"Technical success needs technical skills; business success needs business skills."

From what I've read, Jobs was the hard-charging, demanding, hard-to-get-along-with type, whereas Wozniak was a mellow, easy-going, just-let-me-solder-in-peace type.

But imagine if Wozniak had also been a hard-charging alpha dog type. We might not have an Apple, because Jobs and Wozniak would have broken up as a technology 'couple' early on in their work.

Maybe something like this contributed to the original poster's failure to hit a home run in his decades of work.

This jibes with something it's taken me a long time to learn: sometimes, "going along to get along" really is the optimal path.

What you is say is probably true, but I also absolutely agree with the original poster.

Having access to resources, that mostly means funding, is a HUGE deal.

And often that access is a function of seemingly random things like your physical location and who your friends/business associates are.

Umm... How do you think you get funding? This is the primary difference between the technically-minded and the business-minded. The technical think wealth is who you know or what you're born to -- it's firmly outside their domain. The business-savvy create wealth. That's their job.

That's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that wealth creation is:

1. Not a technical problem.

2. Highly correlated with who you know.

In no way am I implying that it is entirely outside the realm of anyone who has not been born into wealth.

Right. And this is a false correlation. You might as well say "knowledge of C is highly correlated with who you know." It is undoubtedly true. If you know C, you're likely to know many others who know C. If you don't, you might struggle to name even one other person who does.

But this is obviously not because you need to know the right people to know C. It's because a programmer is born not knowing C and must struggle to learn it. In the course of her struggles, she interacts with, works with, and in other ways self-selects for many people who have shared this same struggle.

Business is the same. Its goal (at least in capitalist society) is to create wealth. No one is born knowing how to make profit. A person must struggle to learn this skill, and in doing so often associates with many others doing the same.

So you have two groups. One whose goal it is to create efficient, innovative, elegant code and another whose goal it is to create wealth. One group tends to end up with awesome software and the other tends to end up with awesome resources. It is perfectly reasonable that it should be so. And yet the developers look at the business people and say "I guess it must be who you know?" Aren't we smarter than that?

Create? How?

You sell part of the ownership in a dream for a few million dollars. You then turn the few million into a few tens of millions.

The exact specifics of the "how" are what everyone is trying to figure out, with varying degrees of success.

Actually, that isn't the wealth creation. It is am important market and business function, but the process of want creation and distribution are actually eliminating market inefficiencies, not increasing wealth. Of course, my argument is based upon the simplistic economic model, and I pay no heed to people that believe want creation yields emotional value through the deliverance of material satisfaction. Now, if you mean to say that business people are responsible for increasing factor income, than yes, exactly.

I somewhat agree, but I'm frustrated that that's required. I get more and more disappointed in where our society is at as a whole as I get older. People shouldn't need a professional brown-noser to flatter them continuously for weeks until they recognize the verity and feasibility of a product and decide to purchase it. It's really sad that that's where we're at, I think, sad that people don't just instantly see through that crap and choose not to waste time on companies that aren't straight shooters.

I think I have good executive and business sense, but I don't play with most of these social "norms" that involve constant BS and ass-kissing so it makes some parts of business hard for me. In fact, I'm in the interview process for a job right now, and I sent the company letters about why they're having trouble securing good candidates, and whether I'll get hired anyway is iffy, but only possible because of the open-mindedness of the owner; if this was corporate drone company, like another company I applied with and had to provide programmer-recruitment advice to, I would just be summarily ignored thereafter. How can people be so vacant, so self-absorbed and oblivious to basic and sensical things, like being a normal human instead of living to suck up after your boss and/or potential buyers? It's really upsetting.

This probably doesn't make much sense. My frustration has been pent-up. I have so much frustration that there's still a lot of it pent now. Thanks for the outlet though dudes, outlet appreciated.

Your sending letters critiquing a company you are trying to get a job from? And more than one?! You will not get that job, no matter how 'open minded' the owner is. Right now the owner is hoping someone else applies, and is mulling over how disruptive you would be to the office.

It's like critiquing someone about their online matchmaking profile on your first date with them. It's our first date, and I'm quite a catch, but you keep talking about how my online profile is flawed? Is that really the most important thing to be discussing right now?

There is a fine line between 'sucking up' and 'being polite'.

The owner doesn't want to hire someone who is going to send him letters every week about how his company isn't doing things right. That's being judgmental and condescending.

If you get hired, bring it up the next time they are looking to hire someone. If you don't get hired, then why do you care?

The letters were unsolicited but not completely irrelevant. I wasn't on the inside and didn't know the inside story, but I'd had a second interview with them and the lead developer discussed their desperate status and how other candidates had accepted other offers and/or decided on different career paths after this company had made offers to them. They made me an offer, actually, and they were definitely playing lowball, which is one of their primary mistakes, in my opinion. They'd stated that they appreciated my honesty and forthrightness in the interview, and given the lead developer's lament over their inability to attract good help, and in light of the offer twenty grand under my range, I thought that I might interject. It was a risky move, but it also presented a good gauge; if the dude can't take politely-worded, pertinent, and helpful advice from the point-of-view of a potential prospect advanced in the interview process, presented in a clean, non-harassing manner, I don't really want to work there.

If the girl in your analogy spent all of the first date talking about how guys just never seem to call her from her online profile, and then we went our separate ways, had a second date where the same laments were filed, went away again, and she made a change to a profile that was stupid, then it would be risky but sensible to politely inform her of some things that she could do to improve the appearance of her profile to prospects. That's what happened here.

Good point.. It's pretty inappropriate to complain to the person you are interviewing.

It sounds like they just can't afford you. When we can't afford someone we often ask them if they would like to work 4 days a week. Sometimes they jump at the chance!

You're not entirely wrong to be frustrated, and I'm under the impression that most people here would agree with you that you shouldn't have to be a emotion-pandering brown-noser to get ahead. The difference I see in the comments to this article, and a number of other comments that touch on this, is how resigned people are to that fate. I am not yet, and it doesn't appear that you are either.

The more resigned someone is, the less reasonable being frustrated about broken philosophy or practice seems to be. The solution then becomes either forcing oneself to become numb, or finding some other outlet for the frustration that doesn't solve the problem. I don't think either of these are particularly effective. They've tended in my experience and those of the people around me to become positive feedback loops; bottling or channeling it just doesn't do enough, it comes back and often with greater intensity. In an odd way, it strikes me as being passive-aggressive with oneself.

Frustration is a sign that something is wrong, and, although it is out of fashion to do so when politically imprudent, I'm an advocate of dealing with the root cause. If something is frustrating you, either change it, or become an advocate for change if it requires more than just your effort. Just advocating for the change can be a frustration reliever; you aren't constantly trying to expend energy forcing yourself to be ok with something anymore.

As for the letter, depending on the response, take it as a sign of whether you'd want to work at that organization. I'm undecided on whether you should've sent it; it depends on your goals. If you were just looking for whatever company would hire you, the letter was a mistake. If you're looking for people who are on the lookout for people with ideas and desire to share them, it might not be such a suicidal move. Just imagining myself as a hiring manager, if you had good points, it certainly wouldn't hurt your chances.

"You're not entirely wrong to be frustrated, and I'm under the impression that most people here would agree with you that you shouldn't have to be a emotion-pandering brown-noser to get ahead."

Very valid point. Once can express one's opinion even if it is against the "consensus reality" of a company as long as it is done in a polite and non demeaning fashion. I am known as a "straight shooter" in the corporation I work for and I often find myself disagreeing with my colleagues, mostly about "soft stuff". I keep my tone polite, explain why I think they are wrong, and express a willingness to be corrected by facts and logic.

This is a learned lesson for me but I find that it serves me a lot better then the days when I used to loudly proclaim my preceived truth. Awareness of politics and playing politics are two different things (and the latter is not necessarily a bad thing). "Brown nosing" is a very small subset of human behaviour in groups or companies. There will always be a small subset of people who practice this, but they are not necessarily more effective than people who don't.

You can get frustrated or you can get better at the skill. Human emotion has played a part in our decision making since the dawn of time and I don't think it's going to go out of fashion any time soon. We are predictably irrational beings and like anything else these social interactions can be figured out if you apply some effort to it.

I suggest taking up a sport. It's a much healthier way to vent frustration, and it has the nice side-effect of making you healthier. Plus, if it's a team sport, it should help you with those 'dealing with crap' skills that are pretty vital... well, everywhere, really.

Even the smartest people in the world can be incredibly self-absorbed, vacant, and non-sensible, because they're people. People are emotional, and irrational, and that likely isn't going to change in the near future.