Twenty Years in the Valley
“Tell me, what are we doing wrong?”
I am a tried and true computer nerd.
My father bought me a Timex Sinclair 1000 in junior high, and I learned how to program BASIC on it. I figured out enough on my own with that thing to create crude Pac Man animations in black and white pixels, as well as cook up a few D&D character generators. I got my hands on every IBM PC, Trash 80, Commodore 64, and Mac 128K that I could — access I got through all of my nerd friends. (Yes, that would be you Joey, Jimmy, Marc, and Vivek. Nerds!) I was even the Apple Student Rep in college as the ‘80s came to a close. One of the best college work gigs any student can have by the way. Awesome pay and free Apple schwag.
Steve Jobs was the guy who made computers cool. And believe me, in the ‘80s, being a nerd was not remotely cool.
When I got to Silicon Valley, I never expected I’d get a chance to meet Jobs. He had been long gone from Apple. However, as luck would have it, I did get a chance to meet him. Twice. Or more like one and half.
The first time was at the Stanford Shopping Center in the summer of 1996. I remember it being at the Williams-Sonoma store.
I was standing near a back wall trying to figure out what cookware I wanted to buy for my new apartment in Palo Alto. Jobs came up and stood right next me. And by right next to me, I mean about 5' to my left. He was wearing his usual black shirt and blue jeans, and looked exactly like he does in all the photos you can find of him from 1996. I tried to act cool, but I’m sure I failed.
So when he walked right up and stood next to me, I desperately wanted to introduce myself.
But I didn’t. I just stood there, stunlocked, watching him study the choices on the wall. And by study, I mean he studied them. He picked up and fiddled with the various cookware items, spinning them in his hands, feeling the weight, checking out their lines, furrowing his eyebrows. He didn’t just browse each item, he put each one through its paces.
I figured that if I was too chicken to introduce myself to him right there in the store, I could at least learn something by watching how he checked out the merchandise. He was there all but a minute or two, and appeared disappointed by the choices. Not liking anything, he simply walked away. I looked at the wall of cookware, a little disappointed in myself for being such a dork, and walked out of the store. I bought nothing that day.
The second time was much different.
It was 1997, and Jobs was back at Apple. The acquisition of NeXT by Apple was about as big a shocker as anything that had happened in Silicon Valley during that period. In the mid ‘90s, Apple was in a tailspin. The company had truly lost its way. Microsoft was completely dominating the industry, crushing Apple in a public beating that was almost unbearable to watch.
To understand that period of time, how far Apple had fallen, how much confusion there was with the direction of the Mac, and who Jobs was to Apple in 1997, watch Jobs as he delivers his keynote at the Apple WWDC. Don’t miss the section about 50 mins in where he responds brilliantly to a brutal question from the audience.
So it was sometime in the Spring of 1997, I was sitting in my office at Adobe HQ in San Jose, quietly working away on some new designs. My phone rang and the dialer read “Corporate Boardroom.”
Weird.
I picked up my phone and Bryan Lamkin was on the line. “Andrei! You’re there. Good!”
“What’s up Bryan?”
“Can you do me a favor? Can you gather up the crew and bring them to boardroom upstairs?”
“Um… Sure. Right now?”
“Yes, please! Thanks. See you in a bit.”
By crew, Bryan meant the Photoshop engineers. I went around the floor and found Mark Hamburg. I’m almost positive I found another, and I’m pretty sure it was Scott Byer, but I’m not certain. I told them Bryan wanted us up in the boardroom.
“What for?”
“Hell if I know.”
We all headed up to the coporate boardroom and knocked on the door. One of the executive admins opened it, signaled us to keep quiet, and let us in.
The Adobe corporate boardroom is your typical high-class executive affair. The massive oak table in the middle could seat 30 people. There was a large movie sized projection screen on the far wall with a presentation from one of the product teams on it. One thing I always loved about that room was that the seats were the most comfortable chairs in the entire building. I envied not being able to hold our weekly team meetings in it.
At the table sat Bryan and all of the upper level executives at Adobe, with John Warnock and Chuck Geschke in the middle. Sitting across from them on the other side of the table were all of the top Apple executives, including the newly returned Steve Jobs who appeared to be holding court. They were in the middle of a heated discussion of some sort. Greg Gilley, the engineering manager for all of Adobe’s digital imaging products — and my manager by that time — and Sean Parent, one of the senior Photoshop engineers, were also in the room.
Bryan got up from the table and greeted us after we entered. He whispered, “Just hang out for a little bit. I’ll explain when I can.” Mark, Scott, and I sat down along wall and observed the proceedings.
I can’t go into the specifics of what was being discussed, but I will say that all the stories you’ve read or heard about Jobs and how he could behave were pretty accurate from my experience that day. Basically, Jobs was back at Apple and he was doing emergency repairs with key Macintosh developers. Adobe was one of the most critical, and one that he had a long and positive relationship with personally. It was PostScript with the LaserWriter after all that gave the Macintosh its Desktop Publishing roots for many early adopters. Given his relationship with Warnock and Adobe, Jobs had wanted a few key things out of us, and he was especially concerned how Adobe felt about the state of the Macintosh. At that point in time, I can assure you most of us in the trenches were very annoyed. Given the weight of the situation, Job’s was in full Reality Distortion Field mode, pulling out all of his tricks to try and get Adobe back into the Apple camp.
It was pretty amazing to watch live and in person.
The meeting had been going on for hours apparently, and we had joined with about an hour remaining. From my read, everyone in the room was exhausted, including Warnock. It looked to me like the only person ready to go another few hours was Jobs.
The meeting finally wrapped and everyone started clearing the boardroom. Bryan finally came back over to us. “Thanks for coming up, guys. Steve has a request.”
“What would that be?” Mark asked.
“He wants to talk you. Ask you a few questions. Are you ok with that?”
“Sure!”
I was confused. What could Steve Jobs possibly want to ask us?
“Great. Grab a seat then.”
The room had emptied by now and Bryan walked out. The group of us sat down at the table, which included Greg and Sean if I recall. Jobs grabbed a chair on the other side of the table and sat down.
So picture it: On one side of Adobe boardroom sat the Photoshop engineers and one young punk designer. On the other was Jobs himself. His assistant sat off to the far edge.
Jobs grabbed a notepad and a pen.
“Hey guys. I really appreciate all of you taking the time to talk to me.”
I remember thinking to myself, What the hell? Is this for real?
“So, I hear you guys think Apple’s doing it wrong.”
That was an understatement. Apple was toast as far as any of us could tell. I’m not sure if Mark or I chuckled, but I think one of us did.
“Tell me, what are we doing wrong?”
There was a bit of a pause as we processed what Jobs just asked. Mark was the most senior of the team, and one of the most outspoken engineers I’ve ever worked with. If Mark didn’t like something, you can bet he’d tell you, and in a brutally honest and direct sort of way.
“Where do I begin?” Mark quipped.
“Wherever you want,” Jobs replied calmly.
With that invitation, we were off! The Photoshop engineers got into it, telling Jobs everything they disliked about the state of the Macintosh. These were some of the smartest guys in the Valley, and they were not happy. They let Jobs know it. For my part, I think I mostly complained about how the teams at Apple never bothered to ask any of us our opinion on any features that would make our lives better as Apple developers.
Jobs nodded as we vented. The amazing part to me was that he didn’t even try to retort. He sat there, listened, and took notes as we angrily aired our grievances for what felt like an hour.
He listened. And that impressed me more than anything. He took the time to seek out feedback from a few folks in the trenches, and when he got it, he didn’t fight it. He just listened.
Then he thanked us for our honesty, got up, and shook our hands.
“This feedback means a lot to me. I want you to know that. I’ll take it back to the team and see what I can do,” he said.
That was it. He and his assistant left the room.
Over the years, I have formed my own opinions about Jobs and Apple — about what he and the company did right, and where they clearly misfired. So many things were going wrong for them that I’m still amazed the company survived the period. Remember, the candy colored iMacs shipped in 1998, and while they certainly garnered a lot of media attention, their real purpose seemed only to buy Apple time until Mac OS X and the first iPod arrived, which was in 2001. That was a good five years after our meeting!
I can only imagine the kind of turmoil that was going on inside the walls in Cupertino over the five years from 1997 to 2001 during what came to be the greatest turn around in corporate history. But it seems to me that if there’s any lesson I can take away from this encounter, it’s that if you want to get through the tough stuff, you’re going to have to seek out a lot of feedback, it’s going to be very hard to listen to, and you’re going to have to do it face to face.
