[wpietri]

This is a weird thing to say given the number of relationships he ruined by being an abusive jerk. (I also think the "good developers can get a job" line ignores the way people get psychologically bound to abusive situations. It's like the "she can leave any time" response to domestic abuse.)

Look, for example, at the way Jobs cheated Wozniak out of money early on. [1] That's not what I'd call "good at relationships". I'd call that manipulative and exploitative.

[1] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/steve-wozniak-cried-jobs-kept-atar...

[scarface74]

Why is it weird? Knowing how to build relationships with and inspire people that matter and bulldoze your way over people when needed may not be moral but it can be effective. I am not arguing whether he was a saint.

"If you expect the world to be fair with you because you are fair with them, it is like expecting a lion not to eat you because you did not eat the lion"

[kashyapc]

I see where you're coming from. That said, I definitely don't think Jobs "needed" to stab Wozniak in the back there. He still could have shown better moral scruples and be effective. They're not mutually exclusive.

More people who blindly worship Jobs should learn about these back stabbings as well.

[JudasGoat]

It seems from this discussion that the skills needed to be successful in buisness inovation are in opposition to those I find needed to have a sucessful and happy life. Honesty, compassion, life/work balance. Is there a good exception to that rule?

[hhas01]

This is business.

Know your worth, do not undersell yourself, learn by others’ errors, and always—ALWAYS—get it in Writing.

[eropple]

"This is business" excuses shitty behavior.

If the most important thing to you is not to be decent to others, you live poorly.

[scarface74]

Don’t take it as condoning the action of Jobs, but accepting how the world is and act accordingly when you’re on the other side.

Knowing that the lion is not going to be fair to you, means you need to run from the lion and not sit there and get eaten.

[eropple]

I understand how it works, and I am comfortable with my criticism of that post. Dismissing criticisms of "what the world is" allows the bad parts to flourish. The status quo does not capes.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

There are plenty of businesspeople in my circle at least who are decent people who wouldn't dream of doing this to a partner or even an employee. As an owner of a small business I include myself in that group. Being an asshole isn't "business" - it's just being an asshole.

[sumedh]

> This is business.

I dont think Woz got that memo, he assumed his friend would not betray him.

[wpietri]

I just refuse to call manipulation and abuse of other people "building relationships". That is a positive term for a behavior that is decidedly not positive. We don't say, "Gosh, Hitler was just super at building relationships with the German people." And no matter how tightly a domestic abuse victim is psychologically bound to the abuser, we don't compliment the abuser on relationship-building skills. It's like saying Hannibal Lecter was great at sourcing cuts of meat. It's technically true in some sense but puts a positive spin on a behavior that's harmful to others.

[handsomechad]

But Hitler truly was great at building relationships with the German people. Depending on the context you can interpret that as spin but to me it is also a factual statement, to rise to power from relative obscurity at that level requires being excellent at the art of social skills / climbing, aka politics.

[wpietri]

It is technically true in some sense, but only if you use a very broad meaning for "relationship". In particular, Hitler and the German people were in a parasocial relationship, not any real human connection. I think it's also incorrect in anything other than a technical sense to call it a relationship when it's rooted in manipulation and deception.

[scarface74]

And isn't that to some degree how all political leaders work?

[lern_too_spel]

Not only that, but look at the way he bullied other Silicon Valley companies into enteringing no-poach agreements with his companies (threatening some with IP litigation), depressing software engineer wages for years.

[scarface74]

I’m definitely not condoning the no poach agreements, but he wasn’t bullying poor helpless startups - the other companies were Adobe, Google, and Intel. Only Adobe could have been considered at a financial disadvantage to the other three and even they could have gone nuclear and threatened to stop producing software for Apple and put them at a disadvantage.

The smoking gun email came out in 2007. Google was actually a larger company back then. Apple was in no position to bully Google.

[lern_too_spel]

You've left out quite a few companies from your list that joined the agreement and also forgetting companies he threatened that didn't join, like Palm. What he did was evil and reduced overall innovation in the sector, just for Apple's gain.

[scarface74]

I missed the three companies that were not part of the lawsuit since they settled individually - Pixar, Lucasfilm and Intuit.

But why was he the only evil one and not the CEOs of Google, Adobe, and Intel.

But still the idea that Jobs was the mastermind “bullying” these other companies instead of all of them being equally responsible doesn’t pass the sniff test. And one of those companies - Pixar was also run by Jobs at the time.

[lern_too_spel]

> But still the idea that Jobs was the mastermind “bullying” these other companies instead of all of them being equally responsible doesn’t pass the sniff test.

That's exactly what the documents that came up in discovery showed. Not only does it pass the sniff test, but it passes the legal test too.

https://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/silicon-valley-p...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/angry-over-employee-...

> But why was he the only evil one and not the CEOs of Google, Adobe, and Intel.

I never claimed he was. Still, measuring evilness on a scale, the one who proposed the no poach agreement to the others and tried to force it on unwilling other companies is clearly far more evil than the rest.

> And one of those companies - Pixar was also run by Jobs at the time.

How does that matter? In a world without illegal collusion, a graphics expert could be poached from Apple to Pixar or vice versa and make more money. What matters is that Jobs instituted his illegal program at all his companies, and that is evil.

[epicureanideal]

Or the "he can leave any time" response to domestic abuse.

(My point is, it's not gender specific. The research shows that abuse happens both ways and happens a very similar amount for either gender.)

[scarface74]

Yes, and I was also at a company that didn’t appreciate me and gave me menial raises for 9 years. I stayed for a lot of (bad) reasons, one of which is that I let my skills decay. I vowed I would never make those two mistakes again - letting my skills be out of step with the market and never getting paid less than I’m worth.

[wpietri]

It is gender specific: https://ncadv.org/statistics

Less so than it used to be, in that women now more often have the financial means to leave, but still gendered.

That isn't surprising to me, in that a lot of the psychology of abusers is clearly patriarchal. E.g.: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling-ebook/dp...

That is not to discount abuse against men, of course. Indeed, most of the people facing Jobs's abuse were surely men. But the trope I'm referring to is pretty clearly gendered.

[epicureanideal]

Without some evidence, I don't think NCADV is a neutral source. (See their blog, https://ncadv.org/blog, where they post opinions on unrelated or very indirectly related matters. This is not a research organization but a political organization.) I've seen plenty of actual published, peer reviewed papers that show near equality of violence between the sexes and sometimes even more violence against men by women. I've seen plenty of advocacy groups claim hugely stacked ratios of violence against women, which is not what I see in scientific research. (If someone looks I'm sure a few articles can be cherry-picked that do that, but not a majority of them.)

Not that Wikipedia is a reliable source, but they do have citations anyone interested could look into, and they seem similar to the numbers I saw in my own reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men

However, even on NCADV, I see "1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been victims of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime.1" That's a somewhat skewed ratio but I wouldn't call it a one-sided gendered issue. And I suspect the reason that only 1 in 7 men have been victims of "severe" violence is that men are harder for women to significantly injure, and women are easier for men to significantly injure, so you would assume women would be more often worse injured even assuming both are aggressors in a similar number of situations and using the same amount of aggression, with difference in outcomes for their victims due to their difference in strength.