Hacker News Reader

Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

Otherwise known as survivorship bias. Jobs was an asshole etc who happened to turn out ti be right. It's virtually impossible to know in advance which asshole will be proven right and which won't.

View on HN

More specifically, he wasn't right because he was an asshole or tyrant. I've run in to folks who worshipped at the Jobs alter, and adopted his personality, in the thought that this leads to success (one person basically said it in so many words - 'it if worked for him...').

Jobs' legacy on the behaviour of so many future companies will be an interesting one, because some people only looked at that one side, and ran with it.

As somebody who used to be like that: startups/businesses are hard enough without burning employees out and people hating you. Your job is to remove negative factors, not create them.

This happened within Microsoft too, a lot of engineers who aspired to be Dave Cutler thought that they should start by acting like him.

"Being right" doesn't absolve acting like an asshole. I think people stayed because they found their jobs satisfying, engaging and meaningful. If you only have an occasional withering interaction with the wizard of Oz, that's probably OK, if everything else is good.

He was an asshole that happened to be right several times in his career. First with Apple, then with Pixar, then again with Next and Apple. Your are being disingenuous by trying to paint it like he was just lucky.

I'm not saying he got lucky, I'm saying it's obvious he was right in hindsight and impossible to tell in foresight.

Being correct thrice is not proof that he was not lucky, after all, there's a man who was struck by lightning 7 times through no effort or genius on his part.

I'm not saying Jobs was not smart - but chance and luck was a huge factor in his successes. He wouldn't have had his come-back had Apple bought BeOS rather than Next.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com