<story><title>Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/07/steve-wozniak-steve-jobs-wasnt-really-capable-as-an-engineer.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mrtksn</author><text>I disagree, Steve Jobs didn&amp;#x27;t luck out. Instead, he never went through the filters.&lt;p&gt;Had he tried to become an Aircraft Engineer or a Doctor, he might get filtered out but
he and Woz ventured into an unestablished field that was about to boom. There were no filters to keep him out and though he lacked a scholar formation he was exceptionally brilliant and managed to walk the path better than the most.&lt;p&gt;Peter Thiel says &amp;quot;competition is for losers&amp;quot;. I think Steve Jobs is an example of it. Even if Steve Jobs said he was competing, Apple rarely competed and won on equal terms under Steve Jobs. He had always maintained a startup mentality, instead of making better phone than Nokia he would make something that no one at Nokia or anywhere else even dreamed of. IMHO, his leadership style was exactly what it takes to drive bunch of brilliant people into the jungle where the great riches are hidden but he was no match to Tim Cook as a CEO.&lt;p&gt;To this day, When I listen to his old interviews etc.  I&amp;#x27;m hypnotised by the clearness and the flow of his mind. It&amp;#x27;s probably because he was one of those who made what we have today but if you forget that for a moment he sounds like a time traveler from the 2000s explaining the value of computers to regular folks from the 70s.&lt;p&gt;What an extraordinary man.</text></item><item><author>zcw100</author><text>What really set Steve Jobs apart is that he never should have gotten to where he did. I don&amp;#x27;t mean he didn&amp;#x27;t deserve it or anything but based on that structures that exist to filter people who attain the positions that he did. By luck, or accident, or raw determination, he became a person in the drivers seat that no one would have chose to put there. He was so much not the person they would have chosen that they kicked him out and replaced him with someone they did choose, John Sculley.&lt;p&gt;Because he was outside of this normal system he made decisions that were baffling, treated people in ways they felt uncomfortable with and achieved things that people thought were out of reach. They seemed out of reach because it was out of reach given the world of possibilities they allowed for themselves but Steve Jobs lived by a different set of rules. Steve Jobs rising to the top and succeeding in a power structure that didn&amp;#x27;t share his worldview is what makes Steve Jobs truly remarkable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hnlmorg</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;instead of making better phone than Nokia he would make something that no one at Nokia or anywhere else even dreamed of.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing about the iPhone is that people assume that was always the vision when in fact it was an idea that evolved and matured through the R&amp;amp;D process. Just as Android started out as a camera OS and pivoted to smart phones, the iPhone started out as a tablet, which was already a market that Apple, Microsoft and many others had several attempts at cracking.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s very easy to assume someone is brilliant if you assume they didn&amp;#x27;t go through the same iterations that everyone else did. Iterations of trial and error before hitting upon brilliance.&lt;p&gt;Jobs was great at marketing. He had some great people work under him. But he also had plenty of swing and misses too. I would say perhaps he was better at pivoting failures early than most CEOs but I don&amp;#x27;t think that&amp;#x27;s true either.</text></comment>
<story><title>Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural-born leader</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/07/steve-wozniak-steve-jobs-wasnt-really-capable-as-an-engineer.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mrtksn</author><text>I disagree, Steve Jobs didn&amp;#x27;t luck out. Instead, he never went through the filters.&lt;p&gt;Had he tried to become an Aircraft Engineer or a Doctor, he might get filtered out but
he and Woz ventured into an unestablished field that was about to boom. There were no filters to keep him out and though he lacked a scholar formation he was exceptionally brilliant and managed to walk the path better than the most.&lt;p&gt;Peter Thiel says &amp;quot;competition is for losers&amp;quot;. I think Steve Jobs is an example of it. Even if Steve Jobs said he was competing, Apple rarely competed and won on equal terms under Steve Jobs. He had always maintained a startup mentality, instead of making better phone than Nokia he would make something that no one at Nokia or anywhere else even dreamed of. IMHO, his leadership style was exactly what it takes to drive bunch of brilliant people into the jungle where the great riches are hidden but he was no match to Tim Cook as a CEO.&lt;p&gt;To this day, When I listen to his old interviews etc.  I&amp;#x27;m hypnotised by the clearness and the flow of his mind. It&amp;#x27;s probably because he was one of those who made what we have today but if you forget that for a moment he sounds like a time traveler from the 2000s explaining the value of computers to regular folks from the 70s.&lt;p&gt;What an extraordinary man.</text></item><item><author>zcw100</author><text>What really set Steve Jobs apart is that he never should have gotten to where he did. I don&amp;#x27;t mean he didn&amp;#x27;t deserve it or anything but based on that structures that exist to filter people who attain the positions that he did. By luck, or accident, or raw determination, he became a person in the drivers seat that no one would have chose to put there. He was so much not the person they would have chosen that they kicked him out and replaced him with someone they did choose, John Sculley.&lt;p&gt;Because he was outside of this normal system he made decisions that were baffling, treated people in ways they felt uncomfortable with and achieved things that people thought were out of reach. They seemed out of reach because it was out of reach given the world of possibilities they allowed for themselves but Steve Jobs lived by a different set of rules. Steve Jobs rising to the top and succeeding in a power structure that didn&amp;#x27;t share his worldview is what makes Steve Jobs truly remarkable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pavlov</author><text>I don’t agree with Thiel on a lot of things, but in this instance I do.&lt;p&gt;When someone says “I’m very competitive,” I hear that they want to live inside boxes created by other people.</text></comment>