iWoz

I've just finished reading iWoz - the Steve Wozniak biography. It's a pretty quick and easy read (took me 2 days) detailing how Steve designed the Apple I & Apple II, pulled pranks, organised music festivals and got into teaching.

The book was fairly interesting for me and I did get a bit out of it, but since I've read Accidental Empires previously and seen Triumph Of The Nerds I knew most of the background and apart from adding a bit more detail to what Steve did in the early days and post-apple there wasn't a lot of new history for me. There was however a lot of stuff I learnt about this personality and how he thinks and what makes him tick.

I've read a lot of resumes by I.T. candidates and one thing that comes through time and again is that they talk a lot about their skills and the projects that they've been a part of and have a passion for it, but they never seem to really grasp the details of what else is going on around them, how you can influence a business with your ideas and how the interpersonal dealings are a large and crucial part of what has to happen.

Woz shows a similar type of behaviour in hos bio. He talks about the design of the hardware and the software to run it (and does an awesome job at it too) but it's apparent that in life he's missed a lot of what is happening in terms of business and relationships. For example, his departure from Apple shows this. He was working as an engineer doing what he loves best but wanted to start another company so he tells his manager (2 levels up) that he's leaving but doesn't even think to tell Steve Jobs that he's going. So when a reporter rings the next day and asks why, even then he doesn't think to tell the Apple execs that he's left or that he's just been interviewed. The reporter misquotes (probably deliberately) and there's a big hoo-ha about Woz leaving because he doesn't like Apple. Woz blames the reporter, but doesn't see that the communication about his departure could have been made a lot smoother and not damaged his relationship with Jobs if he'd done a better job on the interpersonal side of things.

In fact, he shows a definite naivety in almost all of his personal dealings and talks about a few of them in the book. It's obvious that money is not a motivator for him - but you shouldn't let yourself get taken advantage of and throughout the book this is one of the things you see repeated.

Is he a great engineer? Undoubtedly! One of the best the we've seen. Is he a well rounded person who is successful outside of engineering? I don't think so. Is it a book worth reading? Absolutely!