steve jobs on why xerox failed
Kumar Saurav1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2024–2024
commentary · general · evergreen · 2024–2024 on HN
A short clip of Steve Jobs explaining why Xerox failed, arguing that product people lose out to sales and marketing people once a company becomes dominant.
HN cites it as the standard explanation of how finance and sales take over a company, applied to Boeing and other declining firms.
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4 comments from Hacker News
I keep this clip open in a browser tab so I can go back to it from time-to-time: ▶ this video It's the same basic message from Jobs, but this time about Xerox.
This is really a systemic problem and I'd honestly be shocked if it's even possible for Boeing to dig themselves out of the hole they've dug for themselves. The core problem is the market demands ever-increasing profits and at a certain point the only way to achieve that is to cut costs. Executive compensation won't ever be cut. The management consultants will never be fired because they provide plausible deniability for the executives should anything go wrong. The inevitable result here is that the financial people end up running the company, not the engineers. The old Steve Jobs Xerox quote [1] applies. No, Boeing wasn't technically a monopoly, but in a duopoly where it's supported by the captured US government, it really operates like one. So you have a series of short-term decisions to increase profits that hurt the long-term viability of the company. Layers of subcontracting that add friction but marginally increase profits and lose quality control and institutional knowledge. [1]: ▶ this video
well in a sense the right word may be oligarch... US companies control all OSs but linux... they are surely working together with NSa and the US government which in turn let them become extremely powerful monopolies... what are oligarchs? people who play together with strong governments... Ithink the upper management of these US companies not just become oligarch-rich from soaring stock prices but the actual thing oligarch enjoy is power which is not 1 to 1 money in the economical sense stock companies have shareholders, simple employees and management and the goal is to maximize profit... totally legit and apple is seemingly doing this by crippling the web because using apps from taxed app store and using browsers to browse simple websites is what fits their thinking and current(!) sales model but you are right, why do people argue for apple I really dont understand... all you have to do if you want to stay simple and apple-safe to follow their suggestions, use safari, never download other browsers, do not use other app stores etc... a choice will not make their system worse and what I want to add, I am not sure Apple actually on the profit max way with these decisions... not because I never buy iphones ever again because most people who buy apple rather tend to beleive them and accept and follow which is an understandable strategy when there is so much information around but they missed making Safari THE browser where they now could distribute Apple products on all OS which
I do not use these but I find windows after linux bloated so it may have something to do with microsoft engineers? (teams) spotify can choose its strategy, you can choose apple music native app (I guess there is something like this? I rarely listen to music but on youtube) Idont know about teams but my partner has ipad and iphone and I hear often how teams and microsoft products behave bad on iHardware... it may have to do with the love these two big corps show towards each other :) maybe you have to buy a windows laptop for teams too, that is the walled garden philosophy you actually seem to protect :) my partner now uses my laptop where I have a windows which I did not totally purged because I need this OS for testing :) hell there were chinese text the other day on the front page, you need to scan your finger twice (even if first was a success) sometimes, it cannot find the timezone from time to time :) I am not linux fanboy, the first ubuntu I purged 20 years ago or so I tried, but in the last 5-10 years linux is just great and getting glimpses how windows works by free family IT care, pff... that is the world we live in :) I added outlook as a web app for my partner and it has some apparent problems without testing it, but in the last 3 months I see it getting used and no problems I hear :) I guess the web designers are not web app programmers and it takes time until a new breed of programmers takes over the web... if I were spotify, I would keep the iOS app and you coul