It saddens me that the engineers and workers who actually designed and built the stuff will die unknown. Just reinforces that fame, popularity, charisma, self-promotion, wealth, and the ability to "manage" trump deep technical abilities.
Without the assistance of a person (or people) with all of those other characteristics, deep technical abilities accomplish nothing. If it were not for Steve the engineers and workers who actually designed and built the stuff would still have died unknown and they would have also probably died without having anything of significance to point to and say "I helped create that."
Steve gave massive credit to the talent and sweat of Apple's engineers and designers in nearly every keynote. He was as humble as you could expect of a CEO.
Yes, he did thank the engineers and designers in his keynotes – COLLECTIVELY. However, he also specifically abolished the previous practice of naming all software engineers involved in OS releases.
Admittedly, there were plausible reasons given for this, but I felt that ultimately, the reason why Pixar gives personal credit to their movie contributors, while Apple does not do the same for its engineers, is that our industry is not unionized.
I read somewhere that this was because of concerns with talent getting poached by other companies (which was especially a concern in the early days of OS X, when Apple was still "beleagured". Still, point taken; there are lot of unsung heroes within Apple's ranks.
I think what might be more problematic is our systemic bias toward attributing the "credit" (monetary and social credit) to any significant work to one person. This just causes pretty much any collaborative work that is not between "pure" friends to devolve into resentment.
I think this has deep roots in American individualistic philosophy, and it's an example of how damaging it can be.
Well Steve Wozniak also became a billionaire, so while Jobs may have gotten more money but he also ran Pixar so it's not all that one sided. As to the "collective" effort argument that IMO that often get's into a social constructs where people are expected to sacrifice for the company and get rewarded for it. Where I prefer the concept of people who are directly compensated upfront for there efforts vs the social contract of working for a promotion etc. You can't be cheated out of a pension you where never supposed to have.
I think giving virtually all of the credit, wealth and social standing to the "visionary" is a massive error which shafts a lot of people, who are even more rare, unique and talented than Steve Jobs. He deserves a lot of credit to be sure, but it's almost insulting to say that engineers couldn't design a phone on their own.
Ives and a lot of other higher ups at Apple get a lot of credit. But I think your comments are misguided. I think working at Apple carries a certain level of prestige in itself, and I know they are rewarded with a great salary.
Without a Jobs, they wouldn't be given the opportunity nor would they be kept in focus to finish the job. As someone who avoided the management track it gives me no pleasure to say this but good leaders are necessary because they are the catalyst, engineers are a dime a dozen.
It's hard to say who deserves the most credit. But Steve Jobs was the one pushing to push stuff past the competitors. I bet Samsung, ASUS, and the likes have or could hire equally skilled designers. But the people on top want to cut costs, so they don't opt for the milled aluminium case, or buying the companies they need to secure technology. Steve was the one pushing those envelopes, allowing them the resources to accomplish those goals. You give any designer, engineer a goal with very little limits and its amazing what they can come up with. But its really important that someone is there to give them that.
This is an appropriate topic for HN, since it has to do with roles & responsibilities w/i a company. So, let's try to correct some misconceptions.
Steve Jobs was the CEO of Apple. And...
“A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.” (from Fred Wilson, Venture Capitalist icon, requoting something he was taught early in his professional career)
Jobs showed that he was able to do all three of these things extremely well, arguably better any other CEO of our time. He did communicate a vision and strategy [#1], and he used that vision and strategy to recruit the very best talent for Apple [#2], people better than Jobs himself was at getting done what needed to be done (i.e., the people you lament "will die unknown"). His ability to do both those things - and to make sure that everyone performed and delivered in line with the vision [#!, again] - is why Apple is projected to have $90+BILLION in cash reserves at the end of the year [#3], climbed from $10/share to $400/share, and is the highest valued tech company in the world.
Remember, too that history reinforces that technical ability minus a clear vision and strong leadership doesn't produce Mac OS X/iOS, MacBook Airs, iPods, iPhones or iPads. They produce Pink/Taligent, 20th Anniversary Macs, Newtons, MacTVs and Pippins. And a company that loses its leadership position, is valued at $10/share, and comes within sight of bankruptcy.
As one of those former engineers at Apple, I can say definitively that Steve deserves it. Without him, we'd never have had the canvas on which to paint.
I'm not a Mac person myself, but I do respect their design philosophy in the sense you don't have to do wild new things -- just standard things really well. So, by proxy I respect their engineers quite a bit. My only beef, really, was with their marketing department and some of their draconian business decisions.
Normal people don't have knowledge about scientists or engineers in our field that helped changed the world. It is partly sad, as they do know about the crackheads that appear on MTV, and I would bet it would be major news if Britney Spears would die.
Personally I am not offended that Steve Jobs is getting so much attention. At least here's someone that we can partly identify with, here's someone that did bring real value and who's death does reach normal people.
And I don't know how much has Steve changed my life with the work he did on Apple, but he definitely changed my life with his speech at Standford, which I watched on Youtube from hundreds of miles away from where it happened, on an iPod Touch.
Why do we care so much about genius scientists but dismiss genius dilletantes?
Also, why do we have to dillute our opinion on people and reduce them to the stereotypes? Is it something we do just to feel better?
Saying that Steve Jobs was just a salesman is as incorrect as saying that Edsger Dijkstra was just an arrogant man. I'm sorry, but both were MUCH more than that.
I agree that this is suboptimal. But it's true that you need both business and technical skills to get something out the door competently. And for these engineers and workers, the feeling of fulfillment that they have working for Steve is real and satisfies what I believe to be an actual human need: to feel competent and useful.
I just wish there was some other way to go about things than for, basically, impressionable technical types to be manipulated into doing work for narcissists.
Maybe the problem is, again, education. School generally doesn't prepare you to be a good salesman, which is unfortunate because that's the only kind of skill you need to actually get ahead in the real world.
