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points by tonyedgecombe 4 days ago | 0 comments

I don't know. I was watching a video about Bill Atkinson the other day (the guy behind the original Mac UI) and he worked from home because it was the only way he could get things done.

[–] diskzero 3 days ago

It ebbed and flowed with Bill. He would tackle super hard tasks at Apple or General Magic and isolate and hyper focus. I saw this from others at General Magic, Be, Apple, Danger, and even more current Amazon. You can even read about this in Soul of a Machine. I suppose the trait of someone on a critical path doing this has been going on forever.

Bill also had some different definitions of “getting stuff done”. At General Magic when others were driving super hard to get things done, he would make soup and ensure that everyone was eating and not totally driving themselves into the ground.

[–] LanceJones 3 days ago

1 - 10: How accurately was life at General Magic portrayed in the documentary?

[–] diskzero 3 days ago

I'll have to rewatch, but I remember watching and debriefing with others and no one seemed like it misrepresented much. The movie created drama and tension and told a neat story. I do wish we had that cool electronic music playing in the background all the time. That might have helped us get more work done.

It was a really interesting group of people, with Pierre Omidyar and Tony Fadell going on to make large impacts in the tech world in different ways. Everyone there was really interesting and smart, even the ones who continued to build and work without all the publicity.