If Steve Jobs was such a bad boss why did so many people work with him? | Hacker News Reader

If Steve Jobs was such a bad boss why did so many people work with him?

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71 pointsaniobi58 comments

This is only slightly related so I ask forgiveness in advance. But historical accuracy is a pet peeve of mine.

That said Steve Jobs bought Pixar after seeing the Luxo Jr video (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxo_Jr.). The true genius behind Pixar is John Lasseter and always has been. Steve Jobs just provided funding.

Don't get the wrong impression. I think it says even more of Jobs in that he recognized a visionary in Lasseter and was smart enough to just get out of his way. And Jobs did make some smart business decisions like selling off Pixar's hardware business. But he was not the visionary behind Pixar.

I think it says even more of Jobs in that he recognized a visionary in Lasseter and was smart enough to just get out of his way.

So, he's a meta-visionary? That's what the real angels are, the ones that succeed, and the rest are cargo-cult wannabes. (Perhaps some also-rans who had a little bad luck?)

I'm beginning to see more and more that people with entrepreneurial mindsets need entire sets of strategies for dealing with people who are without the mindset. Maybe this is the reason why Jobs has a reputation, because his strategy is to not suffer fools.

It seems like most people in workaday communications are accustomed to filtering out unnecessary BS, taking the one or two relevant points and acting on them. I can see how this is useful, but if they ever start working for someone who only sends a few relevant pieces of information, they're still in the habit of filtering out!

This can lead to infuriating situations.

An example: I send out an email to my assistants. I need someone to complete a transaction in thus and such a timeframe. They need to get this device from me and meet with the other party. I tell them it's an 88 key MIDI keyboard, I give the product number, and instruct my assistants to Google it, so they know exactly what it is. I give the other party's contact information. Let me know if you can handle it.

I get no answer from one assistant, but the other emails back and says he'll be by to pick it up. He comes by, looks at it, then tells me he can't do it, and looks at me like I'm stupid because it won't fit in his vehicle. ARRRRGH!

I have other examples. It seems to me some people are accustomed to ignoring 75% of communications.

(P.S. The gentleman is no longer my assistant.)

Interesting. I think I get stung by this as well - I've been struggling to understand why my clear, detailed, fluff-free emails aren't effective. The naive solution seems to be to pad your emails with bullshit, but I think this would often make them so long that they just don't get read.

One solution I've found is to talk to people in person, but this isn't time-efficient; another is to write a numbered(!) list of questions at the bottom, to force people to think about the things I want them to think about. But neither of these seems particularly elegant; has anyone come up with something better?

Too many people write stream-of-conciousness emails, where they figure it out in their head, and don't clean out the cruft after (and if they don't want to read it, why would I)

I think people have evolved in response to this to scan every email for 2-3 actionable sentences and stop once their queue is full. The best I can do is to template the email:

[Pleasantries in on paragraph] -action 1 (in 10 words or less) -action 2 (in 7 words or less) [Status updates and other fluff, they can read it or not]

Good point. Another technique I use is to send unrelated items in separate emails. People tend to use the inbox as a todo list, so getting 3 short emails is easier to manage than one long email. Once you act on one, you archive it and move to the next.

There are others who just act on the 1st email in a group of 3. Fire those people too!

I tend to waffle a bit (well, usually informative, but lots of info), so now at longish emails I go back to the top and put 'summary: foo'. Folks can get the summary and then drill down to detail if they want to. That's not going to help the GPs keyboard problem though.

1. Tell them what you're going to tell them. 2. Tell them. 3. Tell them what you told them.

Somehow, I was thinking there are people out there smart enough, where you have enough of a rapport or common understanding, where you don't have to tell them in triplicate.

I'm unfortunate enough that I don't work for a company where everyone else is smarter than me. (How cool would that be?!)

My solution to this is to be extremely specific in what I communicate (while avoiding condescension) and and to make my communications as easy to filter for other people as I possibly can.

How you do this, and keep it worthwhile to delegate -- something I'm still working at.

This seems like a kind of platitude; it hearkens back to writing 101 but it doesn't actually solve my problem at all.

Sorry for that. It is a kind of platitude... and perhaps I should originally have stated that it wasn't my own invention.

That said, I do find it useful to use this presentational pattern in meetings and also in formal conversation. Using this approach in my email has also served me well and this is why I suggested it in response to you.

Hmm, I could have been clearer...I can write a basic email, but when I have to write a long, detailed, technical email (i.e. here's what you proposed, here's how to make it work, here's the cost, here are the three problems we'd need to solve, here are the two design questions I need you to answer) the problem is getting people to pay attention to all of the detail. I don't think repeating it three times would solve that.

The gift/curse of the visionary is that they can see the future as clearly as they can see the present.

When Disneyworld opened in 1971, a reporter remarked to Roy Disney, "It's a shame that Walt didn't live long enough to see this."

To which Roy responded, "He saw it before you did."

I really like that, but Roy Disney died after Disney World opened. You may be referring to his brother Walter Disney (the 'Walt' in Disney), who died prior to the parks completion.

Talented creative people want to work on projects that matter. Steve jobs had the vision to create those projects. They also want to work with people who have ideas that are groundbreaking. Again Steve Jobs provided those ideas. Is Steve jobs a bad boss... I doubt it. It probably depends on who you ask.

This question reminds me of my kid's Jiu Jitsu instructor. People have said he's a jerk and he's received bad reviews online. I have a different view of him and so does my son - he loves his students and expects a lot of them. He wants nothing but the very best you can do and doesn't accept excuses. Does that mean he calls you out sometimes? Yep. Does it bruise the ego and make you feel bad? Maybe. But most of the time he's right.

That's an awesome analogy.

"...but all this "reality" keeps creating excuses, delays, etc. Can you imagine how frustrating that is if the product is so clear in your head you actually used it last night? Just get the fucker done! Enough excuses!!! Do you have any idea of the change in the world this will have, and if I give a shit about your kids little league game?!? He's not trying to be an asshole. But if he doesn't say it, he's not being true to his vision. It's a big weight to carry."

Wow, how self absorbed can the author be? Treat people around you like crap or you're not "being true to your vision?" Oh no, he's frustrated so it's okay. Of course if any of his employees responded to their frustration in a similar fashion they'd be canned....

I don't think the author was so much defending it as explaining the point of view. If you're fanatically devoted to your product, then it's more important than any of the people along the way, with all of the good and bad things that that entails.

it's more important than any of the people along the way

Uh, no. A widget isn't more important than a person. Maybe the quality of the widget and what it means to the Apple brand means more than someone's ego.

I tend towards this value system.

People who equate their ego, their saving face, with their value as a person? There's too much communications overhead involved with this.

What? That's not the author being self absorbed. That's the author trying to put himself into the shoes of a visionary and imagine how tough it might be to have grand ideas, vision, and clarity of thought about something that has the potential to seriously change the world. Frustration, I think, is obviously a byproduct of that.

Grand ideas, vision, and clarity of thought are no excuse for asinine behavior. This is what really puzzles me the most - why people are so willing to make so many excuses for "visionaries."

I must say that I did not find the author to be excusing Steve's behavior in the slightest, but I concede that room was left to read it another way.

He's trying to give a point of view in the mind of a visionary. I completely agree with the tone, and the idea behind what he's trying to imply.

How many times have I worked on a project and people constantly come in with personal excuses. "I am sorry my grandmother died" (yea you said that last month). "I am sorry my wife had woman problems and I had to go to the doctor with her" (nooo idea why you need to tell me that). "I am sorry my kid was sick all night and I couldnt sleep or get any work done." "I am sorry I have health issues and I couldn't work on it" (yea you said that 6 months ago when the project started).

In the words of my boss "I dont give a fuck what happens outside of work, just get it done. You dont need to tell me why you couldnt do it, the fact is you didn't. Just do your work, if you are unable to, let me know and I will get someone else to do it. DO YOUR JOB." Everyone hated him.

He was one of the best boss I've ever had. It's great to be on a project that finishes on time, and meets stakeholder's expectations. It's awesome being given gifts and thrown parties by clients because they had no hope it would get done, but you got it done.

Everyone knows, within a team, there are the few that make your project a hell. Visionaries know those people and make sure they understand their place.

Sorry, but I'm about to Godwin this thread:

"If Adolf Hitler was such a bad leader why did so many people follow him?"

I think both statements are ludicrous and smell of intellectual laziness.

I think you've totally nailed the naiveté of the OP. The reason both statements are ludicrous is that they judge the person in question outside the applicable context. Hitler was a brilliant leader and speaker, but he was a monster in other aspects. Horror stories about Steve Jobs abound, generally coming from people not working day in day out with him. The fact that he is a narcissistic, egotistical guy ("I'll be employee zero, then") has nothing to do with him being a bad boss in this sense.

In this title I think "bad" is being used in the sense of possessing qualities of bad leadership, not moral badness. For example, the stereotype of having a bad temper, being controlling, calling names, are all traditionally qualities of bad leadership. However, why do some leaders get away with it? What compensates for it? Seems like a perfectly sensible question to me.

The thing that sets visionary leaders like Steve Jobs apart from your common CEO is threefold: First, and the article went in to this is the clarity of their vision. Second is the ability to inspire people to do more than they think they can. People in these companies often work well above the normal workweek, yet they aren't being forced or intimidated to. It's because they are inspired to do so. Finally, they won't accept anything less than perfection from their team. Steve Jobs was(and is) well known to dress down, or even fire employees if their work wasn't up to standards. Bill Gates apparently had no problem saying that his employees ideas were "the stupidest thing I've ever heard". The first two qualities are what attract the people to work, and keep them there and the last one is what makes their work stand out from the crowd.

"sometimes it's a vision other times it's a hallucination"

According to Martin Varsavsky, Steve Jobs hallucinates too. http://martinvars.com/post/3761365862/mi-dificil-encuentro-c... (spanish) reads:

"Steve Jobs insisted european mobile networks were worse than american networks, that Apple invented WiFI and that the iPhone is the WiFi product with more sales. Stuff simply not true."

I think Varsavsky is a little in left field, but I can see how the Apple -> WiFi thing got started if you read up a little on some of the experiments that Apple was doing.

I will offer a possible explanation that might not be popular. There are certainly bad bosses, but there are many more bad employees. Many employees will not be happy with any boss. These people want a friend and not a boss. Even people outside of this group generally try to avoid confrontation. Avoiding confrontation seems to be the main goal of the average corporate employee and it leads to bad work. I am personally willing to tolerate a lot of flaws in a leader if he or she is actually a good leader. I think that Jobs may fall in that category.

Working for a visionary often brings about opinions on opposite sides of the spectrum; you either love them or hate them. This is true for Apple as it is for other tech giants. If you are on board with Steve's vision and can even remotely grasp what in fact you are working towards, you will love it. If not, you will probably hate it.

Much of this stems from an outward opinion of Steve Jobs being a jerk, which will of course vary based on who you talk to. This is true for every visionary.

Many people will tell you Bob Knight is a jerk, but he was one of the best college basketball coaches in history. If you talk to any of his past players that were willing to put in 100% effort and understood what his intentions were, they would tell you they loved playing for him.

Here's my question: Is being a bad boss a necessary requirement for being a visionary?

I am betting the answer is no. In my experience you can drive people to work really hard without being an asshole as long as you are willing to share the load.

Caveat: My experience is with < 10 people unlike Jobs and Blank.

Thoughts?

I used to get this a lot when I led a division of about 20 people. We'd usually discuss some aspect of leadership, and the classic question is asked:

"Would you rather go to a doctor who has great bedside manner, but isn't very good at medicine, or one that will almost certainly cure you but is an asshole?"

It's a false dichotomy. There are a lot of people, however, who confuse being great at something with a license to be a jerk because in most cases, people will tolerate you in exchange for your greatness.

But it's not an excuse, and I don't care how financially successful you are; if you don't treat other people well, you're not a success. There are plenty of people who manage to do both.

Exactly. I think it is a false dichotomy too.

Response to headline: If cults are so bad for people, then why do so many people join them?

I would guess that what some perceive as "bad boss" behavior is simply unfiltered honesty in communications.

To be as successful as Steve is, one must see the world the way it is, which requires complete internal honesty.

The pursuit of perfection is damn hard.

But the process far outweighs the proceeds.

considering a choice between wasting your life (very productive between half and 1/3rd of it) under a bad boss or making [technology] history and gaining valuable experience under Jobs ...

Hm-m... Why am i not working under Jobs? :)

That's kind of like saying, "if having unprotected sex can kill you than why do Thai prostitutes offer to do it bareback?"

Making money is important. Steve Jobs could literally be the devil and people would STILL work for him because cash is important.

The problem with Steve Jobs and the Apple gang is that, they indeed innovate first, but then they stop. The iPad was a revolutionary approach at tablet computing, even if the device was quite dumb. But making your second iPad exactly the same (sorry but a cover and slimmer does not equal innovation) that is just plain ridiculous, especially when they have the capability to make something incredible.

They are just taking advantage of their brand right now, like if they were still the old Apple that struggled to innovate!

The vision and execution is there, it's still Apple, but now they are just taking advantage of their market!

Time, Scope, Quality. Pick two.

Apple picks time and quality, and I appreciate it.

What would you have done differently with the iPad 2? Thinner, faster, better seems to be what they do frequently.

Improve the OS so it doesn't feel like a big iPod Touch! Maximize the iOS Core for the tablet environment, not just stretch it!

You're not actually saying anything here. You're waving your hands around, shouting "make it better," without any concrete steps for how that might work.

Meanwhile, not a single company has come to market with a tablet that can match Apple on price, consistency, build quality, operating system, 3rd party developer support or user experience.

I mean, what are you looking for in iPad 2, exactly – a holographic display and unicorn-bone battery, driving a telepathic OS?

I am just hoping that for a 10 inch device it wont tell me "Location Services isn't ON go to Settings to activate it", at least just put the damn button in that disruptive notification window you have.

The hardware is impeccable, but nobody had any problem with the thickness of the first iPad and that's what they changed. They know their average consumer don't know all those things and functions like tabbed browsing, so they take advantage of it by not taking some of their time and budget to develop those functions. They take advantage of their market.

How can a consumer complain about something they don't know; they can. But they still have the right to fully understand what is available elsewhere and what functionality (that is quite crucial) they just decided to omit. Consumers have the right to know all these things.

Defending the product and just saying it is all nice and good means that it will stay that way. Criticizing and getting informed is what everyone should do in order to make good decision and keeping every new technology advanced and innovative not repetitive !

> The hardware is impeccable, but nobody had any problem with the thickness of the first iPad and that's what they changed.

They changed substantially more than that:

- More RAM, so browsing and multi-tasking is better

- Faster processor, so apps launch faster

- Better graphics processor, so developers can make even prettier games or do crazy graphics transforms in realtime like PhotoBooth

- Cameras for video conferencing

- It's lighter, so it's easier to carry around

None of these things is trivial, but it's an incremental hardware upgrade. That's how Apple's cycles work: Major revisions every two years, incremental bumps in between.

Meanwhile, Apple's OS release schedule isn't coupled to its iPad release schedule. iOS 5 will be announced sometime in the next month, if the past is any indication.

Apple does better than anyone else at continually improving its software and making it available to previously-shipped devices. I doubt the iPad is going to be left in the cold.

"They know their average consumer don't know all those things and functions like tabbed browsing, so they take advantage of it by not taking some of their time and budget to develop those functions."

Wow, you just complained that a company focuses on things most of their consumers care about while ignoring things most of their consumers don't care about.

They didn't stretch it, apps have been re-designed to take advantage of the bigger screen. Seriously, what are you hoping an iPad to do? If you want dark, glowing buttons with 10 widgets on screen at once, I'd try an Android tablet.

They can do that at any time, software updates don't need to coincide with hardware refreshes.

Whoa slow down there.

This is the company that was nearly down and out and then came up with the iPod. Then the iPhone and iPad.

How many product categories do you want them to come up with (ok maybe not come up with, but you know what I mean) before Apple is innovative? A company is lucky if they come up with one innovative consumer product and corners a lion's share of the profits.

Besides, they came out with the iPad last year. Their time machine needs some time to recharge before they can pull more gadgets from the future.

To fairly clarify, while they may not have created any new product categories with the above examples, they certainly did succeed in redefining product categories, in addition to dominating. :) Perhaps the biggest thing the iPod had that other music players didn't have was a successful online music store. Likewise, iPhone and the app store and multitouch. Carry that over to iPad, compared to what tablets were previously.

Come on, the iPad doesn't even have a tabbed browser and they still call it the "best web experience" and I'm not talking about Flash. When you have a full tablet and you still have to quit your program, go find the settings icon, to click on Generla to finaly activate your Bluetooth.... it's just plain ridiculous!

You changed the way people will access mobile information with your first tablet, but don't get stuck with it!

Do you think the iPad's target audience even knows what tabs in a browser are? Or cares? It's entire goal is to simplify computing.

I would venture to say they do. After all, every major desktop browser has tabs (around 11% worldwide are on IE6, but I also doubt those users are getting iPads). How is a tap and another tap a simplified version of browsing compared to tabs?

I'm not saying the iPad browsers window management scheme is better than tabs, I'm just saying most people probably don't use them. I have no definite numbers, but from experience in watching people browse, they have a bunch of windows open and use the Google search bar to type in "facebook".

I realise this isn't addressing your point, but if a browser with tabs is your major objection to the iPad, I would heartily recommend iCab Mobile. It's full of power user features including 'real' tabs and costs $1.99.

http://www.icab.de/mobile.html

In answer to your actual question, I think Apple will address the more specific needs of power users when they feel they can do it without compromising.

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