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Comment by jinushaun | Hacker News Reader

But yet, you never see him up on stage... There's a cult of personality around Ive on the Internet—everyone wants him to replace Jobs as CEO, but is that even realistic? Sure, he can design, but can he run a company?

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Have you heard about the Peter Principle?

From Wikipedia: "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position at which they cannot work competently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

Knowing what somebody is not good at is almost as essential as knowing what people are good at. I guess both Ive and Apple know this.

If you believe in the Peter Principle, you might be interested in the Gervais Principle (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/) which uses characters from The Office to wax philosophical about organizational structure. At the very least, the first part is worth a read. It diverges from the Peter Principle in a number of thought-provoking ways.

Highly entertaining (and insightful), thanks.

There is a subtlety however. At most companies, you need less competence the higher you rise. What gets rewarded is playing the game, not competence.

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/rule-zero-how-things-reall...

Is there anyone who can replace Ive in his current position?

If you think there’s not then you already have the answer to the question whether Ive could become CEO. His ability as a CEO doesn’t even figure into it, at least not very much. He can’t be CEO and designer at the same time and a designer like Ive is at least as important for Apple as a good CEO.

I used to like the idea of Ive as a CEO but in hindsight that’s foolish and shortsighted. Sure, it sounds good but don’t you dare start thinking about it.

Not promoting someone because they're too good at their current job is a mistake bad companies make.

The opposite could also be a mistake: What if you promote that person to a position it is not qualified for? (I think the Peter Principle was already mentioned around here.)

Of course, you shouldn't promote someone as a lifetime achievement award. But at the same time if you hold someone back that has higher aspirations you will lose them.

We don’t know anything about Ive’s aspirations.

There's a difference between not promoting someone from lead code monkey, and not promoting someone from head of industrial design at Apple. The latter is a valid landing point for the rest of your life.

We all make that judgment individually. We all have different aspirations. You can't hold someone back because theyre too good at their job. You can let them stay where they are, if that's what they want. Otherwise you have to eventually make the tough decision to either promote your talent, or let them go.

Head of design at Apple -> CEO of Apple is not a promotion, however. It's a career change.

On the contrary, I think it's a management innovation that tech companies have figured out how to keep good technical people in their areas of core competency by giving them the things they would really want out of a promotion, whether that be compensation, autonomy, etc.

The article notes that Ive is worth $128 million and has tremendous autonomy within the company. I.e. he gets compensated extremely well and has a ton of power but still gets to do the work he is obviously very good at. Why would he want to become CEO where he'd spend all his time answering to shareholders and analysts? Just to move up one step on the org chart?

Where you really get the promotion problem is when your corporate structure is too inflexible to give adequate compensation and authority to your best technical people. That does not seem to be a problem here.

I want to preface this by saying that I'm not implying there is any problem with the Ive/Apple situation, I'm merely arguing against the idea that you can stop an ambitious person from climbing as far as they want to climb.

You can never compensate a person what they would make if you actually promoted them. I.e., you can't pay your CEO less than or equal to your Chief Engineer. If I'm wrong on this feel free to speak up and/or down vote me.

I think you're making some assumptions here that are not necessarily correct, 1) that by being CEO you don't get to do the fun stuff, we only have to look at Apple's own former CEO to know that's not the case, and 2) that a person at this level is going to reflect on the choice and not think they would be good at the higher position. I'm no John Ive, but even my little ego has never allowed me to think I won't be equally good at some higher position than my current one.

"Code monkey", really? I guess Jeff Dean, for example, feels pretty good as a top code monkey at Google.

That's exactly the point I'm making.

Promoting someone who is good at their job into a job they are not a good fit for is a much more common mistake.

Peopleware points this out as a reason to maintain distinct hierarchies for product development and software engineering.

And I do, too. :)

Promoting someone to a job they're less good at because they're really good at their current job is also a mistake bad companies make.

Keeping high performers in a role where they can perform highly, but giving them status, titles, and compensation in line with their importance to the company is the solution to both problems. This is why great engineering companies have career paths for engineers that don't necessarily extend into management. Hell, that's why Ive has a "Senior Vice President" title in the first place.

I don't think Ive wants the CEO position. He has his dream job right now, and he's the best in the world at it. And he's certainly been well compensated for it.

More than that would he want to run a company.

I'm fairly certain the answer to that is no.

He doesn't have to run a company - that's what VPs are for - he has to LEAD a company.

In the 70s you lead by having the best hardware - you needed Woz at the head.

In the 80/90s you lead by having the best OS - that's why Next mattered.

Then you lead by having the best design - it would have made sense to have the designer at the head.

Apple is currently winning because it has the best production management in the world. It got their by having the best design but it's unassailable now because it totally owns the manufacturing business. Who else can get Samsung to produce cheaper parts for it's tablet than they can supply to their own tablets!

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