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Comment by CJefferson | Hacker News Reader

Maybe controversial opinion, I'm not sure most people can learn much useful from Steve Jobs, and trying to emulate his presentations.

He had a huge support team to help him polish, and was very skilled. It feels like someone who has never driven a car trying to learn by watching Formula 1. Yes their drivers are amazing at drivers, but you can't really complain when your delivery drivers can't hit F1 speeds.

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Agreed. I also think too many people are trying to emulate his exact style, mostly to their detriment even though Jobs honed the craft for decades.

If you've been to SaaS product conferences, they are ALL doing the Steve Jobs thing of presenting slide decks that are basically advertisements of new features. All fluff and stock images, very little substance. The implementation details and all their asterisks are provided by your account manager/sales engineer.

Try doing that when presenting a proposal or project results to senior leadership at your company, and see how quickly you get placed into PIP.

Step 0 of a presentation is: know your audience.

Doing a sales pitch to C suite person on your hobby horse is likely to get in as much trouble as doing a technical deep dive into the same topic to the same person.

> The implementation details and all their asterisks are provided by your account manager/sales engineer.

That's because the purpose of the presentation is to get you to talk to your account manager.

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