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Steve Jobs Defied Convention, and Perhaps the Law
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that recent revelations that Steve Jobs was the driving force in a conspiracy to prevent competitors from poaching employees raises the question: If Steve Jobs were alive today, should he be in jail? Jobs 'was a walking antitrust violation. I'm simply astounded by the risks he seemed willing to take,' says Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and an expert in antitrust law. 'Didn't he have lawyers advising him? You see this kind of behavior sometimes in small, private or family-run companies, but almost never in large public companies like Apple.' In 2007, Jobs threatened Palm with patent litigation unless Palm agreed not to recruit Apple employees, even though Palm's then-chief executive, Edward Colligan, told him that such a plan was 'likely illegal.' That same year, Jobs wrote Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google at the time, 'I would be extremely pleased if Google would stop doing this,' referring to its efforts to recruit an Apple engineer. When Jobs learned that the Google recruiter who contacted the Apple employee would be 'fired within the hour,' he responded with a smiley face. 'How could anyone have approved that?' says Hovenkamp. 'Any competent antitrust counsel would know that's illegal. And they had to know they'd get caught eventually.'" (Read more, below.)
Pickens continues: "But the anti-poaching pact was hardly Jobs's only brush with the law. Jobs behavior was at the center of an e-book price-fixing conspiracy with major publishers where a federal judge ruled that "Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy." (Apple has appealed the decision. The publishers all settled the case.) Jobs also figured prominently in the options backdating scandal that rocked Silicon Valley eight years ago. An investigation by Apple's lawyers cleared Jobs of wrongdoing, saying he didn't understand the accounting implications but five executives of other companies went to prison for backdating options, while Jobs was never charged.
There's no way of knowing whether Jobs, had he lived and been healthy, would have faced charges, especially since he was a recidivist. Given Jobs's immense popularity, prosecutors might not have wanted to risk a trial, says Hovenkamp. Jobs probably came closest to being prosecuted in the backdating scandal, but by then he was already known to have pancreatic cancer. Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson notes that 'over and over, people referred to his reality distortion field.' Isaacson added, 'The rules just didn't apply to him, whether he was getting a license plate that let him use handicapped parking or building products that people said weren't possible. Most of the time he was right, and he got away with it.'"
There's no way of knowing whether Jobs, had he lived and been healthy, would have faced charges, especially since he was a recidivist. Given Jobs's immense popularity, prosecutors might not have wanted to risk a trial, says Hovenkamp. Jobs probably came closest to being prosecuted in the backdating scandal, but by then he was already known to have pancreatic cancer. Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson notes that 'over and over, people referred to his reality distortion field.' Isaacson added, 'The rules just didn't apply to him, whether he was getting a license plate that let him use handicapped parking or building products that people said weren't possible. Most of the time he was right, and he got away with it.'"
Not only did Jobs engage in dirty deals as a businessman, but back in the 1970s he was a very active phone phreaker as well.
He was going to die. And he knew it. So he was able to take risks that no one else was going to take.
Because he knew: whatever he did (short of doing an OJ-Simpson style stupidity), he would only be judged by his achievements, the products he created.
Nobody remembers Charlie Chaplin for his three teenager-wifes and pre-marriage pregnancies - even though it was a major scandal even back then.
What lives on are his works.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
It seems pretty silly to ask whether Jobs would have gone to jail. Of course he wouldn't.
Between his celebrity status and bankroll, there's a snowball's chance in hell that he could get convicted of anything, barring committing the crime right there in the courtroom.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I can't seems to stop a suspicion from forming in the back of my mind that somewhere someone is trying to shift blame on the recent news of anti-trust behavior onto the one guy who is no longer here. Doesn't it take 2 to tango? In this very news story, I read that Google was complicate in the scheme of preventing a competitive job market. So let's report on the story that should be reported, please -- Who in Google is going to jail over this?
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Why do people who have achieved nothing in life love to find fault with the innovators that are the engine of modern economic growth.
So because Hitler was the driving force behind the autobahn, VW, and the foundations of modern space exploration we should just give him a pass on that little Holocaust thing? I mean, he was even partly responsible for bringing the US out of the Great Depression!
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Seriously, where do they get off saying it's rare for big companies to do illegal shit? Name me one that *doesn't* at least walk really close to that line.
1) break the law
2) profit
3) maybe get caught
4) if caught, pay a fine of 1% of the excess profits
Why *wouldn't* a company break the law in such circumstances? There is absolutely no reason for it to stop until it becomes routine to either fine corporations an amount much greater than the excess profits (to compensate for all the times they presumably didn't get caught), or it becomes normal to hold the executives personally liable for the corporate actions they endorsed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
that the best programmers/software engineers are astoundingly more productive; something like 10 to 25 times faster then average ones. He obviously wanted to do what it took to retain them, since he was knew that his new product developments relied on impossibly fast deadlines.
I worked as a contractor at Apple for some years in the early 1980s. I was offered a permanent position there which I turned down. In those days Apple was small and I interacted with Jobs on a semi-regular basis.
Inside Apple, Jobs was a capricious tyrant who inspired fear or loyalty depending on whether he liked you or not. The stories about him are legion. He liked people to challenge him, to a point, but if you went over that point he would never listen to you again. He felt that he understood what users wanted much better than the user experience people (maybe correctly). He was the ultimate micro-manager. He gave a few secretaries a $50k spending limit when their boss might have a $5k limit (or less in one case). He ignored convention - but only when that helped him. He hated colored screen output - Woz had to sneak in the 6 colors the Apple II had. In the early days he swindled Woz out of profits from a joint venture. He considered most people as objects to be used to achieve his objectives. He considered laws as something to be worked around. I'm reasonably convinced he had very little or no conscience.
But he knew what he wanted from people. Customer experience was everything. He could charm people when he felt he needed to. He was loyal to people in his inner circle (mostly). He would not compromise if he felt this would result in an inferior product. He had very high expectations of people's work output (and he let them know in no uncertain terms when they didn't meet those expectations).
He had his good side and his bad side. He was not a suitable person to run a company. Firing him was the best thing that could have happened because it changed him fundamentally. He actually started to be concerned about what others thought, and realized that and sometimes you have to listen to them, and on occasion someone else could be right. But be in no doubt, at the bottom of his heart he still considered other people as stepping stones to help him go where he wanted to go - to provide money as investors or customers, to create products for him to sell, or to help him sell those products.
The article is about how jobs subverted the law, consistently. There is hard evidence proving he did just this. This has nothing to do with discrediting, and nothing to do with government access. Stop trying to distract people from the original topic.
I'm a small government kind of guy and I'm not sure what Jobs did should have been illegal. I still believe that Jobs was a jerk and an imitator, not an "innovator" in any sense of the word. He pretty much said himself that his skill was in identifying the best things to "steal" (his word) from his competitors.
In addition, Apple probably wouldn't exist without "big government", since much of their success and much of their power is based on using artificial monopolies and the threat of lawsuits based on dubious and non-innovative intellectual property.
I think Apple/Jobs is just the poster boy. This isn't a new investigation, but as far as I know, it's only now that things are happening that make the news. And, of course, when it comes to anti-social behavior, about the only one person more self-centered than Jobs runs a database company.
Yes, evidently he did, and pretty good ones too. Nobody went to jail, and Apple is doing great. Risky business? Maybe, but it paid off.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I think Steve Jobs was a psychopathic individual.
It wouldn't surprise me if Larry Ellison is, too.
The person who got fired was an HR person -- not the employee who was contacted. Imagine if Apple HR started blindly calling up Google employees trying to lure them away and Google HR trying to lure Apple employees away. It's one thing when employees start looking around and reach out on their own or do so through recruiters. It's quite another for internal company recruiters trying to lure away employees from other companies. They had a deal to not destabilize each others' business. If that deal went so far as to not hire employees who wanted to leave on their own, then it went too far. But this particular email is not an example of such a case.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I still believe that Jobs was a jerk and an imitator, not an "innovator" in any sense of the word. He pretty much said himself that his skill was in identifying the best things to "steal" (his word) from his competitors.
That's what innovation is all about. Nobody can make all the puzzle pieces themselves from scratch. But if you can get the pieces from others, you can then put them together into something new.
"How could anyone have approved that?"
Because Steve Jobs was an ASSHOLE.
I take no delight in his death, it's very sad that he was struck down in such a manner but it doesn't change the fact that he had a thirty year history of being a raging asshole to people.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Jobs was well known to be a sociopath. He cared nothing for people or anything that didn't directly further his vision. That's part of what made him such a successful artist and business man, but it's very obvious to anyone that spent any time at all with him that he just didn't care about the law or anything that he saw as standing in his way of getting what he wanted. Just watch any video with him talking about his competitors. He's dismissive, and rude, and obnoxious. And for some reason, people loved him for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Why do people who have achieved nothing in life love to find fault with the innovators that are the engine of modern economic growth.
So because Hitler was the driving force behind the autobahn, VW, and the foundations of modern space exploration we should just give him a pass on that little Holocaust thing? I mean, he was even partly responsible for bringing the US out of the Great Depression!
Ugh... its worse than that, because the idea that Jobs was a true innovator is a myth I'm getting disgusted by. Maybe a shrewd and ruthless businessman, who was good at marketing, but not an inventor or innovator.
Even while people mythologize Jobs, we forget the engineers, innovators and inventors who actually underlie all the growth and progress we've seen. John McCarthy, the inventor of LISP and a giant in computer science, died at almost the same time as Jobs, and arguably had a much greater influence on computing than him. He's a giant in the history of computer science and engineering. But where's the discussion of McCarthy? Where were all the television shows and books? Why aren't we discussing him?
The first Apple-Samsung trial was about what? Patenting a rectangle? With an outcome determined by a lying, aggressive juror? Where are our priorities?
I have no problem with honoring those who contribute to the progress of society, but the idolization of Jobs is not that. For me, it represents everything wrong with society. It's not only misplaced, but harmful in that it neglects those who actually move society forward and perpetuates the myth of the lone creator. You can call me a hater if you want, but sometimes it's necessary to point out problems before we can move on.
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And you don't have to...provided that you don't plan to drive on the public roads. If you want to drive on the state's roads, it's appropriate for the state to set safety standards and charge you a fee.
And the irony of a guy who made billions using a government-created corporation and government-created copyrights and patents getting his underwear in a bunch over government-issued license plates...yeah.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Except that when pancreatic cancer manifests itself, it's already too late.
Except Jobs didn't have a standard "pancreatic cancer", that is, usually an exocrine adenocarcinoma . He had a neuroendocrine insulinoma. That's a quite atypical variant, indolent, localised, and eminently resectable with a much lower probability of mets if caught early when compared with an adenocarcinoma.
Da Blog
This comes from a VERY old study at RAND or System Development Corp. They took a group of programmers of various backgrounds and put them to doing some varied coding tasks, not all of which aligned with the experience and background of some of the programmers. Sure enough, there was a 10:1 variation in the group, which was really the purpose of the study: to show that there isn't some sort of "generic programmer" that you can put on an assembly line and have them grind out code.
Sackman, H., W.J. Erikson, and E. E. Grant. 1968. "Exploratory Experimental Studies Comparing Online and Offline Programming Performance." Communications of the ACM 11, no. 1 (January): 3-11.
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=362858
It has some methodological flaws and there's a lot of literature on the topic.
Norm Augustine claimed that there is significant difference in productivity in all fields. Running backs score more than 10x as many touchdowns as centers.