Re: question on Two Steves

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Toma Sharple wrote:
> On Feb 3, 6:29 am, limtc <thyech...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Steve denied this in his biography.
> >
> > There are often 2 sides of the story.
>
>
> I passed this along.  He certainly is interested in hearing Jobs's
> side of things, but admitted that a biography of Jobs hadn't been tops
> on his list of interests.
>
> Then he later asked, which book are we talking about?  A search for
> "jobs biography" comes up with a few of them.  "I, Steve", is a
> collection of quotes and stories, though actually from Jobs himself.
>
> The Walter Isaacson book seems like it might be the one you mentioned.
>
> And, as for me, I have my own observation that there seems to be
> things like "Manager Think" and "Manager Language".  A guy in charge
> can walk around claiming to have done something, while the regular
> Earth people would perhaps point out that he had just gotten others to
> do it for him.
>
> I could picture Teddy Roosevelt claiming to have built the Panama
> Canal, (though I don't know if he ever made that claim), because he
> was president at the time and was a driving force for it and all those
> reasons, but he probably didn't pitch more than three shovels full of
> dirt for it and didn't pour any concrete.
>
> Steve Jobs hits me as the kind of executive who may have, in truth,
> thought that he had been the guy who got Atari's contract "done" and
> that Wozniak was just the specialized talent that designed the circuit
> and breadboarded it.  Or, as David and Michael point out, it could be
> "spinning" or worse.  I have learned not to take anything at face
> value.

In any large organization, "doing something" is a many-splendored
thing!

A good manager frames a design problem for his team to solve, and
usually participates in the high-level design team.  It then becomes
his primary job to "sell" the project to upper management to obtain
funding for it.

Throughout the life of the project, usually multiple years, he has
a two-fold responsibility:  1) keep the team focused and progressing,
and 2) provide "air support" to keep upper management and other
divisions of the company from interfering with its completion (by
introducing new, defocusing requirements or starving it for resources,
for example.

When the project is completed, it is completely accurate to say that
all who participated in it "completed" it, since without their efforts
it would never have happened.  This is particularly true for the manager
and lead designers and implementors, who in many phases of a project
are indispensible.

That's why the whole team, including the marketing folks, celebrate
the project milestones, especially product shipment.

(Though Al Gore is frequently parodied for claiming some responsibility
for the creation of the Internet, he did, in fact, play an important
role in supporting and defending ARPAnet funding, which was essential
to the development of the Internet.)

Even in a small team effort, where "upper management" is non-existent,
like the creation of the Apple II, both Steves were indispensible.
Without Woz there would never have been an Apple II design, and without
Jobs, it never would have become a winning product.

It is important to qualify "doing" a project with the nature of the
role played by the particular "doer".

-michael

NadaNet 3.1 for Apple II parallel computing!
Home page:  http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/

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