> I’m not an uncritical Steve Jobs fan. I know, from having worked closely with people who worked directly for Jobs for many years, that he could be a mercurial, and brutish, boss.
That's a pretty big euphemism for Steve Jobs being a piece of shit. What I've realized throughout the years of working is that being able to work as a team is almost more important than your technical capacity. You can always become better in your field, but becoming a better human is a lot harder.
I've repeatedly said here on HN that Steve Jobs was king of the assholes and a huge piece of shit, and been soundly flamed for it. A vast amount of first hand anecdotes of him being an asshole exist and are likely not fabrications by the people reporting them. And yet people think he's some sort of god like figure because apple made cool products.
As a counter point some very boring individuals who are not jerks nor capable of forming a cult of personality have invented singularly iconic and widespread products which achieved great market share. One example would be Eugene Stoner and his design for the AR-15/M16.
Yeah but I would not say the products Stone invented are the same kind of, and I quote, “iconic”, as the products that Jobs invented. They’re just in totally different universes.
The AR-15 pattern rifle is certainly iconic; on its own probably more so (i. e. more recognizable) than almost all of Jobs's products. When allowing for the typical collective amnesia, the only two products that match, or manage to exceed, its iconographic status are the iPhone and the iPad; when bringing in historical expertise you can probably add the Apple II.
Interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that if you asked people in the US or around the world to pick the most iconic products that they would rank the AR-15 in particular above the top Apple products.
I guess it is possible, but I would be very surprised.
I might even think that the AK-47 or the Glock have more name recognition. But what do I know?
> I might even think that the AK-47 or the Glock have more name recognition.
A "yes" on the AK, and a "no" on the Glock.
The AR-15, incl. its variants, isn't called "America's Rifle" for nothing; it's the West's (tm) (cultural) analogon to the AK. Make the test and ask some "normies" to pick out an AR-15. Then do the same for the Apple products. I doubt many will be able to pick out an Apple II.
I'm just casually familiar with guns, if I saw an AR-15, I'd call it an AK-47. Or a machine gun. Every single human walking the earth has an iPhone or its replicant.
> I'm just casually familiar with guns, if I saw an AR-15, I'd call it an AK-47. Or a machine gun.
Okay. Sure. Just as there are people who call(ed) every video game console, or even home computer, under the sun "a Nintendo". I wouldn't call that casual familiarity... but I'm not here to argue about it.
> It's good to have a fandom.
I s'pose. If you've thought that's me you're sordidly mistaken; I'm not a gun afficionado but just somebody who's got to shoot short- and long-barreled guns to keep my weapon's permits, which I need if I ever have to carry one on the job. I would describe myself as casually familiar with guns, not more.
Stoner is more of a Wozniak. You’re comparing a guy who patented part of a rifle that later got used in another company’s DOD bid (and keep in mind militaries are strongly incentivized to standardize on platforms for basic logistics reasons), to a narcissistic asshole who sold something to a mass consumer market. Just different skillsets.
It's the implication that success excuses it that sucks. The fans don't care how their status symbols came about - only that they have them. The illusion is presented that without him we'd all be using MS-DOS to this day.
He was, objectively, a huge POS. Ask anyone who worked with him. He ruined people for capital gain. He failed to acknowledge his first child. He time and again made people miserable.
That phrase gets bandied about quite casually in my experience. Usually is an ironic light joke about somebody in your peer group on talking to other people or near your peer group.
As such, it's been sort of semantically watered down quite a lot in our popular cult.
He was a huge piece of shit. Yet, when I lived in Silicon Valley, I saw parents scrambing to get a house in the right district so their kid could go to Homestead High and have a shot of "being like Steve Jobs." They want their kids to be deadbeat dads who die in their 50s?
> No one has been remembered for being extra nice alone.
That might depend on how strict "alone" is. (Perhaps by definition, only having a singular exceptional trait makes it challenging to be renown.) For example, might Fred Rogers count? Or Dolly Parton who, though remembered for many things, has kindness as a core part of her legacy.
I think many people are remembered for being kind, but only by those who knew them very well, such as family and friends.
Well, depending on how you define success, I'd say Trump is successful getting elected as POTUS twice. He sure is a brilliant man to be revered, and the people complaining about his allegations are surely losers... (sarcasm to be certain)
I spent 11 years at Apple and attended many meetings with SJ. It was amazing to see how quickly he could understand a problem while, at the same time, being brutally harsh about why it hadn't already been solved. No one but Steve would have been allowed to consistently act that way towards coworkers.
Steve showed a generation of CEOs that being an asshole was a viable strategy.
> What I've realized throughout the years of working is that being able to work as a team is almost more important than your technical capacity. You can always become better in your field, but becoming a better human is a lot harder.
Is this a true realization though? Lots of people are very nice, but Jobs got a shit ton done that was truly remarkable.
Survivorship bias. My own experience is that the jerks self-select out because no one wants to work for them.
That said, in the entrepreneurial space it's less clear to me this is true. In a team setting? Sure. But the C-suite of a business isn't necessarily a team sport and a lot of wildly successful CEOs are notoriously pieces of shit including Gates, Bezos, Zuck, Musk, and many others.
I grew up in a one-highschool Texas town, a notorious football powerhouse. The brainwashing we received as players was incredible, and we were definitely respected members of our community (e.g. newspaper would interview us; girls; getting away with murder).
The football t-shirts we were given for dailywear said something to the effect of "loved by few, feared by some, respected by ALL" – and I just can't help but feel this message was terrible advice for [our] young impressionable minds.
We probably deserved it, when playing more-modest football programs, when the opposing team changed their objective from scoring points to breaking our ankles (literally).
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All to say, I have several brothers, two of whom are experts in their respective fields (engineering and law), with decades (each) of practice and expertise:
they come off immediately as know-it-all assholes (to most people; to me, occassionally) simply because their levels of expertise come with the sacrifice of social niceties (not always, but often).
[within their circles, however, they are respected as gods]
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But to offer from their perspective (as a stupider brother of these two): most people my two "asshole" brothers deal with actually are quite stupid [relatively]; they are having to deal with us "morons" on an hourly basis [†]
Once you get past the outer asshole wrapper, these are the people that are driving our societies (for better or worse) "forwards" – do not forget this – they are assholes because they care so much about their work/goals [∑]
[†] remember the Carlin joke: think of the average person, and realize that half of people are dumber that that || to true geniuses (which I am not, but two brothers are) we are all "fucking idiots, most of the time" (to paraphrase their amalgamation)
I don't think intelligence entitles anyone to being an arsehole thought it might sometimes be frustrating. Lets say we make AIs that are more intelligent than us in the end - do we want them being arseholes to us just to achieve some new technology or dream that they have? Perhaps we would be just as happy without scalable fonts on our computers or phones that we can doom-scroll on and don't need to be whipped into achieving them?
My hypothetical argument (based on forty years with these two humans) is: the opposite would be worse (for these rare mental powerhouses "to not care," to not produce).
The bigger concern I have in a world of genAI-overlords is that too many competing AIgoalsetters will result in us humancattle becoming "tragedied in the commons," where too many competing goals overwhelm the limits of actual humanity's desire "to care" [i.e. most people do NOT want to work all the time; these two brothers do, as I presume hyperintelligent genAIs will, as well].
#They'reMadeOutOfWeights #Inexhaustable
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I am an identical twin with one of these entities, yet am (probably) among the laziest people I've ever met (not that I can't/don't/&haven't worked), but I prefer to do literally nothing (hobbies, only, in limited dosages).
There are many other options... A reframe that may be more compelling:
Anger and lashing out at events you can't control is a form of stupidity. It is emotional stupidity. You are expending resources and energy for no gain. It's natural and expected, but also something we can improve at.
You are also likely harming your goals by engendering ill-will. Any motivational benefit provided by being tough on those you interactive with can be achieved more directly, without 90% of the "asshole" piece. One can be firm, assertive, and determined without the poor emotional regulation.
I have 2 older brothers and idolised them until more recently. To me it sounds like you feel a bit overshadowed. Personally I would reject that whole thing. I know you're proud of them but you don't have to be proud at your own expense.
There are many engineers in the world and quite a lot of driven people who achieve things and enjoy letting one know it but the world is 8 billion people now and nobody can be Isaac Newton or Einstein or whatever. Nobody is really irreplaceable and one should not try to compete for renown unless one wants to make oneself unhappy. If someone loves you and you have enough to eat and somewhere to sleep and you're not overly worried about tomorrow then you're winning and if one of those things is missing then sort it out but don't go around talking about how you're lazy. ** that s*t.
Yes, this is how I observe my Truth; but also, what I'm trying to share/convey is that these "high functioning" individuals (e.g. two of my brothers) view almost everybody else as lazy (myself included).
While there is truth to this, I'm not trying to belittle myself; I'm trying to share how my own super-duper-intelligent brothers view most-everybody-else in this world... at least 7.8 billion of us.
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Thanks for your perspective. I think my biggest frustration (perhaps this is "normal: you got older"?) is that as they've hyperfocused in their specialties, they don't really have time for (almost) anybody else. I guess that's okay.
The argument here is that "know-it-all assholes" arise spontaneously if you excel in a field and care so much about it, which I kind of agree with. The corollary here seems to be that several people associate being an asshole as meaning you're good at something. However, that's just an excuse for being an asshole, as it's not a necessary condition to excel at something. It's only through our lack of discipline to tame our own minds that leads us to becoming assholes in general and using expertise as an excuse.
Those should not be ideals we strive for; you can excel without sacrificing social niceties and we should strive for intellectual humility. As one gets better in their respective fields (specially in ours that is always changing so fast), one should try to keep its ego in check. There is a saying in my country: "No one is so big that they cannot learn, nor so small that they cannot teach."¹
The problem with "know-it-all assholes" is that most think they are always talking to someone below them and their expertise carry on to all other fields². Their pride may prevent them from admitting from learning from even the most ignorant of beings.
As an exercise, ask your brothers the times that they were wrong (specially if there was anytime that came from someone that surprised them). If they fail to recollect many stories, I fear you're only hearing one part of the story and you'll never know it yourself. Steve Jobs himself used to do that: people would bring ideas to him that he would dismiss. A week later, he would come back with the idea presented as his.
We should strive to be gentle and humble to anyone, despite success in a field: we'll never know who we're talking to and what they can teach us. Perhaps is our misconception that we think that we're average (or above average) that prevents us from learning from other people.
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¹There is a variation, "No one is so ignorant that they have nothing to teach, no one is so wise that they have nothing to learn.", but I kinda like the former because it fits perfectly with the Lord of the Rings.
> Once you get past the outer asshole wrapper, these are the people that are driving our societies (for better or worse) "forwards" – do not forget this – they are assholes because they care so much about their work/goals [∑]
I forgot to address that you mentioned explicitly that assholes are pushing our society forward and they are assholes because they care about their work. Be careful to not conflate expertise and assholeness. As I mentioned in my comment, assholeness is a disguise; it's not a necessary condition to be excellent in your field. It may help one to achieve their own goals sometimes --- which in general revolves around getting more money to the highest bidder and themselves. They care so much about their work that sometimes they have a huge blindspot that prevents them from seeing the tragedy of the commons right in front of them (per Upton Sinclair's law). No, it's not expertise, it's lack of character. They are simply unaligned with what's good for society vs. what would bring them more money. Steve Jobs was an expert in some fields, but he needed Steve Wozniak. Wozniak is a great counterpoint to Jobs expert-assholeness: he was an expert (a programmer's programmer), cared about his work, and for all accounts, was kind and ethical. As an example of just an asshole, there's Martin Shrkeli and several other politicians that fit the bill --- just assholes, not experts, pushing their own goals.
The main element missing from my previous comment (which you responded to) is my failure to convey that my two expert brothers' "assholeishness" stems from having to deal with literal stupider people, all day long. Not just customer service dealing with general public -stupid, but actually 40-IQ-points-LOWER -stupid.
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>As an exercise, ask your brothers the times that they were wrong
I know most of the few skeletons hanging in their closets; somehow all the chaos, on the road went to me (they are both indoor cats, now).
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I'll read over more of your thoughts and update if anything else sticks out to me. From a legal-representation-POV, obviously you want a bigBAD asshole representing you (it's just how the game works).
That's a pretty big euphemism for Steve Jobs being a piece of shit. What I've realized throughout the years of working is that being able to work as a team is almost more important than your technical capacity. You can always become better in your field, but becoming a better human is a lot harder.