| While i do not share the opinion that jobs was such a genius at all, reducing him to be just a marketer seems very narrow-minded. Sometimes it's about bundling potential rather than exploitation. I have read many stories of the people who worked for jobs, not many of the "first ones" seem to tell stories of being exploited. But many seem to be proud of how much work they put into their work guided by a guy who seems to be there mostly for saying yey or ney. Which seems to be crucial. Think about all the dysfunctional organizations you have seen or worked with. In my experience, most of them were lacking clarity, responsibility, personal investment & decisions. The potential to end all wars, end hunger, free societies etc is there. I mean just on HN, the potential to transform the world by tomorrow is there. There is enough people with good will, enough people in key positions, enough people who are the best in their field, enough people who love to hack away as a side project, enough people who enjoy debating etc... here on HN. All that is missing is the right approach to get a few of these people together with the right goal and by tomorrow we could take out / stop a lot of evil. This person must be able to "market", to bundle potential. But this person must also be able to identify potential & make hard decisions & do the things others would call "insensitive". Otherwise the people would quickly lose interest or be lost in chaos. Focusing potential seems to be the most crucial part. Having a lot of potential but high entropy seems to be irrelevant in most cases. Anyway, had to type it out because i just realized that partially i am doing the same mistake with my startup. Too stuck fiddling on the tech while knowing that i should be focusing on bundling potential. Currently i am just contributing to a entropic potential, which serves no one. Bundling it might serve the right people, at the right time with the right people. Which infects my mind with the question i have been struggling with: is there any way someone like jobs could have been more than just a marketer in your eyes? I do feel like i am looking down upon people like jobs who seem to be happy with just talking and never trying to really do the things themselves. On the other hand having this opinion of potential entropy... what do you think? Edit: just wanted to add the after thought that people most likely call these people geniuses, whose way of achieving results they can't quite comprehend. And usually for people too attached from the problematic domain, the same geniuses could appear like idiots or sharlatans. |