Silicon Valley Historical Association
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2012–2021
1:43 · 6.7M views · Oct 31, 2011
A two-minute clip from a 1994 interview with Steve Jobs by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association. Jobs talks about failure and about how most people never ask for help, recalling that he simply called people to ask.
HN commenters return to it as a motivational reminder to not fear failure and to just ask for what you want.
6 comments from Hacker News
what i find amazing is his thoughts on failure and asking for help from same series i believe Steve Jobs on Failure this video now I've actually always found something that to be very true which is most people don't get those experiences because they'd never asked I've never found anybody that didn't want to help me if I asked them for help I always call him up I called up this will date me but I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old and he lived in Palo Alto his number was still in a phonebook and he answered the phone himself you know yes hi I'm Steve Jobs I'm 12 years old I'm a student in high school and I want to build a frequency counter and I was wondering if you had any spare parts I could have and he laughed and he gave me the spare parts to build his frequency counter and he gave me a job that summer in Hewlett Packard working on the assembly line putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters he got me a job in the place that built him and I was in heaven and I've never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I call I just asked and when people ask me I try to be as responsive to pay that that debt of gratitude back most people never pick up the phone and call most people never ask and that's what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them you got it you got to act and you've got to be willing to fail you've got to be willing to crash and burn you know with people on the phone with starting a comp
Came here to post this Larry Smith link :) Even though Jobs gets some hate on HN, these interviews/speeches have never failed to inspire me. If you don't ask, you don't get - this video On a very formulaic life - [LINK] (I couldn't find one without the bad bg music) Stay hungry, stay foolish - [LINK] I do realise, on some levels, he was not a good person, or atleast came off as an ass, but listening to these interviews and speeches, I feel I can relate to him and his struggles.
You know the core fundamentals of programming, and you simply need to be retrained. You may start with this basic JavaScript course to refresh your skills. If you are interested in learning more about training opportunities that could eventually land you to a better job, I will be happy to guide you. Whenever I feel fear of failure, I watch this video, and it might help you too. this video
I saw a small clip of Steve Jobs talking about the same thing [1]. One of the advices that surprised me most the first time I've heard it. [1] this video
Steve Jobs started a personal story with [1]: "Most people don't get those experiences because they never ask..." And he ends with "you gotta be willing to fail ... if you are afraid of failing, you won't get very far" Which seems to be a surprisingly common theme among successful people: Mark Suster has a famous mantra: "You don't ask, you don't get" [2] Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, told a story of how he got Steve Balmer advise him once[3] [1] this video [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]