Man, every post I'm reading is negative, it's just a motivational poster, I liked it. You only have on life, give it 100%. Whatever you are doing, do it like you only have one day left to do it with.
I'm disappointed that HN would blow out of proportion the one cloud on the beautiful day.
Here's my favourite quote about motivational posters, DeMarco & Lister "Peopleware":
"These motivational accessories, as they are called (including slogan coffee mugs, plaques, pins, key chains, and awards), are a triumph of form over substance. They seem to extol the importance of Quality, Leadership, Creativity, Teamwork, Loyalty, and a host of other organizational virtues. But they do so in such simplistic terms as to send an entirely different message: Management here believes that these virtues can be improved with posters rather than by hard work and managerial talent. Everyone quickly understands that the presence of the posters is a sure sign of the absence of hard work and talent."
More on this:
"Motivational accessories are phony enough to make most people's skin crawl. They do harm in healthy organizations. The only place where they do no harm is where they are ignored—as in companies where the harm was done long, long ago and people have ceased to register any further decline."
Yes, if you go to eBay and order a couple of motivational posters this will only lower morale. Everybody will notice the BS
But this is something different. It's what the company truly believes. Or do you see something not matching Apple's beliefe there?
If you don't believe that, you certainly won't be a good fit.
Now, RedHat can put a poster like "The Power is in the Community" and if you don't like or understand that you certainly won't be able to blend in. Even if you're management.
Now, do you think Google could honestly put a poster "Don't be evil" today?
It's thoroughly disappointing to see such anti-achievement vitriol on HN. HN is getting a bit too popular and populist, I guess. Reminds me of /.
This is a site dedicated to entrepreneurialism, why would members be throwing so much rotten fruit at one of the (if not THE) most successful entrepreneurial effort of all time. Jobs showed the world through his initial time there and then his return to save the dying company that pursuing excellence relentlessly works. Pushing against the edges of your personal envelope every day works.
It's so depressingly cynical to see inspirational words for new employees as useless self-serving platitudes.
Just as easily, you could look at those words and realize that the motivation they're trying to deliver is what has made Apple so successful.
'Enterpreneurial' is defined as 'willing to take risks in order to make a profit.'
Yes, I've quit my nice day job to run a company on what was basically a bluff. Yes, I was literally hungry on more than one occasion. Yes, I don't have a clue how things will pan out within more than 3+ months with my company. Yet, I go on, and I'm not without an option to go back to comfort cave.
There's nothing enterpreneurial in getting hired by Apple. By definition.
No-one has said otherwise. Some people do not want to take the risks that you have. That doesn't make them any less of a person or less ambitious, it means that they have different goals and priorities to you. If you weren't so wrapped up in hubris you might actually learn something from it.
But, what I failed to get through with the reply is the explanation why HN folk (enterpreneurs) might not resonate with the Apple message which is basically a pep talk for a non-enterpreneurial job position masqueraded as the opposite ("deep waters" ~ "risk taking").
The best entrepreneurs I've worked with kicked ass whether or not they were working for "the man". Great entrepreneurs live and breathe high quality work whether they're running the company or emptying the office garbage cans.
To me, being an entrepreneur is a lot more about your propensity to excel rather than the particular role you're playing in a company.
If this was from a YC company, then everyone would be praising on and on about how this would only happen at a startup and how no megacorp would ever do something like this.
I'm disappointed that HN would blow out of proportion the one cloud on the beautiful day.