interrogations...

FWIW, the "Apple Gestapo" article is almost entirely fabricated nonsense.

Gizmodo is not exactly an unbiased reporter of Apple news.

Your comments are extremely unimpressive.

Comparing Apple to the Gestapo because they have a legit business need to keep new products secret until they are released?

Do you even know what the Gestapo was?

Are you even serious, posting this? Ludicrous.

Gestapo? I take it you think I authored the Gizmodo features that I linked to?

He never said anything about being 'employee number ten' at Apple. He just said he felt the ambient invigorating and felt excitement to work with people of the caliber that Apple employs. Aside, making a difference doesn't have to mean to 'fix' world hunger, it's the small things that count. I feel exited to work where I do (not Apple) because I get to try new things for the benefit of the company, and because a lot of the code I check in end's up making a difference in the product sold to the end user. I'm not a drone and I appreciate that.

That's interesting to hear. Apple is rarely mentioned on here in terms of 'going to work for them' and I agree that whilst its probably going to be a lot of hard work when you're there that you'll gain some serious knowledge and work alongside some really bright people. Good luck the next time you try. I've followed Apple for a long time and I know that there are often negatives said about Apple and personally about Steve Jobs but they sure know how to execute and create some beautiful products (both hardware and software)

Related John Sculley interview on Jobs from October. It's a lengthy read but incredibly insightful for fans of Apple and great minds in general:

http://www.cultofmac.com/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full...

Really wish Steve could expand beyond the soundbyte and go deeper into how they hire, manage, do product dev, etc. Very much looking forward to the biography he is supposedly working with Walter Isaacson on.

The obstacle is that it'd probably reveal too much about Apple's secret sauce, or at least there's a perception that it would.

People usually cite all kinds of general reasons why Apple is thriving - product design, emotional marketing, vertical integration - while ignoring the unsexy foundation that makes all of that possible: hiring the best people and setting them up in highly interdisciplinary teams. And any edge there is going to be kept under wraps, especially since competitors like Google are doing it wrong - I've heard of how siloed the designers are there, just like at Yahoo or Microsoft. That's the real reason Google's products look flat and overengineered - their designers hop from team to team like little bees, they're not a core part of the culture.

Most people who read this article will self-identify as an 'A+ player'.

I definitely consider myself somewhere in the B range, but with the potential to be an A player. Today I'm A only in some respects.

Most A+ players probably self-identify as B rangers. :-)

It is largely true that the quality of the people (from HR to security to engineering to the trainers at the gym) that I dealt with at Apple were excellent, but one seldom noted problem is that in an intensely competitive environment, there is little more demotivating than running into a jobsworth, particularly one that you have to work around to get things done. It can really derail the train.

I had to look up 'jobsworth'. Glad I did. It's an excellent word.

reading this quote:

"When you're in a startup, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not. "

gave me some immediate deja vu. pg quoted jobs jobs in 'how to make wealth', one of the better essays that made it into his book.

"Steve Jobs once said that the success or failure of a startup depends on the first ten employees. I agree. If anything, it's more like the first five"

Jim Collins (a "management guru" if you're up for that kind of thing) says in Good to Great:

> Leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline---first the people, then the direction---no matter how dire the circumstances.

He repeats the "first who, then what" numerous times as the only way to turn-around a struggling company.

Ed Catmull always says that his approach to hiring was to find someone smarter than himself and that meant he was the dumbest person left @ Pixar.

I talked at one stage about starting a business with another IT guy. He had many fine attributes, such as being fiercely adamant that if any manager ever described a person as an asset or a resource, that they would get sacked.

People deserve respect, not to be objectified by describing them using the same language as things that are bought and sold and casually discarded.

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