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Comment by evgen | Hacker News Reader

Without the assistance of a person (or people) with all of those other characteristics, deep technical abilities accomplish nothing. If it were not for Steve the engineers and workers who actually designed and built the stuff would still have died unknown and they would have also probably died without having anything of significance to point to and say "I helped create that."

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Steve gave massive credit to the talent and sweat of Apple's engineers and designers in nearly every keynote. He was as humble as you could expect of a CEO.

Yes, he did thank the engineers and designers in his keynotes – COLLECTIVELY. However, he also specifically abolished the previous practice of naming all software engineers involved in OS releases.

Admittedly, there were plausible reasons given for this, but I felt that ultimately, the reason why Pixar gives personal credit to their movie contributors, while Apple does not do the same for its engineers, is that our industry is not unionized.

I don't think Pixar's unionized - not under IATSE, at least...

There are often consequences to working in a largely unionized industry even when your particular company isn't unionized, though.

I read somewhere that this was because of concerns with talent getting poached by other companies (which was especially a concern in the early days of OS X, when Apple was still "beleagured". Still, point taken; there are lot of unsung heroes within Apple's ranks.

I think what might be more problematic is our systemic bias toward attributing the "credit" (monetary and social credit) to any significant work to one person. This just causes pretty much any collaborative work that is not between "pure" friends to devolve into resentment.

I think this has deep roots in American individualistic philosophy, and it's an example of how damaging it can be.

Well Steve Wozniak also became a billionaire, so while Jobs may have gotten more money but he also ran Pixar so it's not all that one sided. As to the "collective" effort argument that IMO that often get's into a social constructs where people are expected to sacrifice for the company and get rewarded for it. Where I prefer the concept of people who are directly compensated upfront for there efforts vs the social contract of working for a promotion etc. You can't be cheated out of a pension you where never supposed to have.

I think giving virtually all of the credit, wealth and social standing to the "visionary" is a massive error which shafts a lot of people, who are even more rare, unique and talented than Steve Jobs. He deserves a lot of credit to be sure, but it's almost insulting to say that engineers couldn't design a phone on their own.

Ives and a lot of other higher ups at Apple get a lot of credit. But I think your comments are misguided. I think working at Apple carries a certain level of prestige in itself, and I know they are rewarded with a great salary.

Without a Jobs, they wouldn't be given the opportunity nor would they be kept in focus to finish the job. As someone who avoided the management track it gives me no pleasure to say this but good leaders are necessary because they are the catalyst, engineers are a dime a dozen.

Great leaders are as common as great engineers.

It's hard to say who deserves the most credit. But Steve Jobs was the one pushing to push stuff past the competitors. I bet Samsung, ASUS, and the likes have or could hire equally skilled designers. But the people on top want to cut costs, so they don't opt for the milled aluminium case, or buying the companies they need to secure technology. Steve was the one pushing those envelopes, allowing them the resources to accomplish those goals. You give any designer, engineer a goal with very little limits and its amazing what they can come up with. But its really important that someone is there to give them that.

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