Chapter 57 Section 3 Pirates Team

In management, Jobs never liked large and comprehensive organizational structures."Steve didn't like big teams at all," Sculley said. "He thought they were bureaucratic and ineffective. He called them 'a bunch of idiots.'" So what kind of team did Jobs like? In fact, when Apple made Apple I and Apple II in the early days, the so-called team was more like a manual workshop with Woz alone and a few helpers.Jobs played the role of head of the R&D team decently for a long time, starting with the Macin-tosh team.The experience in Macintosh was an important period for Jobs to learn management and finally establish his own team management style, although the ending of that experience was not good-Jobs was abandoned by the Macintosh team and Apple in 1985, and Jobs was arbitrary, casual, Rough management still has something to do with it.

Back then, the Macintosh team under Jobs was an out-and-out "pirate team". That year, the Johnny Depp movie series "Pirates of the Caribbean" had not yet been released, but as a famous Disney theme park attraction, "Pirates of the Caribbean" has become a favorite entertainment for Americans since 1967 In terms of image, many hippies worship pirates as unrestrained heroes who dare to think and do things. This is the same reason that young people in China like the green forest heroes who eat large pieces of meat and drink in large bowls in the Water Margin. From the beginning, Jobs wanted to build a Pirates of the Caribbean-style R&D team.In the Macintosh team's office, he unfurls a black pirate flag with a skull on it.If conditions allowed, Jobs might decorate the entire office into a huge pirate ship.

Every new employee who joins the Macintosh team receives a pirate T-shirt that reads: "Be a Pirate! Not a Navy!" The analogy of pirates and navies was an invention of Jobs himself.The two mantras he often said at that time were: "Being a pirate is happier than being a navy." "If you can be a pirate, why do you want to be a navy?" Why did Jobs say that pirates are inferior to navy?This question has long been answered in Shi Naian's book.Take a look at every confrontation between Shuibo Liangshan and the Song Dynasty's official army, whether it was land warfare, water warfare, positional warfare, mobile warfare, guerrilla warfare, sabotage warfare... which one was not the official army losing the shit?Undoubtedly, pirates are more flexible than the regular army, quicker to adapt, more aggressive, less fettered by red tape, and more eclectic in their combat methods... These characteristics are exactly what Jobs wanted to bring to the Macintosh team.

From the office environment, Jobs continued to inject dynamic elements into the Macintosh team.In those years, the Macintosh team moved between several buildings in Apple headquarters, but no matter where they work, there are always some game consoles and toys in the office area that everyone can play after work.Everyone's favorite to play is a kind of colorful ball called NERF that can be thrown or fired with a pop gun. Engineers even designed new game rules for NERF. Jobs also complained that the office was too deserted, and specially approved everyone to use public funds to buy some speakers and put them in the office area. Of course, the speakers can only be turned on at night or on weekends when they do not interfere with normal work.In addition, employees who are good at playing musical instruments in the team also keep many musical instruments in the office and improvise for colleagues during lunch.

The Macintosh office area looks like a messy laboratory and a kindergarten - look at those rising Internet companies, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, their offices are both work and work without exception. The dual nature of entertainment.In fact, this kind of "pirate" office culture was vividly interpreted by Jobs as early as the Macintosh era. Jobs once told Time magazine: "The Macintosh team works 90 hours a week." This statement is somewhat exaggerated.But in order to remember Joe's teachings, the Macintosh team still ordered a special round neck sweater with the words "Work 90 hours a week and have fun in it". sweatshirt with pride.

The Macintosh team behaved more like a bunch of pirates.Once, everyone was discussing software design proposals in the office. In order to go to another building to get a hard drive with presentation files, Bill Atkinson, an engineer with artistic temperament in the team, directly copied the shortcut from The back door of the office building ran out.But Bill forgot that it was already past 5:30 in the afternoon. According to the rules of the office building, the guards had already turned on the automatic alarm at the back door of the office building, and it was not allowed to enter and exit through the back door at this time.Bill's recklessness rang the alarm. For a while, the alarm bell rang loudly, and the entire office building was shrouded in harsh sounds.

The high-pitched alarm bell continued for more than three minutes, and Jobs became impatient. He said loudly, "Isn't there anyone who can turn that damn thing off?" Engineer Andy Herzfeld asked Jobs, "Can we destroy that thing and shut it up?" "No problem," Jobs said without thinking, "I don't care what you do, as long as it shuts it up." Herzfeld and his colleagues, who received the order from Gang Leader Joe, ran into the tool room, picked up hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches and all the things they could handle, and went straight to the alarm bell.They first pierced the alarm bell with a screwdriver, but the damn sound still didn't stop.The angry engineers simply resorted to brute force and dismantled the alarm bell, and the harsh sound stopped abruptly.

Just then, a gray-haired guard appeared behind the engineers. "Very well, very well," said the guard, looking at the gang of gangsters, "you're out of luck! Who's your boss? Do you have any papers?" Jobs handed over his credentials and told the guards, "I'll take care of it." The guard looked at Jobs' ID for a long time. Finally, he shrugged, picked up the fragments of the alarm bell, and left without saying anything. Another time, members of the Macintosh team saw the Osborne 1, the world's first commercially available portable computer, at a computer show.The inventor of this computer was Adam Osborne.Osborne was at the show at the time.When he saw the employees of the Macintosh team, he directly said to them in a provocative tone: "Go back and tell Jobs that Osborne 1 must sell more than Apple II and Macintosh."

The employee returned to the company and told Jobs what had happened.The angry Jobs immediately picked up the phone and called Osborne: "Hi, this is Steve Jobs. I want to speak to Adam Osborne." Osborne's secretary told Jobs that Osborne was not at the company and would not return to the office until the next morning.She asked Jobs if he needed to leave a message. "Yes," Jobs replied, pausing before continuing, "My message is: Tell Adam he's an asshole." On the other end of the phone, Osborne's secretary was silent for a long time, not knowing how to answer.

Jobs continued: "One more thing, I heard that Adam was interested in the Macintosh. Tell him that the Macintosh is so good that he might want to buy some for his kids, even if the Macintosh shuts down his company." Good luck." Jobs' prediction came true, and a year later, Osbourne really closed its doors. It is such a group of pirate-like designers and engineers who, under the leadership of Jobs, the pirate leader, built the shocking Macintosh computer.Although Jobs was not very good at dealing with teamwork and interpersonal relationships at the time, and was sometimes even stubborn and stubborn to death, Jobs's "pirate team" rules still have a lot to learn from in the internal management of the Macintosh team .

In fact, to put it bluntly, isn't Jobs' "pirate team" the "lightweight team", "flat organizational structure" and "product-oriented team" advocated by Internet startups in recent years?When Jobs built the Macintosh, the Internet had not entered the field of vision of ordinary people, but the most popular entrepreneurial ideas and management rules in the Internet age had already been practiced by Mr. Joe. On the one hand, Jobs insisted on controlling the size of the team and the quality of the team members.In his mind, a small team of 10 best people is far more efficient than a large team of 100 good and bad people. In the early days of building the Macintosh team, Jobs said: "The Macintosh team will never exceed 100 people. More than 100 people, even their names can't be recognized." Jobs also said: "If we have to hire someone with a certain specialty, in order to maintain the same size of the team, another person has to go." But unfortunately, with the development of the Macintosh team and the infinite expansion of self-confidence, Jobs quickly left behind what he had said. The size of the Macintosh team later not only exceeded 100 people, but also gave birth to all those "big team diseases" that Jobs hated so much. The relationship between the Macintosh team and other teams in the company was also a mess. Jobs, on the other hand, insisted that the Macintosh team must always be product-oriented, not market-oriented, sales-oriented, or anything else. Jobs said: "A product-oriented team culture is critical if Apple is to continue to have vibrant ideas, exciting products and the most engaging work environment." The Macintosh team was an almost completely self-sufficient project team, with not only software and hardware engineers on the team, but also the team's own designers, product managers, documentation writers and marketing specialists.This kind of self-sufficient team structure allows employees with different responsibilities to maintain the closest cooperation. In the intense work of maybe 16 hours a day, there is no need to run around looking for people, or begging people from other teams to take part in meetings. .At least in Jobs's vision, everyone should work in close cooperation around the core product of the Macintosh, without red tape, without buck-passing, and without bureaucracy. Jobs hoped that the management structure of the team should be as flat as possible, preferably without a middle layer, only the pirate leader and a group of pirates.He once said: "Apple should be a workplace where everyone can go directly to the CEO's office and tell the CEO what he thinks." Of course, Jobs' ideas are sometimes too wishful thinking.His eclectic approach to management has also become the biggest weakness of the "pirate team".A former Apple executive said: "The flaw of this method is very obvious, that is, disorder and uncontrollable." The entire development process of Macintosh was repeatedly delayed due to chaotic decision-making and uncertain technical problems, which is the best proof. In 1984, after Jobs merged the Lisa team into the Macintosh team, about a quarter of the Lisa employees were dismissed, but the combined team still had as many as 300 people, which was not the ideal "pirate team" in Jobs' mind. up.Many cadres of the Macintosh team left.Andy Herzfeld officially resigned from Jobs after six months of layoff.Facing Jobs' retention, he said sadly: "The Macintosh team I wanted to go back to join no longer exists." In any case, Macintosh's "pirate team" is one of the most famous R&D teams in Apple's history and IT history.At that time, Apple CEO Sculley commented on Jobs' management style in the Macintosh team: "Jobs is not like a manager of an IT company at Apple, but more like an art director or theater manager of an art group. Jobs often said that architecture And the process is not to stifle creativity, but to cultivate and foster creativity through innovative ways of thinking.” On February 10, 1982, the "Pirate Team" held a special "signature party". Sign your name on the paper.Jerry Mannock was the designer of the famous plastic case for the Apple II. This time, Jobs asked him to design the case for the Macintosh.In order to reflect the cohesion of the Macintosh team, Jobs came up with a brilliant idea: to engrave the signatures of all team members on the inner wall of the Macintosh case! What a genius idea.Every successful team has a way of expressing pride in their product.For example, in the open space between Buildings 16 and 17 of the Microsoft headquarters, the names and release times of every product in Microsoft's history are engraved on the floor tiles.But like Jobs, it is really ingenious to engrave the names of all members of the product team on the inner wall of the Macintosh case, let users buy it home, and wait for the smartest users to discover this amazing secret! Of course, over time, the old ones have gone, the new ones have come, and the signatures inside the Macintosh case have changed several times.Every time the case design changes, the wall signature becomes a new version.This habit has been maintained until long after Jobs was expelled from Apple. It was not until around 1990 that the signature completely disappeared from the inner wall of the Macintosh case.