Welcome to the wild ride of dealing with large corporations. What you encountered here is absolutely standard -- in fact, I'd say it's actually better than what you'd get when dealing with most large companies, since Steve actually replied back at the end with a "not interested".
You may have put a lot of hope in the "if you've already incorporated, we could acquire your company" line but I can guarantee they didn't put a lot of thought into it.
They were just talking about hiring you (with "acquisition" as the legal mechanism, or not). Maybe with a bit of a hiring bonus.
The standard play when dealing with any large company is always "hurry up and wait". For whatever reason, this is just something you need to get used to.
Do you really expect either Steve or this engineering manager to be replying within 48 hours? I think the second you started badgering them and brought Steve back in the loop, you were toast.
Exactly, given the great opportunity he had a chance at the author should have been far more patient and dare I say a bit more professional.
The experience I've had with dealing with big corps is very much "hurry up and wait". Often this is a symptom of the structure and politics of bigger institutions, where you don't have to convince just the person you are dealing with but convince them to convince others. If they decide to try to bring you in it is their reputation on the line, a reputation that could be damaged even if the deal never goes anywhere.
I've been caught in the middle of some nasty office politics that have totally killed negotiations because I had the wrong guy championing my cause.
Oh and does it strike anyone else as a bit unprofessional to go posting correspondence to the world? I'd certainly think twice before dealing with anyone who had done this in the past, talk about burning bridges! Or am I alone in expecting a certain measure of privacy in my business comms?
I agree 100%, the author comes off a bit unprofessional, pushy, and demanding. You can't even begin to imagine how many people send in suggestions, feature requests, ideas, etc. to companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. I know because in middle school I sent such an email to Capcom on killer game ideas. After some time I received a nice letter in the company letterhead from them encouraging me to stay in school and excel in math. Even though I didn't get acquired or got a job, that letter meant so much to me.
I agree he was a bit unprofessional. Gates' awareness probably did fall off as his earlier emails were buried under the mountain of new stuff. Rather than shouting "Hey look at me" he should have sent a gentle reminder about improvements that have been made in the last week or whatever. Bring him back to top of mind in a positive way. Who wants to get stuck working with a guy that annoying.
Copying Jobs as if he were an active part of the project is a total dick move, BTW. He should be thankful that Steve routed him to the right person. The only future communication to Jobs should have just been a quick thank you for the introduction.
> Do you really expect either Steve or this engineering manager to be replying within 48 hours?
It wouldn't be unreasonable for the engineering manager to get back to him within a few says. There are plenty of slow coasters and non-communicators in large organizations. Most people who are competent accept the beuracracy then find ways of routing around them to get things done. The good companies avoid hiring them in the first place.
It would have taken very little to:
* Real email sent specifically to them. I get a thousand plus emails a day and read every one of these within about 3 hours. My colleagues get way more but still do the same.
* Respond with 'completely snowed under, sorry, want to give this a few hours to look at properly' back to the poster.
That said, I don't think sending email to Steve was a good idea. Call or fax or whatever - if he's out, ask for an offsider to talk to. But bothering the CEO is inappropriate.
Of course, Edison said this after he screwed Tesla out of $50,000 (present value: $1.2 million) he had promised him. Was this the point you were trying to make?
Not just large corporations. I've interviewed with tiny startups (a couple from YC) that couldn't be bothered to email me that they weren't interested.
My sense is that in practice the ethics of responding to email have simply loosened. It's no longer considered rude to leave email unresponded. It's just a fact of life.
I'll second this, but I don't think it's a question of e-mail, more an issue of 'I'll deal with it later' coupled with indifference and inconsideration.
I interviewed at one company that said they'd be making a decision by the end of the week (it was Monday), and would let me know either way. The following Tuesday I sent an e-mail asking if they'd made their decision. A week later, I got an e-mail saying they'd 'gone in a different direction'.
Another company I interviewed with, which involved going to their tiny office miles from anywhere in the rain, talked to me for an hour about not really a whole lot, then said they'd let me know by the end of the week. I didn't care, since I didn't want to work with them, but I was very surprised when I got an e-mail a month and a bit later saying they weren't interested.
There are always exceptions though. After I left my second-to-last job, I decided to take a month off. My last day was October 31st, and I relaxed, cleaned the house, and played video games for most of November. When I woke up on the morning of December 1st, I had an e-mail on my phone from LinkedIn about a friend request from the founder of a server hosting company we'd worked with. I e-mailed him back and asked if he was hiring. Met him at 4 PM, and got the 'welcome aboard!' e-mail at 6:15.
It really comes down to culture. Some people have the attitude of 'I'll do it later', even for things that will only take a few minutes, and some people are go-getters who are eager to get things done and off their plates, and make some progress in the meantime.
My favourite though was when, in September 2008, I signed up to be put on a waiting list for a job at the 911 dispatch for the area (since they had just filled up their quota the week before). 18 months later, I got a phone call asking me to call them back as soon as possible (the tone in the person's voice implied 'today or early tomorrow') so we could schedule a time. The call went to voicemail, and I got something to laugh at when I got out of the movie.
Is it possible that the picture the author had in his head of "Being acquired" was skewing things here? I don't see any clear indications that an "Acquisition" was ever in the offing here. He emailed Steve, Steve forwarded it to an engineer who the author was lucky enough to hear back from at all.
Most likely they looked at what he was outputting and weren't impressed, or had another solution in mind. I'm assuming (and hoping for his sake) from my interpretation that he never submitted actual code to them - just output.
If you believe the OP the potential for acquisition was noted here: "Next he says that if I have incorporated the startup, Apple could acquire it or he could hire me to work with him."
Who knows.
I will say that it was handled very poorly. At the point they weren't interested they should have said it rather than just not responding to email.
In reading the email communication and also paying attention to the timeline, I did not get the impression that the OP was "pestering" the Apple Manager. He was cordial and gently reminding that he was promised a response and had not received one.
If anything, I got the impression that the Apple Manager was stalling (or maybe he really was ill and it really took him 10 days - from May 4 to May 14 - to "get back on his feet")
If anything, I got the impression that the Apple Manager was stalling (or maybe he really was ill and it really took him 10 days - from May 4 to May 14 - to "get back on his feet")
Or else he's just a busy guy with a lot on his plate apart from this one project which he's not that interested in with some guy who keeps pestering him.
Especially considering the timeframe - right around WWDC. This eng manager was likely scrambling like crazy to get ready for that.
Also, if the manager was considering hiring this guy, he was probably looking not just at his code, but evaluating what kind of a person he is and culture fit. If they're hustling to get ready for WWDC while this guy keeps emailing and pointing out what competitors like Google are doing (as if they don't know this), he may have concluded that this is someone he just doesn't want to work with, regardless of the guy's algorithm.
So they are evaluating how well the guy responds to missed deadlines? It seems he was promised responses on specific timelines that kept falling through with no response and with the weakest of lip-service paid when he prodded them enough to get an answer.
If this was just trying to harden him up for what it's really like to work inside of Apple, it's a wonder they get anything done at all.
It's fair for him to e-mail but looking over the discussion it was stupid for him to e-mail so much (and cross the line into pestering). On May 4th the Apple guy said he'd need a few days to catch up because he'd been sick. The author then e-mailed him exactly 3 days later. That pattern continues with him e-mailing every few days or so.
I personally use the two week rule. If someone says they'll get back to me in a few days I give them a couple weeks before I e-mail a reminder. If they don't respond I wait another week and if I still get nothing I give up.
This guy comes across as self important and nothing turns other people off more than that.
I personally use the two week rule. If someone says they'll get back to me in a few days I give them a couple weeks before I e-mail a reminder.
Oh, right. I forgot that in the business world, words suddenly don't have any fucking meaning whatsoever. You can bet your ass that if a corporation wanted something from you (i.e., payment) in a few days, they wouldn't leisurely wait a few weeks before e-mailing you.
There seems to be this unspoken rule in the Apple world that if you happen to get an e-mail from Steve Jobs, even if he threatens to dig up your dead mother and defile her corpse, you'd better drop down on your knees and thank him for even speaking to you.
You seem to be getting confused about the relationship here.
No, I'm not.
Getting a payment from someone is very different to trying to get something for free from a company, or trying to get acquired.
You promise the company payment. The guy in the e-mail was promised continued discussion at a specific point in time. The point I'm making is that if you shortchange a company, they have more power to punish you than if they shortchange you. Thus, I don't understand this casual attitude with companies, where if you don't get a response you just "give up".
I don't understand why everybody is emailing Steve Jobs all of a sudden, and I certainly wouldn't just start sending email to CEOs of companies.
What's wrong with sending an e-mail to a CEO? I genuinely don't understand this. We saw the same thing with that prick from AT&T. Why is it so taboo to jerk the chain of the person in charge? Is their time just so valuable that they shouldn't even have to bother with the lowly proles?
Emailing the CEO because some engineer isn't responding promptly enough to your emails isn't a good way to get him on your side. From your perspective, he promised you something and you are trying to get him to deliver. From his perspective, you've just alerted the CEO of the company (multiple times) that maybe he's not being productive enough.
In general, it's not a good way to get this guy to give you a green light on getting hired/acquired.
That's so true! In fact I can sort of see the corporate pattern:
1. Steve -> Engineer: Whats with the delay?
At this point, almost nothing the engineer could say shows him in a good light - "sick" doesn't cut it at the power difference here. You only talk to the CEO once in a decade, and his experience of you is "doesn't deliver"?
2. Engineer -> Steve: I evaluated it. It sucks. I haven't written back yet as it's not a high priority.
3. Email from Steve -> Unfortunate dude: No interest.
1. Steve -> Manager: This guy e-mailed me again, does this need to be dealt with?
2. Manager -> Steve: It's a good algorithm, but the guy's been demanding and impatient, and with everyone prepping iOS/iPhone 4 for WWDC, Engineer just hasn't had time to look into it.
3. Steve -> Dude: No interest.
Specifically, I highly doubt that Steve Jobs would speak directly with an engineer about a potential acquisition of a potentially useful algorithm. I doubt it was ever really on his radar at all after the first 30 seconds where he read it and forwarded it off. That's the entire reason managers exist.
Apple could also build a rocketship and send him to the moon...
The talk of acquisition happened really early in the conversation - it was all theoretical at that point. They dug a little deeper, and for whatever reason they decided that while they could acquire his working demo, they chose not to on this occasion.
It would have been better if they'd let him know when they'd decided not to, though. It seems like they kept him hanging for a couple of weeks after saying "Sure, we'll send you a login so you can access our full database".
I've been in that situation before though, with some outside vendor/supplier a manager has hooked me up with. discussions go back and forth, I have an idea, and "Hey, let me see If I can get a login for that for you".
And then you actually try to get it done and you get stalled. But you may not have a "No" yet from above so you stall. It's a reasonable thing, but it seems like this guy was pegging all his hopes and dreams on this, and got over-excited.
Well I think the blog title is meant to illustrate the full range of emotion felt by him. I think he knows that any real talk of acquisition would have been a fair ways out, even if everything went as planned. But it's a very reasonable blog title. One that got me to read, and I didn't feel baited.
Going back to the "if" here - the output he did send them may also have been his sample code of sorts.
When I interview people we bandy about a lot of "ifs". But if the interviews don't go well, or if they submit crappy sample code, things tend to peter out from there.
The "if" in this question which is clearly missing but implied (at least in dealing with American companies) is "If there's something of value here, and the two parties are a good fit, and we think we can make this work...". There was no verbal contract here, or even an offer to acquire. It was a job interview, and he didn't get the job.
> It was a job interview, and he didn't get the job.
I would think it awfully poor form if the hiring manager spend the entire time looking out the window, doodling in a notebook, or taking 5 minutes to respond after the interviewee answered his/her question during the interview. (Or just spending the entire glued to his/her BlackBerry, and when the interviewee asks if he/she should just leave, the response is "I'm busy right now, things are hectic around here.")
But that isn't what happened here. They didn't fly him to Apple and have him sit there for weeks. He solicited them with something he purported to have built, then essentially said "Oh, I need access to your private data to really make it work". They obviously saw some first run data and decided not to continue.
They then did the equivalent of:
Thanks for your time, we'll get back to you
It just took them awhile to make a decision.
Also - I don't think anyone had necessarily decided "No" until he gave Steve an ultimatum. Steve seems to be a pretty stochastic guy - in this case he took it as "Fine, then fuck off".
If you've managed to get hiring decisions right there in the interview good for you - usually you have to wait a bit for them to decide ;)
> If you've managed to get hiring decisions right there in
> the interview good for you - usually you have to wait a
> bit for them to decide ;)
But that's the thing. The interview was still not over. They were still in the phase that is akin to asking him questions. They wanted to see how well his algorithm would work on live data. I guess a better analogy would be if the interviewer asked the interviewee a question and then started talking on the phone rather than pay attention for the interviewee's answer.
Or if you want to take the analogy to "waiting for a reply after the interview," then this is more like Apple stalling on making a decision on hiring him. They've interviewed him, and he pings them every week, but a couple of months later they still claim to have made no decision while continuously claiming that a decision is right around the corner and/or just needs one more person's approval/review.
You sound awfully pushy, and can't you just take a hint? I have been not called back by women, customers, partners, and everyone else. They have expressed interest and left me hanging.
At first, you be persistent, and you get more dates and more contracts because of it. But you also learn when to take a hint, and Apple gave you several.
If a woman said she's interested in you, never calls back, and says SHE will call YOU, you wouldn't have hope and stay interested?
I don't understand why this thread seems to be going out of their way to shit on this guy. It's not like Apple said "eh" and didn't respond, they kept saying they'd get back to him and never bothered.
It's called leading someone on, it's rude, and I'm startled at the number of excuses that are being made for this guy.
I'm an Asker but I don't know why I was downvoted. Two months ago I saw a woman in a coffee shop and hit on her. I invited her to go out with me and see Taming Your Dragon In 3-D. She declined and said it was lame. But she took my number and said she'd call me and invite me to a beach party some time. I never got a call from her, and even saw her again in the same coffee shop, but didn't bring it up. She called me today to invite me out this weekend to a beach party. My point is that you can never predict these things. If someone is giving you the "polite yes" or the "polite maybe" but is giving you bad vibes via body language, then you can use that to help gauge your interpretation.
I see you replied again so I think I should respond, though initially I wasn't going to. (And note that I can't downvote your comment, since it's a reply to mine, so I'm not the one draining your karma.) With that preamble finished:
Perhaps your comment is getting downvoted because your premise seems incorrect? When I first saw your reply, I thought, "Hey! That's not fair! Just because I explained what people do doesn't mean that I excused what they do." I was being descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, I thought your reply was pretty unfair, but I was not going to reply because I felt like it was just splitting hairs.
Now that you're getting downvoted and have replied a second time, I just thought I'd point out that others may have felt the same way about your comment as I did. Indeed, the very same people who are downvoting your comment very well may not agree with the behavior that my comment described as being typical.
Which is why I said excuses being made up and down the thread. I didn't mean to imply that you were excusing it, but many people were saying that Apple was being more reasonable that the developer which is why I spoke out in defense of the developer.
I don't buy your explanation. I'd like to, but all over this thread there are highly upvoted comments that explain that this guy was out of lining by expecting anything at all, even though Apple continually led him on. They could have sent two teeny-tiny bytes 'N' 'o' and been done. But instead they were dicks.
I don't really see why my reply was unfair. If you weren't making excuses for apple, fine, but there were dozens of posters on this topic that are/were.
What we have is a situation where both parties behaved imperfectly. Since it was the outside guy who made the whiny woe-is-me-I'm-a-victim blog post about it, it's everybody's instinct to point out what he did to deserve it.
On the other hand if the Apple engineer were the one writing the blog post everybody would jump on what he did that was wrong.
You're welcome to suggest it, but it's really not the case. If someone did that to me I would be upset. I'm sorry that I have the common decency not to lie to people's faces, deceive them, string them on and then expect them to take it with a smile on their face.
I'm working for the man now anyway. Not much to be upset about really.
Most pathetic downmodding I've seen on HN. This isn't even passive aggressive, this is just being a shitty human being. Fuck you all.
It's really cool that HN is going the reddit route of downmodding comments that they disagree with. Although I don't even think my comments would have been downmodded over there. Because we're all hip and "hackers" at HN we just tolerate and expect people to be shitty to each other in the business world. Real cool guys.
No it's not. Point out what was so "acerbic" in my original reply. I've read it twice now and there's nothing out of line in it.
The only emotion I injected was "I am startled". Yeah, really `acid in temper or mood`. Especially when * ironically* I was addressing the acerbic comments being pointed at the author for ACTUALLY BELIEVING people when they told him they were interested.
Strong words. HN will generally downvote strong displays of negative emotions, especially if it's something purely subjective.
It was also slightly accusatory, saying other HN users were "making excuses" for this behavior. There's some ambiguity as to whether you meant the behavior itself was pathetic or the people "making excuses" were pathetic. I think you meant the latter.
Maybe this is an easier way to understand it: imagine you're in a room filled with people talking about this issue, and you stood up and said what you said out loud. How do you expect people to react? Positively?
I can't believe I'm explaining this in such detail. Haha.
I would call people out for excusing leading people on and lying to their faces. In public. In a room full of people that disagree with me. If I am in the wrong and downvotes (or in our analogy looks of disapproval or murmurs of hatred in my direction) are my punishment I will take them proudly. I think excusing the behavior is nearly as shameful as being the person doing the lying and deceiving.
I can't believe I'm explaining this in such deal. I meant the usage quite literally. I'm shocked that an intelligent community such as HN is excusing the behavior because it's supposedly "normal". I think the treatment and thus the excuses are "shitty" which doesn't have a formal definition for me to rattle off, but suffice it to say I think it covers "unacceptable behavior" which is a category that lying and leading people on generally falls into.
If a woman said she's interested in you, never calls back, and says SHE will call YOU, you wouldn't have hope and stay interested?
No.
Whoever writes Roissy in DC: http://roissy.wordpress.com/ is an asshole but also hilarious. It might be worth reading.
In addition, the reason people are ragging on this guy is because a) the behavior is typical and b) not surprising from the POV of Apple. In addition, the guy is making the mistake PG writes about in Two Kinds of Judgment: http://paulgraham.com/judgement.html .
No, I've lost interest in bothering, I'm pretty much just mocking it now.
My comment just above and the comment comparing reddit to HN, I fully expected to get downmodded. The other comments were simply chastising HN's mockery of the guy that actually believed what the Apple engineer said and IMO do not deserve to be downmodded.
This is not what "almost getting acquired" looks like. At a stretch it might be what almost getting hired looks like, but even that would be pushing it I think.
Of course it would be nice if people would just tell you when they're not interested, but generally nobody does that. Adjust your filters accordingly - if someone doesn't seem excited, they're probably not interested at all.
Exactly. Startups get acquired because the executives at the big company like the founders and have been friends with them for a long time, not because they've solved some semantic problem. The poster doesn't really seem to understand how these things work.
If you have enough power to purchase another company, you're probably making at least 500k year. If the company you acquire does great, then you'll probably get a small bonus. And if they tank, you'll get fired. Thus the individuals within the company doing the acquiring have a strong incentive to be extremely conservative. (Unless there are unusual circumstances, like a stock market bubble, some new technology, or a competitor buying a rival startup.)
So basically to get acquired, you need to look like you're not going to embarrass the person doing the acquiring. The best way to do this is to have a longterm relationship with that person and their colleagues. This makes you feel like much more of a known entity in the eyes of the acquirer. Because at the end of the day, regardless of what the book say you never really know what you're getting when you buy a company. Everything piece of the company could be independently audited, but that's not going to stop a critical 5M dollar machine from breaking in half the day after you buy the business.
Anyway I'm not an expert, this is just what I've heard from other people who have been acquired.
If you have enough power to purchase another company, you're probably making at least 500k year. If the company you acquire does great, then you'll probably get a small bonus. And if they tank, you'll get fired
I wish (speaking from my own experience). It may be true for very large companies acquiring really small ones, but there is an entire world out there of acquisitions of small players by slightly larger companies. Neither the 500K salary nor the small bonus apply. Such acquisitions almost look like mergers: they can make or kill the entire company. We are not talking about a small bonus here, it's the livehood of the entire startup. It matters a lot.
I think continuing to email Steve was his fatal mistake. It shows a manager that you are willing to jump rank at a moments notice. Some times you have to, but in this case 3 days go by and the manager says he is sick. Take him at face value and understand that managers of large corporations are extremely busy. I am sure that Steve told the manager to pull back after receiving secondary emails, realizing that this would be a high maintenance relationship in which he felt that he could ping Steve at a moments notice (a person who is even more busy)
The manager said he was sick on May 4. On May 14 he said he was caught up and would get back next Monday (which is May 17). There was another nudge on Wednesday, May 19. Almost a week after that, on May 25, Steve gets CCed again.
While I grant that 3 days out due to sickness excuses some tardiness, the manager was given lots of time to catch up, many opportunities to respond, and over a week past the promised response time before Steve got CCed again.
Even so, what did he expect was going to happen by CCing Steve Jobs? Did he think Steve was going to come thundering down to the engineer's office wanting to know why he hadn't replied to that guy's previous email?
Realistically, I'd say that that kind of move, trying to embarrass someone you want something from in front of his boss's boss's boss, can only have negative consequences.
My comment was intended to point out that the time spent before escalating was reasonable, even despite the 3 day sickness.
As for the consequences of trying to escalate, it is true that it tends to upset the person you escalated in front of. However it is also true that it can motivate them to actually return to your case. I've seen organizations where it was a guaranteed disaster to use that strategy, and others where it was an effective way to get things done.
If I've seen that much variation between organizations within one country, how much more variation could there be between organizations across multiple countries with multiple cultures?
It's reasonable if the engineer in question was actually abandoning his duties, which he wasn't. The OP was deluded as to the nature of the conversation -- it was clear from email #1 it was all very non-committal.
Yeah, he was probably a lot more excited about this project than the other side. Doesn't mean that nothing could have come from it, but they probably didn't consider it 24/7, just at a lower priority. It almost sounds as if the OP felt he was Apple's savior.
All that I need to know about the manager's schedule is this.
The manager said on May 14 that he would get back by May 17, and failed to respond by May 25 despite an attempt to follow-up on May 19. If the manager's schedule, workload and working priorities were such that May 17 was unrealistic, then the manager should not have said he would get back on May 17.
What he should or shouldn't be doing with respect to his job is determined by his manager and company - not by the public at large, fortunately.
While the obvious case can be made that someone could have been more professional in this situation (as with almost any situation) - there is very little in terms of expectation set here. No promises of consequence were made, no binding contracts... and for all we know, the behaviour of the applicant in this situation was part of the hiring manager's decision process (whatever that might be)
I was going to say the same thing. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy blew any chance he had of being "acquired" (read: hired) by Apple by that political maneuver. The "cc someones superior on a follow-up e-mail" move is smarmy no matter what, in this situation it was suicidal. What did he expect to happen?
As someone who's been through this many times, here's a tip:
Any time someone emails you about acquiring you, hiring you, sponsoring you, etc, just assume the actual odds of it happening are about 1%, and be happily surprised if something eventually comes of it.
If they really, really want you, they'll be hitting you up every chance they get.
I think this is true but there's also a whole range of people who are on the fence and can be influenced, and to ignore them is a suboptimal and (imo) losing strategy.
I actually thought the Apple engineer, Patrick Gates, was super polite - a lot of people wouldn't even have bothered to respond. And I don't think anyone ever wanted to acquire anything.
How is lying being polite? I'd rather get no response than a flat out lie.
If you email Steve Jobs and he says, "I'm sending you a new iPad in the mail. Just send us your address." Are you happier that he responded then if he hadn't (except for the fact that you now have a good blog story to tell).
Being polite would have been "thanks for contacting us. As you can imagine we're swamped with work, but we are interested in this. I'm going to have to put this on the backburner and get back to it when I can. No promises. I'll follow up with you when it looks like there's a good fit schedulewise. Thanks."
Because he isn't lying. Stuff comes up all the time. He was being polite and I'm betting he genuinely wanted to get to it. I'm sympathetic because I've done this often - told someone I'll get back to them and then been absolutely drowned in work. I always hold out hope I'll get back to to it but I never do.
I feel like the Apple engineer is being penalized for being polite. A lot of people would have just said "Thanks but we're busy". It looks like he genuinely wanted to look at it but never got around to it. The OP demonstrated some bad behavior by jumping multiple levels and CCing Jobs. When someone does that to me and CCs my management chain, he or she rarely gets the help they want - they've ticked me off and my management chain is going to trust me to deal with things.
The OP mentions that he posted this just to show how bad Apple's corporate culture was. Though I doubt that's why this was posted, I actually thought this showed some good culture from Apple. The CEO CCes someone down the stack and then trusts his call. That's what you want your management to do.
Across all this, I can't believe the OP thought he was looking at a possible acquisition by AAPL. At best, Patrick Gates was demonstrating polite engineer interest. The OP needs to learn to take a hint and how to deal with email communication.
"Because he isn't lying. Stuff comes up all the time. He was being polite and I'm betting he genuinely wanted to get to it. I'm sympathetic because I've done this often - told someone I'll get back to them and then been absolutely drowned in work. I always hold out hope I'll get back to to it but I never do."
I find it hard to believe that you can't spend 30s to shoot a quick email. I think you "think" you're being polite, but you're not. Leading someone on for weeks isn't being polite. That girl who you wanted to date, who leads on for a year, but always has other plans when you go to pick her up isn't being polite. She may think she is, but really she's being selfish.
"Thanks but we're busy" is the right thing to say if you're busy. And if you get busy later say, "Hey, we just got busy, gonna need to put this on hold. Don't know for how long". Took me about 5s to write.
Respect the time of other people as much as you respect your own time (because apparently your time is so valuable that you can't break 30s to send an email). That's being polite.
I agree with everything you wrote, except that I think it was not polite. It's not how I handle things.
And speaking of bug reports, I used to run a team and when I started they'd get customer reports and then say "Won't Fix" and delete the report. One of the first things I did was to make sure every customer got a reply. Sometimes it was just "Sorry, this bug isn't going to get fixed this release." The satisfaction from our enthusiast base shot through the ceiling.
Again, I agree with a lot of what you say. The OP didn't handle it well. But with that said, the engineer still wasn't being polite. I don't think he was a jerk. As you note, it is common for people in our field to simply not respond. But it's not how I do thing
Edit: This response is in reference to the post below me.
First of all, this isn't the same as being asked out by someone. This is one email among thousands of others, code review requests, bug reports and what else. Sure it has a bit of a higher priority since Jobs wanted you to look at it but it doesn't look like Jobs was particularly interested either.
Also, the OP should know that this stuff happens all the time. And people who want a response send a polite ping request and would say that "If I don't hear back, I'll go ahead with <foo>" or "I'll assume <foo>". The OP didn't do that and went straight to the top which was a terrible move again.
At best, someone trying to be polite. At worst, someone being drowned in work and not communicating how busy they are (and being sick in the middle too).
Extrapolating and calling that some sign of corporate bad culture is bad form.
I bet every entrepreneur here would loved to see your startup get acquired, but buddy there were no hint of an acquisition in this guy's communication. You should have been patient, launch your app and keep the communication going. Then maybe, maybe, after 2 years they would look into you.
I feel for this guy -- this is a case of not "speaking American." As an American who works with foreigners a lot, I hear a lot of complaints about how we try to let people down nicely instead of being direct. My middle-east coworkers especially hate this.
The interest dropped off right after he submitted the results of the algorithm. So perhaps the algorithm simply wasn't good. Emailing the CEO with a novel algorithm idea and then sending in the results is classic crackpot behavior, not unlike sending your theory of everything to the head of the MIT physics department. I'm surprised anyone responded at all to the initial email.
"Given that search is their strength, it will be imperative on Apple to provide a more intuitive itunes/app store search and discovery solution to its users"
No matter if you are right or wrong, I can imagine that Apple doesn't like being taught about what they should do. I imagine they think they have a fairly good idea as to what they should do. Maybe your attitude turned them off a little. Just a guess, though.
IMO you were extremely lucky to get any response whatsoever. If I am Patrick I would have quickly dumped you in the pester / annoyance category. Bringing Steve jobs into the mix the second time was fatal, regardless of time frame this is not something to bother him with.
Even if Apple almost "acquired" you (I don't really get that impression), I'd say that penning a blog entry complaining about it is not the most productive thing to do (and might even cause investors in the future to think twice about getting involved with you).
What I expected: OP in negotiations with some technology that Apple would like to pick up to improve its product. OP says something like: "Google and Adobe do this better. You should talk to them."
What I got: OP at the level of spam mailing Apple saying that he is the #1 superstar Ace to improve iTunes only to be told to "Get Bent."
You didn't really have any leverage in this situation. If you did, you didn't express it in a meaningful way.
It's business, not personal. They have so many things going on, it's a bit like trying to get your resume noticed.
Do something crazy, or obnoxious, or out of the blue that will get you noticed NOW. Then show them how, if they don't pay attention to you, it will cost them money.
The Apple engineer made the mistake of casually talking about "acquiring" or "hiring". That would greatly raise anyone's expectations and subsequent anxiety. The other guy made the mistake of being pushy, especially when he cc'ed Steve - it likely pissed off the Apple engineer and certainly would not have made a good impression on Steve.
"It is unethical in all cultures to keep someone waiting while you flout the time commitments."
I think you mean "impolite", not "unethical". Keeping someone waiting doesn't really have a moral value one way or another.
Secondly, unless you are Margaret Mead or an anthropologist of equal stature, you're not qualified to talk about what is polite in ALL cultures. It might be impolite in YOUR culture, but that doesn't necessarily apply to other cultures.
Well if it helps, we held 4 in-person meetings with a company with keen interest before they went totally cold. Took a few months to get a clear "no."
This wasn't too bad. All things aside, I don't think Apple was interested in acquiring you. You did the best you could. They did the best they could. I really don't think you pestering them would matter much if they really wanted your technology.
Something I still have yet to understand is how people who develop for and want to improve apple products repeatedly get screwed over by apple. (Granted he may have been a bit quick to jump to the top in this case)
Then they keep going right back to develop and improve apple products. Why keep going back?
Then they keep going right back to develop and improve apple products. Why keep going back?
Sunk cost? By the time you've mastered the intricacies of Objective C and a gazillion NextStep toolbox calls (or whatever they're called nowadays) what else are you gonna do?
I think in dealing with businesses, as an independent developer (or even as a developer concerned about your long-term career within an organization), you have to think about things in wireframe. Forget shaders, all that is extra.
Wireframe = bottom line and the business requirements and strategies. Everything else on top, giving out free WWDC videos, etc., that's all extra. And it's great when it's available.
But in negotiations you have to look at it in terms of wireframe mode. Otherwise, you'll focus on the wrong local extrema, etc.
How exactly does a one-entry weblog make it to the front page? Clearly this guy has some semantic mojo.
Otherwise, the story is dumb because it isn't "almost got acquired." It's "dude gets excessively excited because of a couple of emails." Just reread the Panic Audion story for something interesting: http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/
The thing to do would have been to develop the app and submit it to the app store, get users, become popular, etc. Once you had some real traction acquisition might have been a possibility.
I've written some software which I occasionally receive emails about. I'll say this: if you ask an intelligent question, I will very likely help you. However, if you follow that up by peppering me with further questions or come across as demanding/pushy, I'm very likely to ignore you.
This is also generally true for open source projects and I'm not surprised the same applies for Apple.
OP: you screwed up. you have noone to blame but yourself.
1) Author emails Steve Jobs about algorithm to improve Appstore's discover-ability problem.
2) Steve replies.
3) Author gets strung along by a semi cooperating engineer. 4) A month and a few emails later, he is told: we are not interested.
- At some point the engineer casually mentions that if he (the Author) incorporated, Apple could acquire him (i.e. hire him).
When someone drops out of communication with you for more than a week it almost always means they're not that interested. This is true for potential employers, investors, mates, etc. While its unfortunate that people aren't more direct, the fact is, rejection takes work and provides very little upside for the person doing the rejecting.
Its a great insight to how the conversation goes with a large corporation, so thanks to whoever posted it. However the conversation becomes rather emotional.
The first email is pretty professional, concisely describing a problem and solution, which got him the initial probing. But if it turns out to be negative in the end, its really nobody to blame.
You may have put a lot of hope in the "if you've already incorporated, we could acquire your company" line but I can guarantee they didn't put a lot of thought into it.
They were just talking about hiring you (with "acquisition" as the legal mechanism, or not). Maybe with a bit of a hiring bonus.
The standard play when dealing with any large company is always "hurry up and wait". For whatever reason, this is just something you need to get used to.
Do you really expect either Steve or this engineering manager to be replying within 48 hours? I think the second you started badgering them and brought Steve back in the loop, you were toast.