Scott Forstall tells story about Steve Jobs, Microsoft, and a dead fish [video]

If you want the gist of the story:<p>Scott Forstall interviews at Apple.<p>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).<p>Scott calls up his contact at Microsoft and turns down the offer he had from there.<p>The next day he gets a package at his doorstep. He opens it up and it&#x27;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&#x27;s Market, bought the largest King Salmon from there, packed it up with ice and shipped it down to him.<p>He ate it that night but still ended up going to Apple.

Unfortunately, I was only an intern then new-grad during those early aughts of Forstall&#x27;s reign. He was quite a brilliant man, very quick-witted and always one step ahead of you. Steve Jobs entrusted all of Apple&#x27;s coolest projects with him for that reason. So all the biggest demos you saw on stage were under Forstall&#x27;s leadership at one point or another.<p>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&#x27;s monocle eye first.<p>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.

I worked in Scott’s group. He was on top of everything and was passionately involved. We would get in a room and pitch all (yes, all) ideas&#x2F;changes to him and sometimes Steve. He had no tolerance for bugs, and quality was number one. He was like that coach you thought hated you, then you realized he cared.

I think software quality has gone way down at Apple since Scott Forstall left.<p>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 &quot;slednecks&quot; 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&#x2F;Disney and ESPN properties got promoted.<p>We later made the first game on Apple GameCenter matchup&#x2F;networking in Ricky Carmichael&#x27;s Motocross Matchup. The early versions of the Apple systems were actually quite solid for matchup&#x2F;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.<p>I was lucky enough to be lead game dev on both and got to help with the direction&#x2F;game design as well especially on Ricky Carmichael&#x27;s Motocross Matchup which is still pretty high up in racing on iOS.<p>Overall, I really feel iOS was a more solid&#x2F;robust platform back then and trailed off after iOS 6 in terms of speed&#x2F;quality, I think that has alot to do with Scott Forstall.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20100130175713&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wireless.ign.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;106&#x2F;1064149p1.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20100130175713&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wireless.i...</a>

I&#x27;m a little shocked to hear this, but I&#x27;ve had a similar fish story with Microsoft!<p>I interned at Microsoft my junior year of college. Toward the end, I interviewed with Google and got a competing offer.<p>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&#x27;s offer.<p>Two days later, a package of smoked salmon on ice from Pike Place Market showed up at my door in Tucson, AZ.<p>(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!)

I have to wonder about the competence of a hiring manager who thinks that sending a candidate (who just rejected their offer) a dead fish in a package, without any other context, is a good idea.<p>But then again, we are talking about tech recruiting, so it’s probably not all that surprising.

I wish Forstall would do a long form oral history with the Computer History Museum (usually around 2-3 hours) even if there was that shorter interview on stage there in 2017. He has a gift for storytelling.

He also related this story in his interview with the Computer History Museum: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;IiuVggWNqSA?t=662" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;IiuVggWNqSA?t=662</a><p>I&#x27;m still upset that, at 48:36, Forstall offered to give his thoughts on what we could be doing with AI that we&#x27;re not, but Markoff decided to move on.

I was interviewed by Forstall (many many years ago, back when that was actually sane) and he asked me one of those annoying puzzle questions - don&#x27;t get me wrong I love those questions, they&#x27;re just useless as interview questions.<p>He was personable enough, but I feel that question also coloured my opinion for many years.

I always wonder if Forstall will ever return to Apple to save it, just like Jobs once did. Surely cash is not a problem right now, to say the least, but I feel the spirit is fading. While there is Apple University and all that, he&#x27;s probably the closest to a true Jobs replacement that is—or might ever be—around (for better or for worse).

Tried to save it to my watch later list and apparently it&#x27;s disabled because it&#x27;s a kids video. Interesting.

A few years ago, oh hang on, more than a few years ago, Jobs was still alive - I was training at a muay thai gym south of bangkok and I met the executive chef on Larry Ellison&#x27;s yacht. He was training to get fit, because a wealthy couple had told him if he could lose weight they&#x27;d set him up with a cooking show. Jobs often borrowed Larry&#x27;s yacht, and he had galley stocked with everything Jobs wanted, except that Jobs wanted fresh fish from a particular Hawaiian fishing company, fresh every day. So there was a young, beautiful woman who flew to meet them every day that Jobs was on board, wherever they were in the world, who would charm her way through customs with a big dead fish packed in ice.<p>Guess he liked fish.

So he interviewed at two really competitive companies. One CEO offered him to skip the entire interview chain after chatting to him for a few minutes. The other sent him a desperate gift by mail after he turned down their offer.<p>Scott must be <i></i>really<i></i> good at interviews! :P

Scott starts speaking around minute 32.

Actual video starts at 2:06.<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.