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Comment by dmazin | Hacker News Reader

Every month "admiring Steve Jobs" becomes a stronger heuristic for me on whom to ignore and/or avoid.

Not only was he a sociopath who hurt others (read his biography) but he was clearly also a deeply unethical business leader not to be emulated (read this fiasco and also the latter parts of his biography).

He held some great humane design principles (read about them from Jef Raskin and Larry Tesler etc who came up with and heralded them) and was able to get tough projects through (like many leaders) of course. But I am afraid that is not what people admire in him.

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It is possible to admire someone without thinking they're flawless; or, perhaps, to admire certain traits/aspects of someone without admiring them altogether.

Michael Jordan was the greatest athlete of his time but an absolute asshole.

Martin Luther King had an affair (multiple? I forget.)

Musicians in general seem like pretty terrible people, with many notable exceptions.

I think the distinction GP is trying to make is in this sentence:

> he was clearly also a deeply unethical business leader not to be emulated

MLK's affair has nothing to do with his contributions to the civil rights movement, the latter being the reason that (some) people admire him.

But GP is claiming that the very accomplishment for which (some) people admire Steve Jobs (his success) was obtained via unethical means that should not be admired.

I think it cuts both ways. People can choose not admire MLK just because of his flaws, regardless if they had anything to deal with his contributions to the civil rights movement. J Cole has a song that talks about this somewhat[0], first two lines in verse one sums this situation up nicely (and applies to Jobs too)…

Also, some people may choose to admire Jobs because of how he did whatever took to reach his goals regardless of ethics involved.

Evidently when Jobs was alive, he did what he did despite what people thought of him.

[0] http://rapgenius.com/J-cole-she-knows-lyrics

Correct. I think that people who go through unethical means to achieve their goals are to be avoided. I worry that people admire specifically the unethical aspects of Steve Jobs' leadership, which is why I declared my heuristic.

I see it different: there are a lot of people doing [relatively] unethical things all the time while preaching about ethics to business wannabes. It's not only about Steve Jobs.

They aren't revered near unto godhead

You need to get to know more musicians. 'Musician' in this context is synonymous with 'person'. There isn't a 'musician' personality.

I believe the parent means, basically, "rock stars" (or "pop stars"/"country stars"/"rap stars"/whatever), the Locutus-like avatars of the music-industry, who are given songs written by the producer's songwriter and told that they're "theirs."

I think Japan is a lot more honest about this, in that these people are just called "idols" and aren't expected to originate any sort of authentic thought or message; they're just transparently icons in the employ of greater corporate forces, who go on talk-shows, and get talked about by paparazzi... and sometimes perform music.

Incredibly even in 2014 "musician" still has a negative connotation among some socially conservative people.

The US music-products trade organization doesn't even use the phrase "musician" -- it uses "music makers". Try to find the word "musician" on http://www.namm.org/about

What an amazingly awful website.

Your comment does not address mine. I pointed out why admiring Steve Jobs is an indicator of someone to avoid, not that I was upset Steve Jobs was not flawless.

That you use MLK to defend Steve Jobs troubles me.

I inferred from your comment that you think people who idolize Jobs should be avoided because he has strong negative personality traits/flaws/etc. I'm addressing that most people -- which include those who are famous and have achieved significant things -- have flaws.

I don't see how I'm defending Jobs. I certainly don't think he's a particularly good person, though I admire his achievements.

Admiring achievements via unethical means is like admiring a drug cartel leader for his ability to turn a profit...

There is admiring someone's work and there is admiring the person. I can admire the iPod as a revolutionary product (the one that changed the industry where others could not), without admiring anything in particular about Jobs.

What was wrong with MJ?

>Martin Luther King had an affair (multiple? I forget.)

And why is "having an affair" a character flaw? Because christianity?

it's because you broke a promise you made to someone. breaking promises is generally considered bad/flawed.

It's a silly promise in the first place, which perhaps is why it's one of the most broken ones by billions of people.

> It is possible to admire someone without thinking they're flawless; or, perhaps, to admire certain traits/aspects of someone without admiring them altogether.

The problem with the Steve Jobs "legend" is that it is told in such a biased way that many people believe that:

  - he was a Genius
  - he succeeded against the odds
  - Poor Apple was copied by competitors after inventing everything, and had to resort to patents to defend themselves. *(Miserables music playing in background)*

Well, the actual story is pretty much completely different, Jobs was an aggressive shark who did not care about sucking the blood of people and unethical business practices, Apple mostly did not invent anything new at all and while they were certainly copied they copied as much themselves as the others.

Therefore I'm not sure if there is anything much to admire of Jobs once you remove the layers of lies surrounding his story.

There are many more hackers who would deserve their story to be told rather than him.

And if you're a big fan of apple, Steve Wosniak would be the guy to admire.

Agree.

I really dislike Apple, but admire Wosniak.

This. I noticed a strong correlation between people I strongly dislike and people that idolize Jobs. Moreover, I found that people that idolize him (not his work) seem to do so because somehow him being good at what he did justified how he treated those around him. I guess these people see themselves as similar to him so they hope that by being good they can excuse being horrible to those around them.

Personally I feel somewhat similar to you, but I find it important to point out that I am discussing the way I filter dangerous/useless people out of my professional life and not why like/dislike individuals.

An important distinction indeed. I stand by what I said: I find people who admire Steve Jobs the person for anecdotes like the one about throwing the iPad prototype into a fish tank to have similar qualities of hubris and arrogance which I personally dislike. In a way I am of the opposite view: I will do business with them and hold my opinion to myself. For me it is a distinction between who I would have a drink with after hours vs n avoid in social situations.

I once met the ex-CEO of Orcon (a major NZ ISP) who had a near mythical view of Steve Jobs. The way he spoke of him made me realise that humans instinctively apply concepts to shape their world view, even if the concepts aren't made for it. There's nothing wrong with that. The CEO wasn't emulating the bad behaviour of Steve Jobs, simply the attention to details, customer focused traits that made his business successful.

To me it doesn't matter who someone admires. It's what they take from it that matters.

Also you can dig up endless dirt on the successful. As a rule of thumb anyone who's remotely very successful has exploited unethical behaviour some point in their life. You can do that with anyone really.

Ryan White's Mother, Ghandi, Mother Teresa,

Mother Teresa told Africans condoms were evil. Gandhi was a racist.

"We were then marched off to a prison intended for Kaffirs. We could understand not being classed with whites, but to be placed on the same level as the Natives seemed too much to put up with. Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized -- the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals." - Ghandi

1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/the-gandhi-none-o...

Gandhi was a lawyer (barrister) trained in English tradition. He was treated as 'part of the ruling class' in India. It is only when he reached Africa that he saw his real place among British who he was raised to admire and copy, and the treacherous ways British ruled India. His statement quoted above comes from his transition period.

It is Gandhi the old, not Gandhi the young, who is respected. No one is born a Mahatma. Except may be Jesus :)

Gandhi also mistreated his wife, neglected his children enough to scar them for life, and used emotional blackmail to get what he wanted from the British and the masses. He kept many beliefs a secret from the people which are coming to light of late. I cannot figure out why we admire Gandhi or call him a mahatma? Non-violence? No he used to beat up his wife and encouraged Indians to get beaten up by the British. We did not get independence because of him- it would have happened any way -given that India was becoming a liability to the British.

He is called Mahatma because people called him so. Those people and their children are dead along with him so it is easy to dig-up dirt on him. I read a great quote somewhere - 'nobody becomes a leader without doing questionable things'. I firmly believe it to be true for Gandhi and MLK and Jesus, but that doesn't steal away the fact that he was indeed a great leader of Indians and the whole world looked up to him for non-violence.

Regarding him being a wife-beater, I want to know your sources. I know for a fact that RSS propagates a lot of lies about Gandhi and Nehru family. I firmly believe he practiced non-violence and was NOT a wife-beater, WAS against caste-system, WAS against British rule over India. His secrets that are coming to light now (such as his sexual deviations) are things that were public when he was alive but almost nobody cared, or cared enough to propagate. Today, his legacy is major political problem for India and so it is being dug-up by some, while others want to hide it.

Whether he was responsible of India's independence or not, I don't know if it can be debated after 70 years of the fact. And I don't think one will ever get to the 'facts' by debating on this point. The maximum one can do is to read more and form informed opinions.

On-topic, while I agree that 'you can dig up endless dirt on the successful', the topic here is not the dirt, it is the person himself. Gandhi didn't become Mahatma because he was a 'racist' or 'wife-beater' etc. But Steve Job became successful due in large part to him being an asshole.

It's important to know what a person admires, and why, and how fully they appreciate the strengths and flaws of those whom they admire. Any kind of blind admiration is not a good sign.

Certainly ascribing all of Jobs's ideas to other people from whom he copied them is a pretty good heuristic for ignoring people too.

That said: I suspect Jobs's view of the anti-solicitation deal was not that he was lowering compensation (although no doubt it had this effect) but keeping employees focused on his projects. After all, being chased by headhunters is very distracting, and if the net effect is you get a great offer, a better counter-offer, and stay, as far as Jobs is concerned you've just wasted a bunch of his time.

No one admires Steve Jobs because he was a domineering unethical asshole. Those qualities are not rare in American business.

People admire Steve Jobs because he repeatedly built and led teams who built and launched products that transformed major industries. The ability to do that is extremely rare and valuable.

How is that working out now? From my vantage point, Apple is standing still.

Is your point that Steve Jobs' is unable to bring together innovative teams, while dead?

No, i guess he is diminishing steve's role in success of apple. He is saying jobs is gone and apple is still standing still without him

You are aware of Apple's history since 1997, right? Apple was in a far more dire situation than Sony is right now. Show me a CEO who can turn around Sony in a 5 years timeframe and you have someone getting even in the same ballpark as Jobs in terms of leadership and product vision.

There's a lot to be said about his character, especially how he treated others (although it appears to me that he matured quite a bit after his departure from Apple in the 80ies). But I don't think you can diminish his role at the biggest turnaround in IT history so far.

Confirmation bias.

Apple did plenty of 'standing still' back when Steve Jobs was around.

"But I am afraid that is not what people admire in him."

Citation? Most of the Apple-centric bloggers I read admire Jobs for the company that he created, not for the way he got there. Perhaps you're mistaking admiration with fascination: a lot of famous people are ruthless, but it's rare for that ruthlessness to be directed towards something other than money or power. Jobs's life is full of unbelievable stories, and people talk about them because it's fun, not because they think they're a good example of how to run a business.

> Citation?

You should probably delete that part. It is moronic to ask for a citation of an opinion. Your point is otherwise interesting.

First, don't be immature.

Second, "that is not what people admire in him" is not an opinion. It's a statement of fact. Fortunately, the internet is effectively a giant paper trail, so whether or not that statement is true, finding evidence of people's opinions should be a no-brainer -- especially if you consider certain high-profile bloggers to be representative of the general zeitgeist.

Quit yer passive-agressive downvoting and talk to me, you cowards. ;)

To admire someone for where they are and not how they got there* is something that troubles me and what makes me want to think the person is either 1) useless and to be ignored or 2) unethical and to be avoided, like I said.

*Or worse yet, to admire someone for where they are knowing that they got there through unethical means, which is the case with SJ.

Plenty of people around here admire Bill Gates for his charity work, despite the fact that he also has blood on his hands. At what point do a person's accomplishments supersede their sins? For some people, creating a company like Apple is enough.

Personally, I try to avoid black-and-white assessments of people, even if I vehemently disagree with them. I used to be an all-out Windows guy, but I started reading Apple bloggers because they had some of the most insightful and intelligent commentary on the state of the computer industry, product design, and programming. If you choose to ignore them just because they might have praise for someone you hate, you're only hurting yourself.

I'll always hold respect for him, despite what people say he was just as much a part of the home computer revolution as Gates and Woz.

I wouldn't consider the non-poaching agreement unethical... Not in the least. (though such a statement won't be popular here for obvious reasons!)

Nor is threatening other companies with legal action...

Anti-poaching agreements are deceitful and manipulative against employees. They harm many for the benefit of the few. Would you mind explaining how you find that ethically acceptable?

What would you find unethical? Surely there's a line somewhere.

No, such agreements needn't be deceitful nor manipulative. "No poach" agreements don't preclude me, as an employee, from leaving one firm and moving to another - they only preclude the partner firms from actively seeking out one another's employees.

If an "extreme no poach" agreement does, however, limit my future choices, then such information should be disclosed to me prior to employment. Even this more extreme form isn't inherently deceitful if disclosed. If not disclosed, then it would be unethical.

Note that California (and likely US Federal) law makes no poach agreements of any form illegal, thus making disclosure quite tricky. Of course, their illegality also makes it much easier for partner firms to cheat.

Thus, under the circumstances, the "soft no poach" agreement would be ethical: It requires no employee disclosure to remain ethical. The "extreme no poach" agreement, however, can not be rendered ethical in the current legal environment.

>"No poach" agreements don't preclude me, as an employee, from leaving one firm and moving to another - they only preclude the partner firms from actively seeking out one another's employees.

In reality, the no-poach agreements Jobs and others held expressly forbid firms from hiring the other's employees even if the position was sought solely by the employee herself.

Well there you go.

They're illegal. Completely unethical. It's not popular because it's flat out wrong, and hurts everyone working for those companies & our entire industry as a whole.

Good, I'll avoid you as well. Whole lot of good your mindless binary worldview does you.

There are legitimate discussions to be had about what Jobs actually did vs the perception people have of him. But there's no doubting that the former category includes a number of meaningful and industry-defining accomplishments.

Unfortunately, those like you who aren't done constantly arguing an equally biased anti-Jobs/Apple view seem to think that rehashing the truly dick part of who Steve could be discounts what he did (often by citing other folks involved / inspired, as if it doesn't take a village to build a revolutionary product). I'm not really sure I'd ever miss interacting with such an ideologue.

All this rage for a salesman? Wow...

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