Travis Kalanick To Uber CEO Candidates: I'm 'Steve Jobsing' It And Will Return (recode.net) 124
Kara Swisher, reporting for Recode: Warring factions within factions, conflicting back-channeling, intense media scrutiny, questionable foreign influences and a capricious leader whose jarring moves leave everyone in a state of perpetual uncertainly. The Trump administration, right? Well, yes, but also Uber, as it nears its much anticipated decision on who will be its next CEO. And, according to sources, that top leader is not going to be a woman, as the board of the car-hailing company struggles to move forward. To add to the drama: Some directors worry that its former CEO Travis Kalanick -- who was ousted -- is trying to game the outcome in his favor, after he told several people that he was "Steve Jobs-ing it." It is a reference to the late leader of Apple, who was fired from the company, only to later return in triumph.
Like Everyone (Score:2)
Everyone, esp. in SV, wants to be Steve Jobs. But I have yet to see someone else pull off the Reality Distortion Field, the black turtleneck, or the fired and return CEO.
Real leaders don't imitate. (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing that these sorts of people fail to realize is that real leaders don't imitate; they define.
The moment somebody tries to replicate what a successful leader did, this person has inherently become a follower, meaning they can't be a leader.
To make matters worse, the imitator likely couldn't even fully or properly imitate their inspiration, either. This means that the imitator will have a greater chance of failure than even the imitated leader did.
This isn't just true for people. It's true for organiz
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Well, Firefox was the leader, until it started copying one of its rivals.
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huh? Firefox was never the leader
Before Chrome, Firefox topped out at a 70-80% share of web sessions. They were indisputably the leader until 1) Google pulled their financial support and made their own browser, and 2) Mozilla started caring more about the political past of its management than the quality of its product.
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Depends. Instagram has copied Snapchat to huge success.
The key is that Firefox couldn't copy Chrome's speed. If they could have made it as light and fast as Chrome before they lost their market share, it would have worked.
Copying works IF you're at the top and are quick about it.
Another negative example would be Microsoft's obsession with copying the look/feel (and high margins) of Apple, without understanding why Apple does things the way it does. Not only did MS forget that their actual strength is in being the mass-market, low-margin OS provider, but that distraction allowed Google to swoop in and dominate the mass-market, low-market phone/tablet market that Microsoft SHOULD have been concentrating on instead, and has also allowed Google to make inroads in threatening both Offic
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that hippo is not a virgin
Not sure why everyone keeps harping on the fact that I'm a virgin. I guess Slashdot has a lot of cherry poppers.
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Since you can't return "in" a motorcycle in a conventional sense, maybe it was in a sidecar bolted to the motorcycle.
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Since you can't return "in" a motorcycle in a conventional sense, maybe it was in a sidecar bolted to the motorcycle.
Seems like you studied under George Carlin [imdb.com]:
About this time, someone is telling you to get on the plane. "Get on the plane. Get on the plane." I say, "fuck you, I'm getting IN the plane! IN the plane! Let Evil Knievel get ON the plane! I'll be in here with you folks in uniform! There seems to be less WIND in here!"
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The difference is (Score:3)
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There's a difference?
Re:The difference is (Score:4, Funny)
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Actually it's mutually exclusive.
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Steve Jobs was a brilliant asshole.
Kalanick is just like Jobs, except for the "brilliant" part.
Re:The difference is (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a part of the Cult of Jobs or the Cult of Apple, but I can acknowledge that Jobs was very good at determining what people would want before most people even realized it, and was technologically savvy enough to know when to attempt to push the product development such that it was viable and could be brought to market. He was also very good with at least evaluating interface design, don't know if that was more of a veto-power sort of thing or if he had a real hand in it, but either way, Apple products under Jobs generally had good design. That hockeypuck mouse on the first iMac stands out as the opposite, and I'm certain that we can find other glaring examples throughout the years, but by and large, both the software interfaces and hardware aesthetics were quite good, and were well liked by the nontechnical buying-public and even by some tech-savvy users.
I don't see how anything in this relates to Uber. Apple is a products company, while ultimately Uber provides a service, and a service that once the phone app portion is concluded is not different enough from competitors' services to stand-out. The CEO of Uber trying to compare himself to Steve Jobs is like comparing Apples and Automobiles. It just doesn't make any sense.
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more like:
Uber is a hype company, providing growth in the short term to investor's based on this hype. The car rental nonsense is incidental to the hype.
Uber is also a house of cards that could collapse at any moment in time.. mark my words, within 10 years there'll be a simplified version of the tale of Uber a la 'wolf of wall street' or 'the big short'
Jony Ive (Score:2)
Let's not give Steve Jobs too much credit for employing Jony Ive [wikipedia.org].
Riiiight (Score:5, Insightful)
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Pixar was a company he bought off from George Lucas, who needed cash after his divorce, that burnt through his money until Toy Story came along, and then took credit for something he had almost nothing to do with..
When did he take credit for anything at Pixar except funding it for the initial 10 years? He never said that he did any of the work in those early years. For the first 10 years Pixar did run on Job's money, however, he engineered the first Disney deal that led to Toy Story. Jobs also took Pixar public. Jobs was CEO until Disney bought it out in 2006 which saw Pixar rise to be the juggernaut it is today. So Jobs did a lot for Pixar.
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When did he take credit for anything at Pixar except funding it for the initial 10 years?
According to "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" [amzn.to] by Alan Deutschman, when Steve Jobs presented Toy Story [youtube.com] at SIGGRAPH 1995, an industry group that he has no affiliation with. The animators, who were affiliated with SIGGRAPH, had to watch from the backstage. Steve Jobs funded the second decade of Pixar after purchasing it from George Lucas.
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You literally contributed nothing to the story.
Nonsense. I provided a very insightful comment (attention, mods!), a link to a book that I've personally read that is relevant, and a YouTube link with Steve Jobs at SIGGRAPH. You're not obligated to click on any of the links.
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Steve Jobs presented Toy Story [youtube.com] at SIGGRAPH 1995, an industry group that he has no affiliation with. The animators, who were affiliated with SIGGRAPH, had to watch from the backstage
Er what? Are you saying that Pixar didn't actually make Toy Story? Is that what you are saying?
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Er what? Are you saying that Pixar didn't actually make Toy Story? Is that what you are saying?
Steve Jobs taking credit for Toy Story even though he had nothing to do with project than own the company. The animators should have presented at SIGGRAPH.
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Steve Jobs taking credit for Toy Story even though he had nothing to do with project than own the company. The animators should have presented at SIGGRAPH.
The only awards shows that animators present at are The Annies. [annieawards.org] Steve's job (heh) at the time was to talk up Pixar, especially to a trade show audience, and back then no one was better. It was a speech not just about the achievement of Toy Story, but a prediction of the future of animation. This wasn't just a regular speech, it was the keynote presentation at the show -- naturally the executive producer and owner is going to speak.
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Pixar was a company he bought off from George Lucas, who needed cash after his divorce, that burnt through his money until Toy Story came along, and then took credit for something he had almost nothing to do with..
When did he take credit for anything at Pixar except funding it for the initial 10 years? He never said that he did any of the work in those early years. For the first 10 years Pixar did run on Job's money, however, he engineered the first Disney deal that led to Toy Story. Jobs also took Pixar public. Jobs was CEO until Disney bought it out in 2006 which saw Pixar rise to be the juggernaut it is today. So Jobs did a lot for Pixar.
From your story, it sounds like Disney did a lot for Pixar.
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From your story, it sounds like Disney did a lot for Pixar.
And Pixar did a lot for Disney. Do you remember what Disney do for the Pixar films? They didn't fund them. Pixar did that. They didn't make them. Pixar did that. Disney distributed them. Initially Disney also owned the rights to the early films which Pixar found onerous. So Disney mades tons of money off Pixar in multiple ways. What would Disney been between 1995 and 2006 without Pixar.
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Pixar was veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery lucky to get attached to the Disney name.
Disney without Pixar would still be Disney.
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Iger said the importance of Pixar to Disney's future had become clear to him during opening ceremonies for Hong Kong Disneyland in September 2005, just a month before he became chief executive. He noticed the many characters from Pixar films featured in the kickoff parade. But there was nothing from Disney's recent animated movies, whose latest characters weren't popular.
That and Disney animation films were in a rut producing less and less at the box office. These are just facts man. Both companies benefited from the deal. To pretend Disney didn't is pure denial.
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The NeXTcube was apparently so very nonviable that Tim Berners-Lee used one to invent the World Wide Web.
The NeXTcube cost $10,000. That's $7,000 more than what Steve Jobs promised the universities that were supposed to be his customers. Tim Berner-Lee worked at CERN that could afford $10,000 workstations.
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A man of your age and vast experience has used them, yes?
Nope. My work experience has always been Windows on PCs, and occasionally Macs at more enlighten companies.
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Don't you have some lusers Windows laptop to fix? I can just imagine the reactions on their faces when they realize it's creimer coming to fix their computer. They're going "oh god, not the smelly fat fuck that's full of himself. Please tell me he's not going to try to sell me his crappy book again."
1) I don't do break fix.
2) I wear Old Spice.
3) None of my coworkers know about my ebooks or websites, as they're not my intended audience.
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$10k was a pretty common price point for Workstations [wikipedia.org] during the early 1990s, especially graphics workstations. Very comparable to the prices SGI was charging for their workstations.
In short, people who needed real computing power that wasn't x86 garbage on Windows 3.1 were very much willing to pay. x86 PCs were considered toys compared to workstations.
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$10k was a pretty common price point for Workstations during the early 1990s, especially graphics workstations.
I'm currently reading "Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing" [amzn.to] by Randall Stross. The NeXT computer was supposed to be better than the Mac and priced at $3,000 for the university market. When the NeXT computer got introduced, the universities balked at the $7,000 price tag for their students. Apple owned the educational market the inexpensive Macs.
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Up until Toy Story, Pixar made its money from licensing Renderman..
Pixar burned holes in the pockets of George Lucas and Steve Jobs. IIRC, Renderman was a $30,000 computer for a niche market. Pixar even did TV commercials for a while. They weren't financially successful until Toy Story came out.
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RenderMan is software. It's not a computer. Perhaps you should shut the fuck up about things you know nothing about.
What part of IIRC don't you understand?
I mean you could have at least read the damn wikipedia page about RenderMan
It was the Pixar Image Computer [wikipedia.org]. Like NeXT, Pixar went from being a hardware company to a software company.
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Up until Toy Story, Pixar made its money from licensing Renderman
Renderman sales weren't quite that big. What kept Pixar afloat were TV commercials for companies like Listerine [youtube.com] and Life Savers [youtube.com] candy.
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Back in the 1990ies I used to do some IT for an engineering company that almost exclusively used NeXTstations. The company owner wanted me to admin their NeXTstations, almost forcing me to borrow a ton of manuals, but back then I was a DOS and OS/2 guy, so after some time trying to make sense out of NeXTStep (and my English wasn't that good back then hence reading those manuals was difficult) I've declined. I kinda regret it now - could have earned a lot of money.
Re: Riiiight (Score:2)
You are missing my point - for that company the NeXTStations were a viable product.
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It fits with some stories I read of him being a fan of Ayn Rand. His belief that Uber needs him to prop it up fits neatly with that. I almost wish he would get the CEO job back so that he can be at the helm when it finally sinks.
Pancreatic cancer FTW? (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, it's what Jobs would do....
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Going back to his Jam Pad (Score:1)
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He doesn't even have Jobs's ego. Ego usually describes a person's inflated idea of their own genius. Jobs really was about as good as he thought he was.
Just proved he's not CEO material (Score:5, Insightful)
Good on ya (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, so Nexting and Pixaring? (Score:2)
Yeah, um, create two other companies, one hugely successful and one that gets acquired by Uber, and then we'll talk.
That's not "Steve Jobs-ing it". (Score:3, Interesting)
Steve Jobs-ing it is "You're all fucking idiots, I'm out of here." It wasn't some big plan where he was going to go chill out in the woods for a bit and come back stronger. Jobs intended NeXT to take over everything, he was just 10 years or so too early.
Further, "Steve Jobs-ing it" is selling all of your shares but one, because who wants to invest in idiots? Then after Apple acquired NeXT, he sold almost all of _those_ shares, too.
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Wouldn't have happened if Bee had priced itself at a reasonable value. NeXT was the backup.
It's for the best. (Score:3)
The more assholes that die from ignoring medical advice from experts, the better off the world will be. (Sorry Apple fans but Steve was a real dick)
Jobsing (Score:2, Informative)
It may also be a reference to the late leader of Apple, who killed himself by trying to cure cancer using quack remedies rather than actual medicine.
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who killed himself by trying to cure cancer using quack remedies rather than actual medicine.
Steve did use actual medicine: he was diagnosed in 2003, and had surgery nine months later to remove the tumor. The particular type of cancer he was initially diagnosed for has an unusually good prognosis for Pancreatic cancer. He was one of the "unlucky" few for whom the surgery wasn't curative. The doctors apparently suspected the cancer spread to his liver, and they took the unusual step of replacing it. That put him on anti-rejection drugs.
Because of the anti-rejection drugs his immune system is compro
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He said himself that he regretted the initial delay while he sought 'alternative treatments'.
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If I had to guess, I'd say it was the fruit that killed him. Fructose is bad for the pancreas and from what I read he ate a lot of fruit. Once your pancreas goes, there is nothing that can be done. It doesn't regenerate, you only have one, and it provides some life-critical chemicals.
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While Jobs was a Raw Fruitinarian for a while, it's important to note that diabetes != cancer; they're totally different diseases;
We've discovered a 'link' between diabetes & pancreatic cancer, but we're not sure which way the arrow points - it may be that pancreatic cancer may be a cause of diabetes, but not the reverse).
The nine months between the cancer diagnosis and the start of treatment was likely a far bigger problem; given the debilitating nature of most cancer treatments, it's not unusual for p
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Where did I say diabetes? Fructose is bad for the pancreas, period. No human cell can metabolize it directly and it is processed in the liver in a manner similar to alcohol. My understanding is that this process produces by-products which are harmful to the pancreas over the long-term. Severe alcoholics are also known to have pancreatic issues with little or no sign of diabetes.
Investors to Travis Kalanick: (Score:2)
Classic (Score:2)
So... (Score:2)
...he plans to die?
He's a shining example for most CEOs I know, that much I have to give him.
Tough if he is an ex-con (Score:2)
Travis may end spending some time in the big house first, and I think that means he cannot be a CEO of anything.
How will he "Jobs" it (Score:1)
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Not far from Gom Jabbar which you want to avoid with your neck
Thank you Muad'Dib.