Designer's Digest - Steve Jobs on the role of product and marketing people.

I think the problem is actually what Steve Jobs had once mentioned [1]. Companies get taken over by sales/marketing teams as a company grows in size, and the product/customer focused people get removed from the decision making. The quality of the companies products then stagnate or rot, as the product people are always in a rush to meet the requests of upper management - who of which have no idea what it takes to make a good product. So everyone's being micromanaged to meet stupid metrics - rather than the outcome - a good product. As so it's not so much about micromanagement, as so much as having the best decision makers throughout the company. But none of this matters much when you're big, or have a monopoly... [1] [VIDEO]

>it feels increasingly like IBM of 2003 Probably explained by: [VIDEO] On another point. I'm not sure how much this is true, but I've read that most of AMD's chips are made from the same basic building blocks, and their different CPUs are mostly just a matter of how many these blocks are stitched together along with whatever tuning/other hardware. Such a design is probably very scalable, which simplifies manufacturing and reduces costs. Whereas I heard intel chips have more separate customizations requiring more separate tooling for each of their chipsets, which complicates manufacturing...

I feel pretty strongly that, assuming you care about the art and creating things then Valve is a blueprint of how exactly not to do it, hang on let me finish. Building Steam was a genius business move, it has basically given them an insane amount of income for close to zero effort, I mean the client is insanely janky and has barely been updated from an actual experience point of view in over a decade but it doesn't matter because almost all PC gaming purchases are funneled through it. Now what this should have done is allow the company to stop caring about profits and being able to relish in building true art to a true un-compromised vision. But something has seriously gone wrong here and the company has struggled to ship close to anything meaty in 16 years. To put it in perspective lets look at auteur studios held in similar regard as Half-Life. (I'm ignoring side releases, just focusing on mainline games) - Half-Life: HL2 2004, HL:A 2020 - Kojima : MGS3 2004, MGS4 2008, MGS5 2014, Death Stranding (worth pointing out his studio was rebuilt from nothing for this too) 2020 - Rockstar : GTA:SA 2004, GTA4 2008, RDR 2010, GTA5 2013, RDR2 2019 If Valve hadn't had steam, the company would not still exist today with that output. If HL:A good, yes. But we put it next to Rockstars output in the same time and it's not even the same league. Something has seriously gone wrong within Valve and I think the charitable way to frame it is "Oh they just care so much they only release when its

Essentially what Steve Jobs said about product vs sales & marketing people and Xerox, but more regional/department version. [VIDEO]

I was in shock, when realised that everything that I love about Mac Desktop since beginning of OSX era will be showed away in the name of vertical integration. Now I am ok. Catalina is the last Apple OS that I will run on my computers. Figma is in the browser. Blender is working under Linux perfectly. Windows is horrible, but if used properly for specific tasks it will perform. The big problem was to move away from Logic, but where there's a will, there's a way. I am deeply thankful for all those years of Desktop Bliss, but Apple nowadays is marketing and shareholders driven company and this is the opposite of Jobs philosophy. [VIDEO]

just my humble opinion - i believe aapl has crossed the threshold into the territory which steve jobs famously described as the hallmark of the Scully era[0] - their endless pursuit for revenue has pushed sales and marketing people to the front of the line and product people operate in their shadows. of course in a company as big and wide ranging as aapl, there are so many competing priorities and things to focus on but, IMO, tim cook is a real life paperclip maximizer. early on in his tenure there was some criticism that he was a "bean counter" and would ruin things cause he wasn't Steve, but rather than cutting costs as a traditional beancounter type would, he has been ruthless in pursuing what works to continue the endless revenue climb. there are certainly many things they could work on but choose not to, or could do better, but when you're in Cook's position and you are the preeminent Elephant (far larger and less capable of dance than Gerstner could have ever imagined), you have no choice but for changes in direction to be slow but large in magnitude. and at such a massive scale, while aapl could stumble out a new product/service and vacuum up tens of $millions, there are fewer and fewer opportunities which will clear their IRR. Taking some liberties interpreting here, but hence why they feel the need to extract value from App Store payments, turn a blind eye to scam apps, Google as default $earch, etc; their gravitational pull is so powerful that, as a proper paperclip

Management and sales completed their takeover of Mozilla over the last 5 years. The Mozilla we knew for decades is dead and gone, and now there's a zombie consumer tech company left in its place. Relevant, as this is exactly what happened: [VIDEO]

"The same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies." "The people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out." [VIDEO]

> resource curse, where countries with rich natural resources are prone to foundering Steve Jobs calls this out wonderfully here: [VIDEO] > [...] the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies. Like, oh, IBM and Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or a better computer. So what? When you have a monopoly market share the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people. And they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. [...] the product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to the monopolistic position gets rotted out. By people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers.

This reminds me a lot of the Conflict vs Mistake framing[0] which is expanded on by his Tragedy of Legible Technique article[1]. It also reminds me a lot of the Steve Jobs Product vs Marketing clip[2]. > When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does. That means she's trying to solve a harder problem than Zvi is, and it makes sense that sometimes, despite having more resources than Zvi, she does worse at it. It seems to me like the issue is actually in rent-seeking, where the more rent-seeking you have available, the more the marginal mistake person converts into a conflict person. In a world of perfect competition there would be no room for conflicts, and only once you have freely available rents does the land-grabbing phase begin. When your rules are written by the conflicters, for the conflicters benefit, it's already to late. They'll certainly never compromise on the simple correct path. [0]: [LINK] [1]: [LINK] [2]: [VIDEO]

"If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful." - Steve Jobs [VIDEO]

Yeah, effectiveness is something too in monopoly tech firms. The Mythical Man Month [LINK] Steve Jobs on product dev vs marketing teams [VIDEO]

Think of why the iPhone existed in the first place. It was because Jobs saw the writing on the wall and knew that cell phones were bound to destroy the market for the iPod, Apple's moneymaker. Before making the iPhone, he made the Rokr and Jobs threw massive amounts of resources into the iPhone at large risk to Apple. He bought up the patent for multi touch back in 2005. I honestly think people overlook this aspect of Jobs leadership, basically from the time he returned on Apple he doubled down on mobile computing repeatedly throwing 50% of Apple's marketing budget into the unproven iPod for instance. Why was Jobs able to see the writing on the wall and not Intel? I think Steve Jobs himself said it best: [VIDEO] Intel itself was NOT totally blindsided by the mobile revolution. Intel Atom development started in 2004. Intel Atom could have dominated the market. There were Intel Execs pushing Atom. But all the R&D was pumped into the desktop and server business, the quality silicon was reserved for the desktop and server business, Intels execs didn't want these inexpensive chips for what were presumed to be peoples secondary computers to cannibalise its expensive desktop and server chips, and the strategic vision was simply bad. You can apologise for it but the mistake may have doomed the entire business and plenty of companies did not make the same mistake. Intel wouldn't even exist if they didn't already make such a shift away from the memory market into the microprocessor mar

They boost the share price for a while, but then the competition takes over. Steve Jobs has the best explanation for this. [VIDEO]

The vibe I got reading Tim Cook wasn't involved: [VIDEO] (wasn't expecting him to be because he's an ops/logistics guy, but that bit was a bit alarming).

Reminds me of the interview with Steve Jobs where he talks about large companies not caring about product because of their market position. Soon all that really matters is sales and marketing, so all the people that were good at making good products leave or get drowned out by bad decisions [VIDEO]

They hired people who introduce Jack Welch methods. This is like in that Steve Jobs video about product people being kicked out and exchanged by ones who dont care about product: [VIDEO] They will not make good search. That is not their priority.

Apple has had no problems with providing their macOS libraries, tooling, and associated updates for free, even with a drastically smaller user base, and it appears to have been sustainable for decades. The truth of the matter is Apple would almost certainly continue to do offer their iPhone services, updates, app store, etc; even if they were statutorily prohibited from making any money off of any of it, because in the end it makes for a better user experience and helps them differentiate and sell their phones at a premium. What is happening, is the more financial-minded types within Apple have realized they have substantial lock-in and market power, and they can leverage it to take a % of profits from other market entities. If you actually care about Apple products, and want them to continue to deliver great products well into the future, then the best thing that could happen would be for them to get the message and accept a loss in this battle. Otherwise you will see increased financialization continue until they are thoroughly hollowed out of great product/engineering culture, and collapse under their own weight, like so many before them. [VIDEO]

I doubt it. For one thing, the ergonomics of an "orb" are horrible. This is a solution looking for a problem and seemingly designed by people who took the wrong lessons from Apple's success. Incidentally they have a typo in their announcement page[1]. > The Orb is the incluse[sic], secure and anonymous device that enables World ID holders to verify their humanness and uniqueness. I assume "incluse" is meant to be "inclusive". But what's "inclusive" about letting a startup with foggy monetization plans collect everyone's biometrics? Sounds like bullshit. [1] [LINK] Edit: I'm reminded of this old clip: [VIDEO] From all external appearances, "World" is being run by sales and marketing people from its inception.

[VIDEO] Steve Jobs talking about Apple of the future. (His comments on product people running a company vs sales)