Steve Jobs Content vs Process
Why Hacker News recommends it
Quoted whenever HN discusses process-heavy management and companies losing their product focus.
What it is
A three-minute clip of Steve Jobs arguing that great products come from people who care about content rather than process. He says process-focused people take over and cause decline, citing IBM as an example.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2021 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec colund · 2024-01 · on “27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process”
Jobs talks about this in [this video] . I wish more leaders understood this. I interpret his words that people who do, understand and care are more valuable than those who only focus on process and politics. Steve Jobs has great points again. I love to hear him talk about what really matters for success of great tech companies.
Recommends KajMagnus · 2021-03 · on “Fuckin' user interface design, I swear”
Intereting talk :- ) "Steve Jobs: Content vs Process", [this video] 3 minutes. I'd guess that it'd work better with a better-than-good-enough Benevolent Dictator who gets to improve the user interface however s/he wants, than to go looking for the "magic" UX improvement process
Recommends edelans · 2022-03 · on “Low process culture, high process culture”
there is also this gold nugget from Steve jobs (there is no date, late 80s ?): [this video] >"Companies get confused. When they start getting bigger, they wanna replicate their initial success, and a lot of them think somehow there is some magic in the process of how that success was created. So they try to institutionalize process accross the company, and before very long, people get very confused that the process is the content. And that's ultimately the downfall of IBM : IBM has the best process people in the world, they just forgot about the content." [...] >"In my career, I found that the best people are the ones really understanding the content, and they are a pain in the butt to manage, bu
Cites ksec · 2021-07 · on “Apple expanding outside of SV as it struggles to recruit and retain talent”
>Cook is that he’s a process and money guy “People start to get confused that the process is the content...And that’s what makes great products. It’s not the process, it’s the content.” —Steve Jobs [1] [this video]
Cites bgmeister · 2024-07 · on “July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs”
I assume they're referring to Steve Jobs' comments in this (Robert Cringely IIRC) interview: [this video] (not a great copy, but should be good enough)
Cites tarsinge · 2024-09 · on “Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech”
No, tech has become no Woz and no Jobs either. You don’t get enshittification with Jobs, but the opposite. Also he would abhorre modern day process driven product management: [this video]
Cites duxup · 2024-09 · on “How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)”
Your comment reminded me of the old content vs process Steve Jobs commentary: [this video] But I agree, it's so tempting to get internally focused, or focused on "improvement" that really shifts the focus to something else entirely (hollywood style movies, tv shows, whatever). Personally I'm no fan of the youtube-ism and youtube generally, but it's clear that game is it's own game. It's not making a movie, it's not a TV show, it's not even tiktok. It's its own thing and it is pretty clear that generally you have to play that platform's game. My kids play a lot of roblox, and while there's a lot of copy cat games based on traditional gaming, there's almost a system on roblox as far as what games a
Cites duxup · 2026-02 · on “An Update on Heroku”
> people more concerned with process than results Sounds like something Steve Jobs observed at apple [this video]