Read on Twitter
Rather than reread Walter Isaacson’s length biography of Steve Jobs, I decided to reread Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader, by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.
It mostly covers the period after Jobs was kicked out of Apple.
It mostly covers the period after Jobs was kicked out of Apple.
The interesting thing about Steve Jobs is that he had such an overriding passion to “put a dent in the universe” by making great products. But he had to learn a lot of valuable lessons by making a lot of big mistakes running NeXT (and getting sidelined at Apple just before that).
If he hadn’t learned those leadership lessons, then Jobs wouldn’t have been able to save Apple and set them on a proper course for long-term success.
I have so few role models from my time in Silicon Valley working at Microsoft and then Google. I don’t wanna be like Andy Rubin.
I have so few role models from my time in Silicon Valley working at Microsoft and then Google. I don’t wanna be like Andy Rubin.
I didn’t work directly with Andy Rubin, and thank goodness. I’m glad I didn’t get involved in his inner circle, with the sex stuff, especially.
But the larger picture is I see Andy as a dilettante, like a young Steve Jobs who didn’t grow up and take on a proper leadership role.
But the larger picture is I see Andy as a dilettante, like a young Steve Jobs who didn’t grow up and take on a proper leadership role.
By the time I arrived at Google in March 2010, I didn’t even see Andy. Hiroshi Lockheimer was running things even back then.
I remember Andy had brought one of his giant industrial robots to Building 44, across from my cubicle. He wanted to get it to operate an espresso machine.
I remember Andy had brought one of his giant industrial robots to Building 44, across from my cubicle. He wanted to get it to operate an espresso machine.
I never saw Andy with the robot, but sometimes I saw technicians, I think flown out from Japan from the HQ of the company that made the robot arm, trying to make the robot do things, and they had put an espresso machine within the arm’s reach, but they never made any progress.
I had a choice in late 2009 as to what company to work at next. I’d quit Microsoft in disgust that year knowing that the upcoming Kin phone would be such a miserable failure that it would sink Danger and become a footnote in mobile phone history (all of which happened).
I had several reasons for wanting to go to Google rather than Apple, but in retrospect, I would’ve been much happier with the culture at Apple than Google.
At the time (2009), I was burned out and being called by a Google recruiter on a weekly basis. I wanted the challenge.
At the time (2009), I was burned out and being called by a Google recruiter on a weekly basis. I wanted the challenge.
Not the challenge of actually working there, but the challenge of interviewing at Google and being made an offer (all of which happened). I also had it in my head that if I didn’t help the “open source” Android succeed, then the iPhone would “win” and become a monopoly.
I’m glad I helped Android to succeed as a competitor to the iPhone, but I don’t feel entirely good about Android’s success because of the way that Google ties the platform to their search engine and its monopoly profits. It’s all about the GMS bundling. Very “evil Microsoft”.
“GMS” is the Google Mobile Services bundle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_mobile_services
If you’re a handset or tablet OEM, then you’re forced to buy into the Google Play / GMS ecosystem on all of your devices, or you can’t bundle it with any of them. You can’t also ship any “forks” of Android.
If you’re a handset or tablet OEM, then you’re forced to buy into the Google Play / GMS ecosystem on all of your devices, or you can’t bundle it with any of them. You can’t also ship any “forks” of Android.
Google’s PR during the period of Android’s growth, when they were enforcing this through secret business agreements that hadn’t leaked yet, and before Google became the subject of international antitrust investigations, was that they wanted only the best for users by doing this.
Google claimed this was about reducing “fragmentation”, or incompatible Android devices that wouldn’t be able to run all of the apps people had written.
But Google’s actual motives were forcing OEMs into bundling Google’s apps, putting them on the home screen, and Google search.
But Google’s actual motives were forcing OEMs into bundling Google’s apps, putting them on the home screen, and Google search.
I did learn a lot from watching the circus of executive management dysfunction from a distance at Google. 10 years ago, their reputation was much more positive than it is today. Now, I think the sloppiness and lack of focus is apparent from the trail of canceled products.
10 years ago, you could at least say Larry and Sergey on stage at TGIF every Friday, and in theory, you could ask them some questions at the mic or via the voting page (“Dory”). But by 2014, Larry and Sergey had gone AWOL.
Eric Schmidt’s an interesting character, too.
Eric Schmidt’s an interesting character, too.
I don’t mean “interesting” in a positive way. It was weird to see Eric speaking so unguardedly about how he’s a capitalist, how Google is a capitalist company, and how it’s good for Google when US dollars are cheap (profits are mostly overseas currency, expenses mostly in USD).
One thing that was made clear to me about the way most Silicon Valley executives seem to think is that they seem to start to have contempt for their own employees, once they get to the point of having tens of thousands of them. There isn’t actually much respect for the Googlers.
To sum up my experience, I got the strong feeling that almost every high-flying executive at Google: Larry and Sergey, Eric, Andy, and the rest, were all floating on a cloud of hubris and feeling like they were the young Steve Jobs.
They should’ve been imitating the older Steve.
They should’ve been imitating the older Steve.
Hmm, maybe it’s more that the Google execs making the big decisions over the past decade have been acting like a combination of the pre-1997 Steve Jobs and the pre-2000 Bill Gates. All the hubris, with none of the lessons learned from the big mistakes those young titans had made.
I suppose if I had ended up at Apple instead of Google in 2010, I would have learned some completely different life lessons, but at that time, Google had this reputation of being a playground where one could grow and stretch one’s skills. I did interview a lot of candidates.
I think my final count was 174 interviews, roughly half phone screens and the other half in-person interviews (of software engineers). The Google interview process has been dissected to death and I don’t really like it. I wasn’t able to interview candidates to grow my own team.
The people who interviewed me in 2010 were random Googlers, only one or two of whom had even worked on the Android team, and only one on telephony. And even then, everyone was telling me how unusual it was to be hired at Google and know which team I would be joining (telephony).
The whole Google campus experience felt like a bizarre “playground”, like the Pleasure Island in Pinocchio, or like a movie set from Gattaca, where everyone was pretending to be serious and grown-up and living in the future, but at the same time, were slowly turning into donkeys.
And then Eric Schmidt co-authored a book called “How Google Works”, explaining that this chaotic and disorganized work environment was the key to Google’s success and something for all tech companies to emulate.
Especially the idea of coddling “aberrant geniuses” (his words).
Especially the idea of coddling “aberrant geniuses” (his words).
Oh, to end this thread on an optimistic note, I have never been more excited than now about the potential for small companies and startups and homebrew hobbyists to make great electronics. For decades, you almost had to be Google or Apple or Samsung to build your own hardware.
Going back to Apple’s early history, as a kid I was a big Commodore fan and thought the Apple IIe and early Mac models were hugely overpriced and underpowered. But the achievement of the original Apple II did shape the rest of the industry. Friendly typewriter keyboard and case.
It used to cost huge sums of money to sell a device with a friendly plastic case because of the costs of making the molds and setting up the production line. Now you can make good prototypes and molds with 3D printing, so the prototyping & design costs are much, much lower.
43 years ago, the achievements of the Apple II were to sell a consumer-friendly PC with expansion slots, room for future cost reduction (Apple couldn’t design their own ASICs then, unlike Commodore, who owned their own chip fab, MOS Technology), friendly manuals, & tech support.
The IBM PC wouldn’t have had slots if the Apple II hadn’t had them. Nor would the PC have shipped with schematics and BIOS source code. The Macintosh was much more closed, but the PC was copying the Apple II, with Woz’s ideas about openness.
Designing PCBs was simpler back then.
Designing PCBs was simpler back then.
For decades, designing your own PCBs wasn’t something a typical hobbyist wanted to deal with, but now, there are a lot more tools and options available. Even better, there are so many SBCs like the Raspberry Pi line that you can design stuff on top of, which is a huge time saver.
Speaking of buses, after the iPhone 12 announcement, I remember chatting about modular smartphones and how Google tried to do this with Project Ara but it didn’t pan out and was discontinued. Well, the bus protocol, “Greybus”, has apparently survived. https://lwn.net/Articles/715955/
I found out from the latest Amp Hour podcast episode ( https://theamphour.com/514-focus-dammit/) that the BeagleBoard foundation is working on a new IoT product using Greybus called the “BeagleConnect”.
The README for the BeagleConnect project on GitHub ( https://github.com/jadonk/beagleconnect) talks about the Commodore 64 and growing up in the 8-bit era being able to connect electronics to PCs, and how that got harder in recent years and should be easier and more modular. Very cool stuff.
