>The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers
Duh.
For a technical business to have the most unfair advantage (well above patents, etc.) there has got to be the most technical competence/productivity at the very top.
There's still an unfair advantage if there's as much competence at the top, but when it's the most that's when it's really the most unfair.
Jobs was an outstanding visionary, salesman, task-oriented and goal oriented manager, but without Woz at the top along with him Apple would have been greatly limited.
Once things took off they could build some bigger teams, on paper it looked like they could afford anything. It was expected to require more than one engineer to design as salable a product as Woz could do single-handedly.
By 1985 Jobs was reminiscing about being burned:
>We're going to be a big company, we thought. So let's hire "professional managers." We went out and hired a bunch of professional management, and it didn't work at all.
>They knew how to manage, but they didn't know how to do anything.
As this took place it required more & more personnel, as well as these non-domain managers to go with them, in order to accomplish less than Woz and a small team. It was a no brainer.
What a person can do single handedly turns out to be the best indication of how much more they can do with a proper high leadership position (if they are willing), especially when compared to "professional managers" without the domain expertise to hold their own when there's no technical team backing them up.
Not how many people the impressive manager has managed before, even if there was legitimate positive financial outcome in their background.
Once there was a competent all-technical team, if less wizardly than Woz himself, Jobs could sell that just as well, Woz was well set, and he was out of there with his shares in Apple wisely held.
If Apple had not recognized this as early as they did, there would be no way Apple could have gotten as big as they are now.
>I always had, by design, an "administrative partner" on my team who brought those abilities to the table - and I always paid attention to what they had to say. That combination (technical knowledge, leadership skills, and sub-contracted management skills) carried me
Woz could legitimately say this about Jobs which is a true measure of whether there was adequate technical leadership at the very top during his time.
Duh.
For a technical business to have the most unfair advantage (well above patents, etc.) there has got to be the most technical competence/productivity at the very top.
There's still an unfair advantage if there's as much competence at the top, but when it's the most that's when it's really the most unfair.
Jobs was an outstanding visionary, salesman, task-oriented and goal oriented manager, but without Woz at the top along with him Apple would have been greatly limited.
Once things took off they could build some bigger teams, on paper it looked like they could afford anything. It was expected to require more than one engineer to design as salable a product as Woz could do single-handedly.
By 1985 Jobs was reminiscing about being burned:
>We're going to be a big company, we thought. So let's hire "professional managers." We went out and hired a bunch of professional management, and it didn't work at all.
>They knew how to manage, but they didn't know how to do anything.
As this took place it required more & more personnel, as well as these non-domain managers to go with them, in order to accomplish less than Woz and a small team. It was a no brainer.
What a person can do single handedly turns out to be the best indication of how much more they can do with a proper high leadership position (if they are willing), especially when compared to "professional managers" without the domain expertise to hold their own when there's no technical team backing them up.
Not how many people the impressive manager has managed before, even if there was legitimate positive financial outcome in their background.
Once there was a competent all-technical team, if less wizardly than Woz himself, Jobs could sell that just as well, Woz was well set, and he was out of there with his shares in Apple wisely held.
If Apple had not recognized this as early as they did, there would be no way Apple could have gotten as big as they are now.
>I always had, by design, an "administrative partner" on my team who brought those abilities to the table - and I always paid attention to what they had to say. That combination (technical knowledge, leadership skills, and sub-contracted management skills) carried me
Woz could legitimately say this about Jobs which is a true measure of whether there was adequate technical leadership at the very top during his time.