Rory - Neopoleon : Back in the Day - #1

Welcome to Neopoleon - Sign in | Join | Help

Navigation: Home | Forums | Galleries

Back in the Day - #1 - Working for Steve Jobs

I'm sitting here, drugged to the gills on this uber potent anti-nausea medication my doctor gave me the other day, but I'm writing a post anyway. It's because I think I had an idea.

Actually, it isn't so much that I think I had an idea: I did have an idea. However, I don't know if it's a good idea or not, and I'm certainly in no state to go around judging, so I thought I'd dump it on your doorstep and run away.

As my move to Connecticut draws closer, I've been thinking a lot about life. You get irritatingly introspective at the points in your life when you know you're making a big change. You can't do anything to stop it, although you'd gladly stop the onslaught of personal evaluation with a nice sharp kick to the groin if you could. Or, if mace worked, you could use that, too.

I've noticed that I'm really painting a pretty picture of my past as I dwell on it. Take my childhood for example - in my mind, I've added "hungry," "poor," "confused," and "lonely" together, and somehow come out with "happiness." I don't know how that works, but I know that I sure would like to get my hands on whatever it is that my brain's been smoking.

I then started thinking about how common it is to romanticize the past. It's something that we all think about from time to time, but it's been, at least for me, one of those very transient thoughts that I disregard almost as quickly as it arrives. Thinking long and hard about nostalgia might be fun for a bunch of high brow intellectuals, but it isn't exactly going to put dinner on the Blyth table, if you know what I mean.

That's when I had my idea.

This is the first installment of a comic series that I'm going to call "Back in the Day." I'm taking an item from the past that people have romanticized to the point that it's nostalgically bulletproof. I don't know exactly what I mean by the phrase "nostalgically bulletproof," but that's something you're going to have to take up directly with my brain. I'm just the hands here, typing, delivering whatever messages are sent down the arms from the guy in charge.

So, this first bit of "Back in the Day" deals with something that computer geeks the world over have romanticized the hell out of: The golden era of computing. That time when 8-bit processors chunked text-mode graphics on the screen, and also when this little company called "Apple," now known best as the world's largest non-profit organization, was about to bring out its IBM killer called the "Macintosh."

I was reading some of the articles up on folklore.org on the history of Apple. There are some incredible entries in there by Andy Hertzfeld, one of the guys who was there "back when," and the picture he paints of Apple...

...well, I don't think that working for Steve Jobs "back in the day" was probably all that great.

Also note that, as is the case with today's comic, "Back in the Day" will often touch on the experiences that we tend to romanticize the most: The ones we didn't have. For example, at the time that the activities depicted in this comic were taking place, I was in kindergarten, picking my nose and wiping it on the girls I thought were cute. Either that or emptying the pencil shavings from the sharpener and dumping them in Patrick Sherman's hair while we played Dukes of Hazzard, which really confused him since we were supposed to be "buds," and he was never able to provide himself an answer to the question, "Rory: Friend or foe?" as a result. Point being, I was nowhere near Cupertino at the time, and if I had been, I would have been at the Toys R Us bar, slamming back glasses of milk and challenging the other kids to thumb wars.

Finally, lest I should be called an Apple-hater for all this, I'd like it to be known that I bought another Mac this past week, so it's not like I don't appreciate all the hard work these people have done. I just think that the company, and particularly its history, have been ever so slightly romanticized over the years...

Published Saturday, February 21, 2004 11:08 PM by Rory

Filed Under: Comics

Comments

	Andy said: Heh. Funny. I like it but I fear the humorless masses will probably check in with a few Rory flames over this one. Reading their posts is sometimes as funny as the original post. In a "good God who let that into the gene pool!?!" sort of way. February 21, 2004 11:18 PM
	Alethie said: Ive not read much about the history or Apple, but every time I see Jobs speak, or read some of his comments, this is the exact picture that gets painted in my head. Well done. February 21, 2004 11:30 PM
	mike said: Steven Levy wrote a book titled "Insanely Great" that talks about the history of the Mac, and of course about Jobs. Worth a read. February 22, 2004 12:29 AM
	Louis Parks said: It reprents Jobs as he was represented in "Pirates of Silicon Valley." Don't know if that's how it really was, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. February 22, 2004 1:00 AM
	Rory said: Louis - "Don't know if that's how it really was, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me." I think the "Pirates of Silicon Valley" Steve Jobs was sugar-coated. Read some of the stories on folklore.org - he wasn't a very nice guy :) February 22, 2004 1:03 AM
	Bliggy said: 'emptying the pencil shavings from the sharpener and dumping them in Patrick Sherman's hair while we played Dukes of Hazzard, which really confused him since we were supposed to be "buds," and he was never able to provide himself an answer to the question, "Rory: Friend or foe?" ' It must be genetic ... think French and WWII. February 22, 2004 12:59 PM
	peterb said: I wrote about the Folklore site a bit here: http://peterb.telerama.com/weblog/archives/000005.html, and I think I have a slightly different perspective than you, Rory. First off, i did laugh at your cartoon, but mostly it was a laugh of recognition. I don't think Steve Jobs really is unique in that regard; to some extent, working on a big, important programming project that is going to change the world means that you're going to be under a lot of pressure. But good programmers are lazy. The same laziness that leads us to spend days figuring out a clever hack that will save us work in the long run also makes us lazy in the traditional sense of the word, too. So just remember that while I'm sure Steve was a raging jerk back in the early days of the mac (or now), it's that same raging jerkiness that is responsible for such great products coming out of the company. There are plenty of companies or universities where you can work an easy job with 8 hour days and no one yelling at you or making your life stressful with deadlines that seem impossible. If that's what you want, don't work at a startup (or at a non-startup company that is trying to do something truly innovative). What people are romanticizing isn't Steve Jobs being a jerk, but the fact that his jerkiness -- among other factors -- helped push them to transcend their limitations. Having done it myself, I think that's something worth romanticizing. So keep writing those cartoons, and understand what you're poking fun at. That'll make them even funnier. February 22, 2004 4:30 PM
	Rory said: Peter - "So just remember that while I'm sure Steve was a raging jerk back in the early days of the mac (or now), it's that same raging jerkiness that is responsible for such great products coming out of the company." I don't think that he had to be as much of a bastard as he was - there's a point at which you just turn people off and they quit. Think SteveW. There are companies that have been much more successful, but which have been run by people interested in the success of the company more than satistying their own egos at the expense of other people's self-respect. Just because Steve Jobs was able to do it, and just because Apple did well, doesn't mean that it's the only way to get things done, or that it's the best. Steve's skill seems to be coming up with that killer idea, and then seeing it through to completion - the problem is that, from what I've read, he only seems to know of one way to get people "motivated" - the Steve Way. There are others, though, who could have done just as well with the same ideas without reducing people to little puddles of insignificance. "There are plenty of companies or universities where you can work an easy job with 8 hour days and no one yelling at you or making your life stressful with deadlines that seem impossible." If your idea of an "easy" job is one where you work 8 hour days and nobody yells at you while demanding the impossible, then you have an interesting concept of "easy." I think the American work ethic is totally whacked and that far too many people believe that pain and suffering are the same thing as success. The flipside to your easy university job example is that there have been plenty of people who have set up cots in their offices, worked 20 hour days for weeks on end, and failed miserably - more, in fact, than have succeeded, which is The Way in business. "What people are romanticizing isn't Steve Jobs being a jerk, but the fact that his jerkiness -- among other factors -- helped push them to transcend their limitations." This is something I could have been clearer about - I wasn't addressing the romanticization of Steve Jobs, but rather of Apple. I've heard plenty of people I know say things like, "Man - to have worked at Apple back in the day," or, "I wish I could have been at Microsoft back in the day." They paint pictures of how fun it would be to work in a garage while doing what they love and making mountains of dough, but I think they selectively forget about things like Steve Jobs coming around to bust your ass because you thought it'd be OK to stop working this month for five minutes and take a multivitamin so that you don't pass out from exhaustion. I guess that's what happens when you do this stuff while being under the influence of some weird anti-barf drug. The rest of my argument stands, though. "Having done it myself, I think that's something worth romanticizing." Hm. I guess you have a different point of view here - what were you working on when you had this experience? February 22, 2004 6:28 PM
	peterb said: Well, apart from working for a private ISP (telerama) when there were only about 3 or 4 of them, I'm still working at my second startup -- http://www.panasas.com Only time will tell if it changes the world, but I definitely feel that working in an evironment where hard work is required to survive and succeed has helped me transcend my personal limitations as a software developer. I was good when I got here and now I'm five times the software engineer I was than when I arrived. (and, frankly, no one yells at me here). I'm not saying "If you suffer, you will be succesful." you correctly point out that the roadsides of corporate America are littered with failed companies which had people that worked hard. I do, however, think that the converse is true: you can't be succesful (in the marketplace) without hard work. Hard work doesn't magically make your product not suck, but a lack of it will. Large companies can substitute money for hard work to some extent, but that's a poor tradeoff for a startup to make. it can be work you enjoy. It can be work you love. It can even be fun -- I probably wouldn't be writing a unit test on a Sunday for a bug I fixed if I didn't enjoy it -- but the fact is that different workers are motivated by different things. Ask yourself whether you think any Apple employees worked an extra weekend and finished a feature in development for the Mac because they were afraid that Steve might yell at them and humiliate them in public. Maybe that was bad for the company in the long term, it certainly isn't acceptable public behavior or how I'd want my boss to treat me, but if you're honest you can say that it might be a factor in the success of the product. Once again, I agree with you that ritual humiliation of your employees isn't the only way to get work done or to succeed, but I think what might be missing is a sense of realism about Jobs' or Gates' accomplishments. Apple, NeXT, Pixar. That's three successes (i'm being generous and rounding NeXT up as a success, although I know that's doubtful). Most of us don't even have -one- on that scale. Would MS have been successful if you or I were at the helm in 1984? Without disrespect to you, I doubt it. The fact is I don't think you can separate "Jobs drove his employees to ridiculous lengths" from the fact of his successes, any more than you can separate Gates' ambition and drive from MS's success. Would you rather be at a Microsoft that never had Bill Gates but had an uncompetitve work environment? February 22, 2004 6:48 PM
	Rory said: Peter - "I was good when I got here and now I'm five times the software engineer I was than when I arrived. (and, frankly, no one yells at me here)." OK - That's good. No yelling + hard work + improvement in your abilities is a fine thing. "you can't be succesful (in the marketplace) without hard work" I agree with that statement, as well. That makes sense to me. I work hard, and I feel that I'm doing all right, but I'm not suffering (yet). "..but if you're honest you can say that it might be a factor in the success of the product." Before we stray too far here, let me just say that I never stated that a company couldn't be successful by operating on fear. I pretty much just said that it sucks. I understand that Steve Jobs was the driving force behind Apple, and that nothing would have happened without him, so I'm perfectly happy to agree that the Steve Jobsness of Apple was the reason for success - but it wasn't pleasant (hence the cartoon). "i'm being generous and rounding NeXT up as a success, although I know that's doubtful" Only doubtful if you consider OS X a lackluster success, which I don't - OS X was the first reason I ever had to buy a Mac, which I would say makes NeXT a success. "Would MS have been successful if you or I were at the helm in 1984?" In 1984, I was in first grade and right in the middle of thinking that Van Halen was the greatest thing on earth. That aside, I think transporting Rory 2004 back into 1984 would have resulted in some serious dough. I wouldn't get too high 'n mighty by declaring that it would have been MS dough, but I think I'd be quite retired by now, which would be a mark of success. So, the answer to your question is: Probably not, but I would have succeeded elsewhere. "Would you rather be at a Microsoft that never had Bill Gates but had an uncompetitve work environment?" I think the answer you're looking for is that such a Microsoft wouldn't exist. However, MS, Apple, etc., are the exceptions. There are plenty of other opportunities in life to do well, make good money, and be a success. If changing the world is your goal, then software engineering isn't where you want to be, so you'd have to look someplace else to satisfy that desire, but the rest of the bag is pretty attainable. I know a girl who makes and sells fancy pipes for hippies, and she's about as happy as can be <shrug>. Just depends on what you consider to be "success," and I don't see Apple/MS/etc. as being very good metrics for what most people should consider success in terms of their own personal/small endeavors. Anyway, it's Sunday morning, and my blood sugar's low. I'm going to go get breakfast. What I'll say before leaving is that I agree with much of what you say, and I think we're agreeing in a way that doesn't obviously appear to be agreement. I also went and read your post regarding folklore.org, and it gave me some perspective on where you're coming from. I also read a bunch of other posts, and will probably just wind up subscribing by the end of the day :) It isn't every day you find a post on ligers... Now, time to get some tea. February 22, 2004 7:45 PM
	Eddy Recio said: First I like to say that your comics are great, in fact it adds to your already very entertaining Blog. I don’t want to sound like a drone, and say I agree with your postings, but I do certainly agree with you on the whole romanticizing and how many would say “Man, imaging working @ MS or Apple back in the days…” I also agree with the whole Steve Jobs is an @$$ to his employees, not because I was there but from the same accounts you or people have posted. In fact I don’t know that he is such a success story, after all if he was so brilliant he could be the 800 lb gorilla and not MS, since he was giving all of the PARC work and ideas and was the first and so on and so forth. The problem with geeks being managers is that most don’t have an understanding of business or management. I am not knocking down that, most people sometimes even business grads still don’t. The classical management thought by Frederick Taylor was that employees are inherently lazy and therefore manager must pull out the stick, the modern thought is to use other techniques such as motivation, it also is useful to make the employee part of the process, that way they feel they are responsible for the “failure” or” success”, among many others, none of which belittle an individual. The point is Jobs is not great for getting them to execute, he might have done better without those antics, or perhaps a money could have ran that ship back when no one was in the personal computer biz other than the ultra hobbyist geeks. I might argue the Hawthorne experiments by Elton Mayo might have been more successful that Jobs’ antics. Lastly, I don’t know that one should punish good programmers for achieving something in 2 hrs instead of 8 hrs. How can anyone every really know how long it takes to come up with something no one has ever done before. On the flip side, I find this similar to writer’s block, when you don’t see it, it can take hours upon hours and nothing. Yet when you’re flowing pages become quickly filled. Programming is not factory work, you can not measure productivity since skills can be very disparate, it’s intangible. February 22, 2004 8:33 PM
	Paolo said: Man, I wish you hadn't posted that link. I've blown the entire weekend reading it. Good stuff. February 23, 2004 5:22 AM
	Rory said: Paolo - "I've blown the entire weekend reading it." Yup! They've done a fabulous job on the site. I'm really impressed with the amount of work that's gone into it, and with the quality of the writing. Good, good stuff... February 23, 2004 6:09 AM
	Jason said: Came across your site while listening to DotNetRocks. I'm dying laughing over the Steve Jobs comic. February 26, 2004 7:57 PM
	Rollie Lopez said: Steve Jobs is God and you, Eddy Recio are gay! March 8, 2004 7:04 PM
	Noel said: Jason - "Came across your site while listening to DotNetRocks. I'm dying laughing over the Steve Jobs comic." Ditto and heard about in on Channel9 as well. Great stress relief. Keep up the good work. April 6, 2004 8:43 PM

Back in the Day - #1 - Working for Steve Jobs

Comments

Andy said:

Alethie said:

mike said:

Louis Parks said:

Rory said:

Bliggy said:

peterb said:

Rory said:

peterb said:

Rory said:

Eddy Recio said:

Paolo said:

Rory said:

Jason said:

Rollie Lopez said:

Noel said:

About Rory

This Blog

Post Calendar

Post Categories

Feeds