In Praise of Bad Steve

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/10/in-praise-of-bad-steve/246242/

by dctoedt • 15 years ago

262 83 15 years ago

danso• 15 years ago

The talk about "Bad Steve" reminds me about Gundotra telling the "Icon Ambulance" story the day that Steve stepped down, in which Steve calls him up on a Sunday because "we have an urgent issue" involving the color gradient on the Google iphone icon.

https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKx...

For many people, that kind of anal attention to detail (and describing it as an "urgent" matter) would be the key sign of a "bad" boss. I think it's acceptable in Steve because if anyone has shown a good grasp of the cost-benefit analysis of such perfection, it's him.

ajross• 15 years ago

I don't think that's really justified. Jobs had a long career, and only two real industry-dominating hits: the Apple II (most of which was Woz's work) and the iPhone. A lot of the hyperbole we're seeing right now is because Jobs had the mis/fortune to die at the very peak of his hit.

Had we all been doing the same analysis in the mid-90's when NeXT was failing and Pixar a mostly academic curiosity, I doubt anyone would be talking about how great a judge of the "cost-benefit analysis of perfection" he was.

2arrs2ells3• 15 years ago

Wouldn't Pixar count as "industry-dominating"? It may be too early to tell, but I'd bet money the iPad will also end up in that category.

The man took a company that was going out of business and turned it into the largest company in the world. I don't think this talk is "hyperbole" in the least.

http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...

alexsb92• 15 years ago

I think it's more than the just the Apple II and the iPhone. The way I see it, the man's main hobby was disruption. He disrupted the PC industry with the Apple II and later the Mac line. He disrupted the music industry with the iPod and iTunes, and the phone industry with the iPhone. He changed the animation industry with Pixar one of the most successful, both financially, and critically acclaimed movie company. He revived an industry which most considered a dead horse with the iPad and where most companies are still playing catch-up.

I agree if this was to happen back in the 90s, he wouldn't be as praised as he is today, but what does that have to do with anything? If I was to judge anyone before their greatest moments, they wouldn't pass the bar. And yeah, he was kind of an ass in his early days, but by most accounts he became a lot more mellow when returning to Apple.

mikeash4• 15 years ago

I'd say at least five. The Macintosh was also an industry-dominating hit. While the Mac itself never dominated in terms of market share, it so dominated the market that almost all PCs shipped in the last 20 years are imitations of it. The iPod pretty much took over the portable music player market and remains the dominant player today. And finally the iPad pretty much created the tablet market and everybody else is still trying to catch up to it there.

I think you have a good point about the timing of all of this. However, Steve was consistently and shockingly successful for the past decade and a half, which I think is more than enough time to say that these qualities aren't just an artifact of timing.

msbarnett4• 15 years ago

We could argue about the domination of the Mac or the impact and legacy of NeXT and Pixar, but...

You really don't think the iPod was an industry-dominating hit? They sold hundreds of millions of them, and no other company ever really came up with a successful answer to them. It was left to Apple itself to kill them with the iPhone.

watmough• 15 years ago

The iPhone wouldn't be what it is without OS X.

There's another thing.

angelbob• 15 years ago

I find myself hoping the iPod/aquarium story is true.

jmjerlecki• 15 years ago

Couldn't this mean a number of things? 1. The device isn't fully sealed. 2. Isn't there always going to be air unless you cover each area of the device and seal it off?

nknight2• 15 years ago

I think you missed the point by a couple light years. Air escaping means there's room in the case for air to be in the first place. Air molecules aren't magic, and can't occupy the same space as other objects.

nikuda2• 15 years ago

It could be, but I've heard this same story told about a Sony exec. instead of Steve, and that was before iPod's time. It was a camera that he dropped into a body of water though. The rest is same.

Someone• 15 years ago

Funny that both devices cannot really be made without air in them.

That first iPod had a hard disk. Hard disks have disk heads that float on air.

Typical lenses aren't flat at the back; CCDs or films are. You could fill that void with glass with a different index of refraction, but that would only make the thing heavier, not smaller.

martey• 15 years ago

Doing as exhaustive of a search as I could, I found a couple of interesting things. The Sony version of the parable seems to center on the Walkman (as opposed to a camera), which was built in the late 1970s, and either Akio Morita or Masaru Ibuka (co-founders of Sony). However, the earliest reference on the Internet to it I can find is from September 2002 [^1], about a year after the iPod was released, making its origins inconclusive. The fact that it is linked to multiple founders of powerful technology companies suggests to me that it is apocryphal.

[^1]: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&me...

ScottBurson• 15 years ago

I've never worked for Apple and never really aspired to, mostly because my interests didn't overlap with what I thought I would probably be doing there, but partly, I have to admit, because I had heard the stories of Steve the tyrant and was put off by them.

Maybe my ego is sturdier now, because I wonder if I wouldn't have enjoyed the challenges he set people. One thing is for sure, you could know that if you did what he wanted, it wasn't going to be a me-too product.

jonnathanson• 15 years ago

I've worked briefly at Apple, but had only one face-to-face encounter with Steve. It was intensely scary. He was loved -- LOVED -- on the Apple campus. But he was also feared. And I felt that fear when I saw him. He was, and remains, the only person I've been genuinely "star struck" upon encountering. A lot of that was born of admiration, but just as much was born of terror.

In retrospect, I realized that I wasn't really afraid of Steve. I was afraid of myself: my limitations, my shortcomings, my relative talent (or lack thereof), and my performance in life vis-a-vis my self-theorized potential. When I saw Steve Jobs in the flesh, I saw an embodiment of everything I was not, and probably never would be. Frankly, I felt like a fraud. I felt unworthy.

A lot of that seems silly now, and will strike readers of this post as childish, if not fawningly fanboyish. But it was a very intense feeling that he inspired, even if unintentionally.

michaelochurch3• 15 years ago

99% of corporate executives and celebrities are underwhelming in actuality. You find yourself saying, "I could do that" or at least, "I know someone who could do his job". And you know what? Most of the time, that sense is right. The people on the top of society's heap are generally not more interesting or talented than the average HN poster-- possibly less so.

Steve Jobs is not in that category. His combination of vision, discipline, and courage is unusual.

brettvallis• 15 years ago

Not childish, on the contrary: quite mature, accurate, articulate and insightful.

Mostly we fear ourselves, what we are, what we aren't, etc. Whether the dialogue is accurate or not, well, that's up to us individually, and so is what we do with it.

Situations and experiences can hold a mirror up to us - so to speak - wherein we're forced to confront these fears of ourselves. It's interesting that the Steve persona did that to you. I doubt it was intentional on his part, just part of who he was, a part of the legacy he had created and you.

2arrs2ells3• 15 years ago

If this sentiment is common enough (I know I've felt it), I wonder if the Apple applicant pool will change in the post-Steve era.

Folks who are less confident (or - more modest) might be more likely to apply now.

Alex39172• 15 years ago

This idea of people as heroes or villains strikes me as being myopic. The very idea that people can be either good or bad shows that we're all just mushrooms growing out of a much larger mycelium.

Ever notice that so many of the most popular American tourist destinations are places like machu picchu, the great wall of china, the pyramids, etc? The fact that these places exist says far less about their creators than it does about the societies that produced them. (Although perhaps the fact that Americans are obsessed with the monuments of slavery and fascism says something about us.)

iand2• 15 years ago

Contrary to popular belief, the pyramids weren't built by slaves. They needed precision and skill.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/pyramids/pyramids.html#who

ars3• 15 years ago

I always thought that was a terrible argument. So they weren't slaves like blacks in the US south, but they could have still been slaves.

Slaves can have skill, families and pride in their work. Historically some slaves were trusted to go out on their own and do business for their owner, and not run away!

Some slaves became so important to their master than they actually inherited the estate when the master died.

So they may have been high level slaves, but slaves nonetheless.

michaelochurch3• 15 years ago

High-skill slaves have a strong presence in history. Romans bought Greek slaves for their literacy, and the Ottoman Empire had slaves who managed to work in substantially high-skill intellectual jobs, but were still slaves.

paul9290• 15 years ago

History shows many luminaries to be like Jobs was or even worse; ruthless and totally unethical.

Thomas Edison (http://www.reformation.org/thomas-edison.html) comes to mind.

_delirium2• 15 years ago

True, though there are plenty of very humble, friendly luminaries as well. Woz and Bob Moog come to mind.

lurker193• 15 years ago

Who is Bob Moog?

The class that includes Edison and Jobs is the class that wins the recognition and respect of the general public, including my 80 year old aunt who has never used an Apple product. I guess of doesn't really matter though, if the luminaries and some of their fans choose not to care what the public thinks. The nice thing about choosing your own definition of success is that we can congratulate both Jobs and Woz for their success even though they reached incredibly divergent outcomes and there is no way they could have ever both reached the same point.

the_grind• 15 years ago

There is no doubt he left his mark on the world.

However, I'd bet that > 90% of people who are praising him now would never have enjoyed working for him in any capacity.

nknight2• 15 years ago

I'll bet some of the people who willingly did so for years didn't really like "working for Steve". If you get enough satisfaction out of the results, though, that doesn't really matter as much.

People sometimes stay in otherwise intolerably boring jobs for years because they really like their bosses and/or coworkers, and sometimes they stay in incredibly exciting and fulfilling jobs for years despite loathing same.

gbsi• 15 years ago

I've worked with dictators (kitchen chefs in very high end restaurants) since I was 13.. First I hated it then it got to me.. If you're truly passionate about something, and its your life mission, not much else matters.

http://www.sagmeister.com/work/all#/node/207

mikeash4• 15 years ago

I imagine you're right, but so what? A lot of excellent people are unpleasant in person in some circumstances. There's a lot more to being praiseworthy than simply being a nice person.

wuster• 15 years ago

I've wondered about this myself - while I admire his accomplishments greatly, the stories of the kind of fear and admiration of Steve as a boss makes me wonder if that type of personality would have jived well with my wanting constructive feedback and positive reinforcement. It appears that in his later years (2000s), he attributed credit to his team and thanked them for hard work whenever he introduced a major product.

Tangent: One person would have first hand knowledge of Steve's management style: Andy Hertzfeld of the original Macintosh team: https://plus.google.com/117840649766034848455/posts

biot• 15 years ago

I worked for an overly demanding boss and would not want to repeat that experience. He was demanding in a petty way about things that didn't matter such as turning up the temperature of the thermostat in Winter when it got too cold. It was due to insecurity and ego that this boss went on his power trips.

I would have loved to work for Steve Jobs as he's passionate and demanding about things that do matter. The perfection makes a difference in the product rather than making a difference in his ego.

michaelochurch3• 15 years ago

Working for him in a mentor/protege context with mutual respect and trust would have been (despite the immense difficulty and enormous high expectations) a great opportunity. Working for him as just a regular VP? Not as much. Probably not worth the stress.

chaostheory3• 15 years ago

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Bernard Shaw

reledi• 15 years ago

I would like that quote more if it read

> Therefore all innovation

because I think progress can still happen in a world that does not adapt to change, but innovation cannot.

chaostheory3• 15 years ago

> I would like that quote more if it read 'Therefore all innovation'

I feel that progress implies innovation. Shaw's quote was meant to be general and universal, applying to crazy inventors as well Women who wanted to vote, and people of color who wanted equal rights. All of these people probably seemed unreasonable to their peers at one point.

saturn• 15 years ago

I have always thought that quote was ridiculous. What is unreasonable about noticing an improvement can be made in your surroundings, and endeavouring to make it?

There is a grain of truth I suppose, vis-a-vis humanity's general restlessness, fixing what ain't broke, etc, but I think that this generalisation that anyone who isn't perfectly happy and satisfied with the exact present state of things is "unreasonable" is not true at all.

chaostheory3• 15 years ago

> What is unreasonable about noticing an improvement can be made in your surroundings, and endeavouring to make it?

I guess if the Steve Jobs aquarium urban legend didn't sound unreasonable, you probably have the silicon valley mindset. It's really easy to think of the current state of things and to feel that everything done up to now is 'reasonable'; especially if you live in a really progressive, techno-friendly place like Silicon Valley. You need to know the historical context from the perspective of an average non-technical person in places that aren't as open minded and progressive. One example would be an average person wondering why people wasted their time making unreliable experimental horseless carriages when clearly horses were superior. I also can't help but think of the author of Gulliver's Travels making fun of people experimenting with electricity.

lurker193• 15 years ago

Being dissatisfied isn't what was considered unreasonable. Thinking that changing the world is easier than changing your expectations is what is considered unreasonable. From a frequentist statistical point of view, that is true. But some people are outliers who are able to bend the world to their will.

m0wfo• 15 years ago

Apparently he died of an extremely rare variant of pancreatic cancer called node.js

funkdobiest• 15 years ago

He was a visionary. He foresaw his own death, and started wrapping things up back in August.

podperson• 15 years ago

This article along with the New Yorker's piece rank as the best I've read since he died. He was an amazing man, and changed my life and many others', but not perfect.

In Praise of Bad Steve

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