Comment by cronix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cronix | Hacker News Reader

This reads almost identically to Steve Jobs history at Apple revealed in Walter Isaacson's biography of him.

> But it’s a difficult and exhausting book. Jobs was a world-class asshole. He was a selfish, self-centered man who heaped abuse on everyone around him. After a few hours, the catalog of tantrums, tirades and put-downs wears thin. You may have huge admiration for Jobs’s accomplishments, but it can be hard to hear in detail how the sausage was made.

> He was brutal about it. At one point, he decided to lay off most of the staff that worked on the Lisa, the unsuccessful precursor to the Macintosh:

> “You guys failed,” he said, looking directly at the Lisa team. “You’re a B team. B players. Too many people here are B or C players, so today we are releasing some of you to have the opportunity to work at our sister companies here in the valley.”

> Most people are socialized to be nice to others, to value friendship or feelings over the interests of the corporation. Jobs turned those priorities on their head. When asked why he was so nasty, he said it made the company better. “Part of my responsibility is to be a yardstick of quality,” he told BusinessWeek. “Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

https://www.cultofmac.com/126245/steve-jobs-the-world-class-...

Musk seems to be more of an asshole, like someone affecting an exaggerated version of his image of Steve Jobs.

There are entirely valid critiques of Steve Jobs. His overly restrictive and proprietary technology being a major one. But the myth that he was some kind of social monster is ahistorical.

Steve Jobs was very opinionated, honest, and unafraid to tell people what he thought. At times he was overly harsh, no doubt, and sometimes a bit of an asshole. He was "world-class" but not a "world-class asshole" by any reasonable measure. At best, he was a very minor league asshole.

The world-class assholes in business are the people pouring pollutants into rivers/air or selling cigarettes/alcohol/opioids.

Anyone who thinks Steve Jobs was a terrible person has no perspective whatsoever. They're evaluating his agreeableness against the typical bullshitting-manager at Google or Microsoft. People promoted specifically because they're mediocre people-pleasers.

The proof that Steve Jobs was not a "world-class asshole" is that he had many friends. And many people that consider their time working with him to be the height of their career, even if it was also very intense.

There are a grand total of 3 stories about mistakes he made (and eventually made up for) in his entire life, all of which he made in his early 20s or earlier. As much as people try to tear him down, he lived a better, fuller, and more positively impactful life than all but a handful of people in history.

He was superficially obnoxious to many, but fundamentally kind person. He hurt no one and provided incredible value to billions.

Maybe you need to look into what he did to his first born daughter, I think that will change your perspective

Yeah, I'm very aware. He made so few mistakes that each one is fairly well documented and this is the biggie.

He accidentally got his girlfriend pregnant at age 23, freaked out about her keeping the baby, acted like a petulant child about it, and then shortly afterwards realized his mistake and took responsibility in every way possible. His daughter became an intimate part of his new family, for decades, and was there when he died.

As far as we know, this is the worst thing he ever did in his entire life. He made this mistake at 23 years old and spent the rest of his life trying his best to make up for it. What more could anyone ask?

Read Woz's bio. And even he puts it lightly since you can tell he considered Jobs a friendo.

Jobs was unhinged.

> > “You guys failed,” he said, looking directly at the Lisa team. “You’re a B team. B players. Too many people here are B or C players, so today we are releasing some of you to have the opportunity to work at our sister companies here in the valley.”

perhaps it happened this way and jobs was overly caustic, but zooming out from that emotionality, the designated outcome was not necessarily a bad one. it's in fact the basis of creative destruction. when a team fails (and for setbacks in general), disbanding and allowing new teams to form can be net positive.

> perhaps it happened this way and jobs was overly caustic, but zooming out from that emotionality, the designated outcome was not necessarily a bad one.

You walk down the street and someone you know in passing tells you:

"Hey, you gain a lot of weight. You look fat and ugly. Nobody will love you so loose weight."

don't get offended they are just trying to help you. Humans are emotional creatures, treating them as if they are robots is reserved for psychopaths.

Besides if you are the boss and team fails to deliver, guess who is to blame first. Its the fucking boss who failed to access the task and oversee the progress.

and yet where would society be without them?

Yes, the amount of ingratitude you have to see after changing the world. "You shouted at a person. You said the F word!"

If I had to summarize the internet in one feeling, that would be jealousy

Ingratitude? How grateful am I supposed to be for the fact that they get some product here faster than competitors? I'll take a slightly slower world with fewer assholes, thank you very much. The world is still going to change without them.

You are not very representative of society

Tesla is worth 600 billion dollars. Means the world is very impatient to buy their cars actually.

Also, you don't get to decide how people behave and treat each other. The social equilibrium is such that you only get to decide on your behaviors.

Yeah I guess decent people are dummies for not wanting to live in the world made in the wake of geniuses like you and Harvey Weinstein.

I wouldn't use the word "decent" for someone who pokes their nose at your use of the F-word and voice intonation. I would rather use "control freaks".

Yes, the people who are specifically critical of abusive practices of poweful executives are the "control freaks" here. Flawless logic.

Tesla's worth as a publicly traded company is not determined by "the world", but rather by the tiny percentage of people who trade stocks - and even then mostly large investors, not individuals. So it's not exactly representative of the society, either.

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