[joe_mamba]

Economic, market and product results.

Schmidt took Google to the moon financially, speareding projects like Chrome and Android that cemented Google as THE tech titan(couch monopoly cough), whereas Woz was a top HW engineer of his time, but Apple would have quickly failed if he was at the helm calling the shots, instead of Jobs.

From which would you take advice, the successful entrepreneur/investor, or the nice hacker geek who was a one trick pony with the Apple computer but hasn't been in touch with the tech economy and jobs market for decades?

[crispyambulance]

> From which would you take advice, the successful entrepreneur/investor, or the nice hacker geek [?]

The nice hacker geek? By the way, the Woz has a net-worth of 140MM, so he's more wealthy that the vast majority of "successful entrepreneur/investors", and also vastly more beloved than virtually all of them.

In any case, that's a false dichotomy and actually the wrong question entirely.

[tmp10423288442]

Woz should have a lot more money than that for being such a large early shareholder of Apple, so that actually speaks poorly to his reputation as a "successful entrepreneur/investor". Some of the reason why his net worth is below expectations is noble (giving $10m of shares to early employees), but most of it is not - 4 marriages as opposed to Steve Jobs' 1 marriage, an impractical attitude in general, and never having any success after Apple, even as an investor.

[coldpie]

No one should have more than $140MM. That is a ludicrous amount of money.

[jjulius]

Additionally, it's kinda funny to see someone arguing that an individual who's famous for talking about how uncomfortable he is with massive wealth, including his own, should be more wealthy than he is.

[LocalH]

That's what happens when someone views the world through the lens of "wealth is the only way to measure success"

[joe_mamba]

>By the way, the Woz has a net-worth of 140MM, so he's more wealthy that the vast majority of "successful entrepreneur/investors",

So are a lot of people who invested(gambled) early in Bitcoin and Tesla, that doesn't mean people should take career advice from them just because they managed to make a lot of money.

But if you design and developed several successful tech products in your career, I think people should at least listen because it's a pattern rather than just luck.

>and also vastly more beloved than virtually all of them

So is Taylor Swift, that doesn't mean people should take career advice from her.

When I look for people to take advice from I want to see a pattern of home runs, that they can deliver successful products repeatedly, like Erich Schmidt or Steve Jobs, not one trick ponies like Woz who managed to get lucky once in a completely different era, then coast the next 50+ years on past glory giving speeches.

Again, I really like Woz as a person, he's my spirit animal, but that doesn't mean he's correct and in tune on the status of the tech market, the challenges people and entrepreneurs will face today. His experience being a HW tinkerer in his garage in the 1970's isn't relevant anymore today. The world has changed massively since then.

A more modern day woz would be Palmer Luckey of Anduril. Love him or hate him he's more up to date on what the industry rewards today if you want to be a garage tinkerer made billionaire entrepreneur founder than Woz.

[andrepd]

> A more modern day woz would be Palmer Luckey of Anduril.

The fucking things you read on this website, I swear to god.

[naravara]

Funny thing about Steve Jobs is that he actually didn’t deliver a single home run until his return to Apple late in his career.

The Apple II was Woz, the Mac was okay but mostly got shepherded into what it was by the other Apple leadership, the Lisa was a flop, Pixar he was an investor but was mostly Lasseter’s baby, NeXt went nowhere until the Apple acquisition.

The guy had somehow managed to make a successful career out of shipping very opinionated, interesting, and cool products that were commercial failures. If you were going purely by commercial performance you would not have picked him, you’d be picking him based on that ineffable reality distortion field of his that makes you BELIEVE everything he’s doing will change the world.

[StilesCrisis]

Did you forget Pixar? Jobs transformed the company with his extremely bold bet on Toy Story. They were doomed to obscurity without this big bet and now all children's movies are made this way.

[naravara]

I covered this when I said “Pixar he was an investor but was mostly Lasseter’s baby.”

[crispyambulance]

  > When I look for people to take advice from I want to see a pattern of home runs, that they can deliver repeatedly...

That's fine, I guess, if your idea of "success" is apple-scale product home-runs (good luck with that).

For those of us with more modest aspirations, listening to a cool person talk about cool stuff is a far better of use of time and attention.

[jjulius]

Right? OP asked a very subjective question on a public forum and is bristling that other's worldviews/desires/goals are different from his.

[stavros]

The only people I see bristling are the ones who don't want to hear an uncomfortable viewpoint.

"When it comes to jobs, I'd rather listen to a business wizard from 2011 than a technical wizard from 1981" is hardly contentious, but if people liked hearing "AI has changed the world and you're all fucked", the students wouldn't have been booing in the first place.

Honestly, if you don't like what Eric Schmidt was saying, you should have a long hard think about whether unchecked capitalism is really as great as advertised.

[itsalwaysgood]

This is a topic about predicting and preparing for the future.

If you want to be snarky: this is hackernews, not reddit. Bring some logic into the discussion and stop fishing for points.

[jjulius]

>This is a topic about predicting and preparing for the future.

This is a discussion that started about preparing for the future and has spawned multiple[2], fluid threads[3] of conversation[4] that aren't quite in line with "predicting and preparing for the future", some even with their own throwaway responses unrelated to "the topic"[5]. Should we lambast the person who posted the Lisp joke, too?

This particular conversation chain is about how one measures success, which I've discussed with logic in a separate[0] response. Future success looks different for all of us, and there are a wide variety of ways for us to get wherever those goals are.

>If you want to be snarky: this is hackernews, not reddit.

Oh, no snark was intended. OP asked a question on a public forum and started getting snarky themselves[1] towards people who shared their subjective response, and my intent was to point out that it's OK for us all to view success differently.

>... stop fishing for points

Is this not snark based on your own assumption that I care about meaningless internet upvotes?

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235299

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235315

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234258

[3]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234631

[4]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234238

[5]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234819

[LargeWu]

I want advice from the one questioning whether we should, not just whether we can.

[joe_mamba]

OK, and who's stopping you? Take your advice from whoever you want.

History tends to shows the pragmatists wiping out the luddites out of the gene pool/business market, but you are free to make your choice the way you see fit, nobody is forcing you to follow anyone.

[wat10000]

I'm fairly allergic to advice in general, but if I were to take some, I'd take it from the happy extremely rich guy over the ridiculous ultra rich guy.

[jjulius]

Wozniak, every time. Gigantic financial success at the expense of everything Google has negatively impacted isn't something I would be proud of.

Everyone defines success differently, and Schmidt's "success" is, frankly, unappealing and gross to myself and, I'm sure, many others.

There's a lot more to life and the world than the economy and massive financial gains. Focusing on "economic, market and product results" yet mentioning nothing about the impact to people and customers is how Zuckerberg sleeps at night, and that's ugly to me.

[amanaplanacanal]

Dude: Eric schmidt is somebody who turned a cool technology company whose motto was "don't be evil" into an advertising company.

[watwut]

Google turned from company that at least pretends to not do evil ... into one who does it without care.

I think that taking advice from a sociopath able to amass a lot of money is usually bad idea. Their advice is designed to make you make him a lot of money. His advice is not about what is good for you - he does not care. And if you succeed you are his competitor.