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Comment by michaelpinto | Hacker News Reader

If we're still talking about him half a year after he's gone he must have gotten something right. I think something that techies don't see is that Jobs real gem is Pixar, a company that Lucas couldn't make work and a company that became Disney's animation studio. My bet is that as these devices go from being cool gadgets to the mundane that Jobs will be remembered for those Pixar films which will seem charming even if their technique is crude next to animation in the year 2032.

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No one doubts that he did some things right, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he mistreated nearly everyone who helped him make Apple the company it is today.

He should have been fired when he couldn't get along with anyone at Atari and he should have been fired the first time he ever called anyone a "shithead" at Apple.

I've worked for an abusive boss before, and no amount of success can excuse the fact that as a supervisor and as a human being he was a complete failure.

If someone thinks that I am being unreasonable, consider the fact that I have a disorder that basically acts as a get out of jail free card for me to be a total dick to everyone, yet I still find the time and energy to be respectful to everyone whom I work with, peers, subordinates, and even my abusive former boss.

> consider the fact that I have a disorder that basically acts as a get out of jail free card for me to be a total dick to everyone

So did Steve - it's called "the ability to see a short distance into the future".

Complete failure? Are you arguing that the products that came out during his reign are below par? Above par despite his supervision? Not worth the psychological damage he did?

I doubt Apple would be where it is today if he had played mr. Nice.

Also, is there data that supports a claim that, e.g. churn was higher under his leadership than under other managers in similar situations? I am not aware of any, and it would not surprise me if there is data supporting the claim that churn was lower (in some sense just as Napoleon was able to breed loyalty, even though he led his soldiers to war again and again). For example, from what I have read about Steve, when working for him, he could be very harsh, but you would not have to worry about being shot in the back. That is worth something.

He certainly built multiple successful companies, but he's not the only one who's done that. Few people have done what he did with Apple the second time—that's what he got really right, in terms of why people are still talking about him so much—turning the company around not just into success but into a behemoth, but if you want to know how he did that, I'd look at what changed. He was always an abusive manager/colleague, yet that didn't make Apple in the early 80s or NeXT in the 90s dominate their markets in the same way Apple of the last decade did with the iPhone/iPad. The vision, the timing, the perfectionism... none of that depends on also being a colossal jerk.

He almost did nothing for Pixar, except pouring money into it quarter after quarter and using Toy Story's success to rise again. He was a very big visionary, a great manager and he deserves every bit of praise he gets for what he did at Apple in his second coming, but his role at Pixar was only to negotiate and give them money; not that it's an unimportant thing. Pixar would most certainly not exist today if it wasn't for Jobs, but the creative mind at Pixar was John Lasseter.

Source: I've read two books about Pixar, more than 10 about Jobs/Apple and watched well over 20 documentaries about these subjects.

Actually what he did right with Pixar was to let the creative people be creative. I realize that sounds like nothing, and yes it is nothing -- but it's everything and here's why:

A bad producer or studio head who isn't a creative will always get his or her paws all over the film projects and tend to ruin them. Or worse yet select projects not on the creative merits but on a perceived notion of how they'll do in the box office -- the result is all of the bad special effects and franchise movies we see today.

Instead Steve had the rare courage to do NOTHING except let the creative people "make a great film". That's something that's very rare in Hollywood and deserves a ton of credit...

Exactly. And that's what I was trying to say. He created (or recreated) bot Apple and Pixar, but his role at two companies was completely different.

Standing up to the stuffed suits at Disney would have been no job for the fainthearted. Jobs may not have done anything at Pixar, but he certainly did a lot for them.

Could you recommend a good book about pixar?

"Pixar Touch"[1] is fantastic. Highly recommended.

Also, the 2007 documentary about Pixar ("The Pixar Story"[2]) is well worth a watch - Extremely well done. There's a shorter, 23 minute mini-documantary about Pixar Shorts ("The Pixar Shorts, A Short History"[3]) that I also enjoyed.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Pixar-Touch-Making-Company/dp/1400... and http://www.pixartouchbook.com/

[2]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059955/

[3]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1164983/

Thanks, i will have a look at this

  > If we're still talking about him half a year after he's
  > gone he must have gotten something right.

Godwin might disagree with this logic. :)

And yet, I remember seeing an article here on Hacker News where one of pixar's first employees said Pixar was not great because of Jobs, but in spite of him

I remember reading that but if Jobs hadn't have taken a risk and continued ploughing nearly all of his money into Pixar it wouldn't be around today. I think I read that he put nearly all of his money into it, to the stage he didn't have much left, and at that point Toy Story came along.

I think the article you are referring to was about the actual movie making process. If Jobs had access to that side of things he would have exercised control over it and people like Lasseter wouldn't have been able to create the work they did.

So his only valuable contribution was as an investor? That doesn't speak very well of him.

Not just the investment, but he also negotiated the partnership with Disney in such a way that Pixar was able to retain creative control of the movies and their identity as a studio. If not for him, they would have been subsumed into Disney and the movies would have been focus-grouped into bland drivel.

I get that you're a jobs fan, but suggesting that Disney movies are bland drivel, especially their cartoons is being disingenuous.

Well, I was thinking of a specific anecdote about how one of the Disney execs kept insisting that Woody in Toy Story had to be "meaner" and "more edgy" to the point that the project was almost scrapped because it wasn't working.

But in general, the recent Disney animated movies haven't been all that great, and a lot of what they do is just straight-to-dvd stuff to make some quick money on their existing properties.

The early guys at apple have said the same thing. Alot of the stories Andy Hertzfeld wrote on www.folklore.org describe pretty well how much of a "genius" Steve was.

edit: here's a good one. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s... by Date&detail=medium

We're still talking about him, and so are his co-workers. Jonny Ive, for instance, obviously adored him, as did Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, etc. These were the folks who worked most closely with Jobs and according to the book were subject to his scorn and mind games. Yet they speak of him in glowing tones. So I think the story is much more complicated than "be mean to people if you are driven." Jobs could apparently also be very supportive and endearing to those for whom he developed respect.

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