Steve Jobs on PipeMakersForum

[Tyler]

From an article in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/ ... ntPage=all

Jobs’s taste for merciless criticism was notorious; [Jon] Ive recalled that, years ago, after seeing colleagues crushed, he protested. Jobs replied, “Why would you be vague?,” arguing that ambiguity was a form of selfishness: “You don’t care about how they feel! You’re being vain, you want them to like you.” Ive was furious, but came to agree. “It’s really demeaning to think that, in this deep desire to be liked, you’ve compromised giving clear, unambiguous feedback,” he said. He lamented that there were “so many anecdotes” about Jobs’s acerbity: “His intention, and motivation, wasn’t to be hurtful.”


Speak amongst yourselves.

[LatakiaLover]

Nothing new in terms of human dynamics happening there with Jobs, or here on PMF.

The bottom-line question has always been, "Would you rather be right, or would you rather be liked?"

It's a rare individual who can manage both simultaneously.

Interesting, too, is that over time hardasses usually mellow, and the "wanna be liked" people grow weary of blowing sunshine, so they end up in the middle. Most ten year and up pipemakers & collector critics tend to come across about the same. Moderates.

The biggest aggravation with the dynamic is that some of those who don't know much use the "right or liked" thing as fuel for plausibly deniable self-delusion. As in, "No one agrees with me, so I must be right!" It doesn't work that way, of course. ($50,000 pipes, anyone?)

[wdteipen]

[RobEsArt]

Ambiguous commentary is a means of protecting oneself from the backlash of the truth. You know what is working and what isn't. Your reluctance to acknowledge it amongst your peers is tedious and cowardly. It is a matter of ego, whether the giver or receiver, the truth does not hide, but we become the ostrich.

I believe this to be a cultural phenomenon.
In our society, we have been programmed to believe that "In order to get along, we must go along." We don't dare criticize someone else's motivations for fear of the return favor. We don't want to hurt someone's feelings (aka - egos) because ours may get hurt in return.

[d.huber]

From an article in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/ ... ntPage=all

Jobs’s taste for merciless criticism was notorious; [Jon] Ive recalled that, years ago, after seeing colleagues crushed, he protested. Jobs replied, “Why would you be vague?,” arguing that ambiguity was a form of selfishness: “You don’t care about how they feel! You’re being vain, you want them to like you.” Ive was furious, but came to agree. “It’s really demeaning to think that, in this deep desire to be liked, you’ve compromised giving clear, unambiguous feedback,” he said. He lamented that there were “so many anecdotes” about Jobs’s acerbity: “His intention, and motivation, wasn’t to be hurtful.”

Whatever his intentions were, to many he was very hurtful, disrespectful, and cruel. What's interesting to me is that it's entirely possible that he saw himself as a helpful speaker of truth while he was seen as tyrannical by many around him. IMO, taking the route that Jobs talks about above is, by its very nature, hurtful and vain. Vanity sought through the pain and degradation of others. His intentions were irrelevant because his means did not achieve his ends.

My point here is not that it is bad to offer feedback or critique. What matters most is the way that it is delivered. If you want your critique heard, you have to gauge your audience. Taking a single approach will not work. We can tell someone the truth about something without leaving them with a feeling of incompetence or worthlessness. There is far too little of this approach in the world today.

[sandahlpipe]

I think Steve Jobs could get away with more, because, well, HE'S STEVE JOBS! if you're a true expert in your field, I think you can get away with a harsher critique, because the value of your opinion is so high. If you're not an expert on the subject, be truthful, but be as kind as possible as well.

I think there is a good point made here, though, about being honest with critique. If your work is shoddy and you don't hear the truth from someone you ask an opinion of, it's like if no one tells you you're walking around with your fly down...embarrassing.

Developing a thick skin when it comes to critique is a mark of one who has potential. If you really want to learn, listen to someone who doesn't sugar coat the truth. My mind keeps going back to Bruce, who at the Chicago show two years ago gave me fire in my pants when he ripped my pipes to shreds. I wanted to quit. But then I realized he was right and most everyone else who was looking at my pipes was just being nice and unhelpful.

[Massis]

My mind keeps going back to Bruce, who at the Chicago show two years ago gave me fire in my pants when he ripped my pipes to shreds. I wanted to quit. But then I realized he was right and most everyone else who was looking at my pipes was just being nice and unhelpful.

I've had that feeling with pretty much every pipe I've posted here so far

[pipedreamer]

All well said, but taken from a different point of view, the man made a lot of people very wealthy. How? Good product! He had a mission.The product spoke for itself!

[sethile]

Not sure how this relates to the focus of the forum here, but this is something I think about a good deal...

In this World there are some amazingly talented and gifted people on the cutting edge of their disciplines, pursuing them with an intense, single minded focus. This intensity often comes at the expense of themselves and the people around them, but... without it, would they have still achieve as much? I doubt it...

My take on this is that these people make amazing contributions to this World, making it a better place to live, often compromising their own lives in the process. Many die early, and some are miserable a good deal of the time. A lot of them seem to have some issues that are sometimes unpleasant, like maybe being bi-polar, or perhaps they have some aspects of autism that make it difficult to fully relate with others.

Talented, focused, and driven people make significant cutting edge contributions. My guess is if we could somehow change the parts of them we find troubling we would loose the things we love about them and their work in the process, and perhaps the very best art, music, science, medicine, literature, you name it, would suffer as a result.

We all have issues... I think we need to take the good with the bad. Except perhaps in very extreme cases that involve what we have defined as criminal behavior, the good is too good to risk...

[d.huber]

Well said, Scott.

[pipedreamer]

Thank You Scott, well said!!!!

[RDPowell]

Steve Jobs, I seen a movie that was suppose to be a true story about this man. He was a great salesman and
as far as having any character I'm sorry to say I seen none. He was a childish, two face, self centered egotist.
I'm glad I have the pleasure of saying I didn't know him.

[Alden]

Steve Jobs, I seen a movie that was suppose to be a true story about this man. He was a great salesman and
as far as having any character I'm sorry to say I seen none. He was a childish, two face, self centered egotist.
I'm glad I have the pleasure of saying I didn't know him.

Hold on now. I don't know the first thing about Steve Jobs but you're basing your opinion on a move you saw about him??
I could rent a monkey, dress him up in a flannel shirt, teach him to speak in a Canadian accent and make a movie about what a crass self congratulating disrespectful ass Todd Bannard is. Just because it's all true doesn't mean the Steve Jobs movie was too.

[RDPowell]

Steve Jobs, I seen a movie that was suppose to be a true story about this man. He was a great salesman and
as far as having any character I'm sorry to say I seen none. He was a childish, two face, self centered egotist.
I'm glad I have the pleasure of saying I didn't know him.

Hold on now. I don't know the first thing about Steve Jobs but you're basing your opinion on a move you saw about him??
I could rent a monkey, dress him up in a flannel shirt, teach him to speak in a Canadian accent and make a movie about what a crass self congratulating disrespectful ass Todd Bannard is. Just because it's all true doesn't mean the Steve Jobs movie was too.

I understand that and that's why I mentioned it was a movie. Although my perception of mankind nowadays is fairly grim
and tend to believe most of it. That's just my opinion and doesn't suppose to be worth anything to anyone else.

[LatakiaLover]

I could rent a monkey, dress him up in a flannel shirt, teach him to speak in a Canadian accent and make a movie about what a crass self congratulating disrespectful ass Todd Bannard is.

Are you going to stand for that, Sas?

Ryan just accused you of wearing a flannel shirt.

[Alden]

I understand that and that's why I mentioned it was a movie.

Oh I understand, I just thought this thread, this forum, this world in general needed a little Sasquatch bashing.

I could rent a monkey, dress him up in a flannel shirt, teach him to speak in a Canadian accent and make a movie about what a crass self congratulating disrespectful ass Todd Bannard is.

Are you going to stand for that, Sas?

Ryan just accused you of wearing a flannel shirt.

That's not a fashion thing, it's for security reasons. That's the only way LE can tell he's a Lumberjack and not some kinda deranged terrorist.

[Sasquatch]

No this is all good - there's a deep pluralistic truth here. The irony is that while Ryan was hoping to generate an example of what we'd all recognize and agree on as benevolent hyperbole at worst, he's actually hit the nail on the head. I am a self-congratulatory flannel-wearing monkey. Whether this has any effect on whether Steve Jobs was an asshole... I just don't know. I would say I have influence yet.

More to the point, really smart people tend to be really weird. I have problems, socially, only with normally-aspiring "get a good job and keep it and let's have lots of colorful vegetables for supper" sort of people. I can get on with chess masters, the autistic, physicists, philosophers, most strippers, most cabinetmakers. I don't get on with middle-management, bankers, politicos, anyone who thinks it's weird that I never wear boots with laces. Driven, bizarre, difficult assholes I can totally handle. Because they're on to something, and usually, they don't care if you are onto it or not.

There are gentle geniuses, friendly open sorts like Einstein, and there are the fucktard sort of difficult geniuses, the Bobby Fischers, and you just have to realize that while they are total cocksuckers to be around, they are also kicking crazy amounts of ass. That's not something our society values, in general, unfortunately. We'd rather think that actors are smart, and that the people who read the news to us know what the fuck they're talking about. All illusion, but the opiates are a lot easier to deal with than the raw ugly truth of our own mediocrity.*



*I mean, of course, your mediocrity. I'm the fuckin Sasquatch.

[kamkiel]

No this is all good - there's a deep pluralistic truth here. The irony is that while Ryan was hoping to generate an example of what we'd all recognize and agree on as benevolent hyperbole at worst, he's actually hit the nail on the head. I am a self-congratulatory flannel-wearing monkey. Whether this has any effect on whether Steve Jobs was an asshole... I just don't know. I would say I have influence yet.

More to the point, really smart people tend to be really weird. I have problems, socially, only with normally-aspiring "get a good job and keep it and let's have lots of colorful vegetables for supper" sort of people. I can get on with chess masters, the autistic, physicists, philosophers, most strippers, most cabinetmakers. I don't get on with middle-management, bankers, politicos, anyone who thinks it's weird that I never wear boots with laces. Driven, bizarre, difficult assholes I can totally handle. Because they're on to something, and usually, they don't care if you are onto it or not.

There are gentle geniuses, friendly open sorts like Einstein, and there are the fucktard sort of difficult geniuses, the Bobby Fischers, and you just have to realize that while they are total cocksuckers to be around, they are also kicking crazy amounts of ass. That's not something our society values, in general, unfortunately. We'd rather think that actors are smart, and that the people who read the news to us know what the fuck they're talking about. All illusion, but the opiates are a lot easier to deal with than the raw ugly truth of our own mediocrity.*



*I mean, of course, your mediocrity. I'm the fuckin Sasquatch.

BRAVO

[Tyler]

Fwiw, I think that there's some truth in what Jobs said, and some crap. The crap, I think, is the assumption that kindness or empathy is done entirely out of narcissitic motivation. That may be true for Jobs or Ivey (I have no idea), but I don't buy that it's universally true. I also think it's crap that unambiguous feedback need be delivered heartlessly. It's implied, in my reading of the quote, that the truth and concern for the receiver of the feedback are dichotomous. I don't buy it.

[Sasquatch]

Another way to say this (if I read you right Tyler) is that we are arguing whether content and style are or can be two totally separate things, and the answer is obviously "no".

Hemingway's style is part of his content, the emotive content of his work.

T.S. Eliot's style is part of his content, obviously someone like Dylan Thomas or e.e. cummings you might say style IS their content in some cases.

For someone to operate on a level of real and consistent emotional separation actually puts them firmly in a sociopathic tradition, and again, that's probably pretty common with this "My IQ is 172" crowd. Their emotional IQ is often quite low. Watching the new Sherlock Holmes series, Cumberbatch's Sherlock is firmly in this tradition - the lab assistant who likes him puts on lipstick when he shows up and of course he notices, and points it out (wondering about her choice of timing). She surreptitiously removes it, and he announces (truthfully) that she looked better before. Her (doubly) hurt feelings are both confusing and irrelevant to Sherlock.