Scott Forstall interviews at Apple.
During one of the many interviews onsite, Steve Jobs pulls the interviewer out of the room then eventually replaces the interviewer and begins peppering Forstall with questions. They have a connection and Jobs offers him a job on the spot (but also tells him to go through with the rest of the interviews).
Scott calls up his contact at Microsoft and turns down the offer he had from there.
The next day he gets a package at his doorstep. He opens it up and it's a huge dead fish. Forstall, thinking maybe it is a threat from Microsoft, calls up his contact and asks what the meaning of this was. His contact explains that they went down to Pike's Market, bought the largest King Salmon from there, packed it up with ice and shipped it down to him.
He ate it that night but still ended up going to Apple.
That's easily a few hundred dollars just for the salmon. Maybe over $1000 depending on the size of the salmon.
> He ate it that night but still ended up going to Apple.
No way he ate it all that night. Family friend brought us a whole king salmon from a fishing trip. Lasted a few meals. The best salmon I've ever had. Nothing like the farmed atlantic salmon you get from the supermarket.
> No way he ate it all that night.
He ate it does not necessarily imply he ate it all. I ate chili last night, but that doesn't mean I ate all the chili.
But, anyway, those weren't the actual words of Forstall in the video.
However, if you wanted to work on those cool projects, it meant you had to work with Forstall and he was intimidating to say the least. A mini-SJ people internally would call him. Any feature you were working on that needed SJ approval went through Forstall's monocle eye first.
On the one hand, he was one of the few leads that would remember my name and say hi to me when passing in the hall. On the other, I was scared to look him in the eye lol. I do think he held his reports to unreasonably high bars by expecting long hours of work and he seemed to find joy in seeing people squirm. It was weird.
While I personally hate skeuomorphic interfaces, I'll mostly agree with your analysis on Tim Cook. He's an amazing supply chain whiz, but he's not a product guy. The software quality at apple has also plummeted.
Maps is core to the iPhone, given it's a device you use out and about. Google had them under their thumb, because they were dependent on their data, and were denying them features[0]. They couldn't wait until the data was better because that's not how it works, you need to collect data to improve data.
I don't see what they could have done differently? Even in hindsight this seems like the right call?
This whole situation sounds like people not liking to use a mediocre product, but just because the product is mediocre doesn't always mean it wasn't the right decision to release it, from both a company strategy perspective, and from a consumer benefit perspective (if you believe competition is healthy for consumers).
[0]: https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair
Side note, I still have fond memories of working at 2XL Games and on ESPN X-Games Snocross and it was one of the first games shown on the iPad on stage by Scott Forstall that highlighted the ability to run on iPhone and scale up to iPad [1]. We had made the game in 9 weeks which was very fast from ATV Offroad, adding snowmobiles for the "slednecks" as they are called. The game launched and while we were working on our next game, we tuned into the keynote as all devs did in 2010, it was Jan 27, 2010, we saw our game come up on stage and no one knew it was happening. It was one of those killer moments that made the work worth it. Turns out it was largely because Steve Jobs was on the board at ABC/Disney and ESPN properties got promoted.
We later made the first game on Apple GameCenter matchup/networking in Ricky Carmichael's Motocross Matchup. The early versions of the Apple systems were actually quite solid for matchup/networking. This was before Android had Google Game Play Services so we eventually swapped it for a platform agnostic networking system but still lots of fun.
I was lucky enough to be lead game dev on both and got to help with the direction/game design as well especially on Ricky Carmichael's Motocross Matchup which is still pretty high up in racing on iOS.
Overall, I really feel iOS was a more solid/robust platform back then and trailed off after iOS 6 in terms of speed/quality, I think that has alot to do with Scott Forstall.
I think Scott Forstall was required for Steve Jobs to really make NeXT and iPhone happen. The way he was let go after the Apple Maps push, which I am sure was pushed out early, was disheartening.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20100130175713/http://wireless.i...
I interned at Microsoft my junior year of college. Toward the end, I interviewed with Google and got a competing offer.
But during the negotiation process, the recruiters had Chris Jones (Windows Live VP at the time) call me to try talking me into joining Microsoft. He told me his story about how at the start of his career, when he was comparing offers from a few companies, Microsoft (relatively unknown at the time) sent him a salmon from Pike Place Market --- and that gesture convinced him to accept Microsoft's offer.
Two days later, a package of smoked salmon on ice from Pike Place Market showed up at my door in Tucson, AZ.
(I went to Google for non-salmon-related reasons, but sending me food mostly became a reminder that Google was offering free food as a perk!)
It's the local Thing. Lots of places have that sort of strong geographic tie to an art or food or what-have-you; the only odd part here is that most local foods don't travel well -- but smoked salmon obviously can and does.
I wonder if it has been the inspiration for Steve Jobs’ “Japanese are like dead fish washing up” quote, if Microsoft was sending dead fish left and right around California and he was sick of it.
But then again, we are talking about tech recruiting, so it’s probably not all that surprising.
Like maybe there was a card explaining it and he either threw it away without reading or left it out of the story. Maybe the parallels to The Godfather are something he thought of later.
Or maybe you're right, and whoever sent it was kinda dopey and thought a fellow Washington State person would immediately get the reference, and he didn't.
But sometimes it's important to lie a little bit to make a story better.
The people recruiting went out and really tried to be different and do something out of the box.
Because of them we have this great story, and something at least a bit dear to Scott Forstall who clearly uses hyperbole since it wasn't a 'dead fish', it was in ice which normally we would say fresh fish when not telling stories.
But stack-ranking ...
[0] Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJxElfc0N9E Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47bNpIbCaL8
Scott gives an incredible story about how Steve Jobs saved his life was really moving.
I'm still upset that, at 48:36, Forstall offered to give his thoughts on what we could be doing with AI that we're not, but Markoff decided to move on.
He was personable enough, but I feel that question also coloured my opinion for many years.
You are given two bags, and 10 marbles, 5 are black, 5 are white. You have to put the marbles into the two bags, and then the interviewer (I guess?) shuffles the bags and lets you pick a a bag to select a marble from. You "win" if you get a black marble (or white).
The problem is essentially: how do you distribute the ten marbles between the two bags to maximize you probability of getting a specific color.
My first answer was to point out the window behind him and say "look a zeppelin!" and he turned :D
Like all such problems the actual answer is obvious once you realize it or if you already know it.
“Code Break 9.0: Events with Macklemore & Scott Forstall” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bcO-X9thds
Forstall’s part (living in a tent in a park with his parents and brother, being able to afford only 2 minutes of warm shower per week): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bcO-X9thds&t=31m51s
Fish story specifically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bcO-X9thds&t=35m54s
Guess he liked fish.
Scott must be really good at interviews! :P
I heard no sound but saw his mouth moving, thought something was wrong with my Airpods Bluetooth connection, so I kept disconnect and reconnect it lol.
