[HN Gopher] Careless People
___________________________________________________________________
Careless People
Author : Aldipower
Score : 966 points
Date : 2025-04-24 08:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pluralistic.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (pluralistic.net)
| bk496 wrote:
| How abstract is this book? Are there many examples of things that
| are relevant at meta today, especially on the web and developer
| front?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Maybe depends on if by relevant you mean, "I'm working on
| airflow surface turbulence" vs "am I making a cruise missile?"
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I'm only part of the way through the book, so have nothing to
| spoil here. But it's entertaining. And shocking. The author will
| relate a scene that's so absurd that you think "ah, this can't be
| true, this is made up for dramatic effect, nobody would act like
| that" and then you Google it and you realize the absurd thing is
| totally true and was fully documented at the time. All the author
| is adding is a perspective from the inside.
|
| I understand why Facebook people might have wanted the book to go
| away. That their attempt to do so comically backfired and
| resulted in entirely the opposite effect, well, that's also
| pretty much what you'd expect from this crew after reading the
| book.
| binaryturtle wrote:
| It's called the Streisand Effect. :)
| rsynnott wrote:
| It's kind of amazing that people still hit this, really.
| Like, if you're Facebook's lawyers, how are you not telling
| them "don't talk about this; anything you say or do will only
| promote it further"? The lawyers must _know_.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| After reading the article, it seems plausible that they
| were advised against this and, well... didn't care.
|
| (Perhaps it's more accurate to say they did not think it
| would manifest but that's not a fun play on words.)
| remus wrote:
| From the lawyer's point of view I guess you're making a
| risk judgement, presumably they thought the chance of
| getting a successful court order outweighed the potential
| increase in press of they happened to fail.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Even if they got a court order (they did get partial bars
| on publicity AIUI) it would _still make the problem for
| Facebook worse_, tho.
| remus wrote:
| I'm not so sure. I think there is some selection bias
| happening, so it's easy to say "Streisand effect!" When
| it makes the headlines but that ignores the times it
| doesn't make the headlines.
| 3np wrote:
| Yeah. How many were silenced prior to this?
| John23832 wrote:
| Competing incentives.
|
| Lawyers get paid to "do something". To wealthy people, a
| lawyer saying "let's actually not do anything" seems like a
| "what am I paying you for then" moment.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| The lawyers and the PR team don't talk to each other.
| stevage wrote:
| That is not the lawyers' concern.
| openplatypus wrote:
| Their lawyers are daft as bricks.
|
| They can't even control their client from lying in public.
| Thoreandan wrote:
| It's right there in the URL, along with #ZDGAF
| notesinthefield wrote:
| Please tell me exactly when it gets interesting, Im listening
| to it and completely uninterested in the author's "job pitch"
| kashunstva wrote:
| > completely uninterested in the author's "job pitch"
|
| It's central to the arc of the narrative though. She begins
| with the idealistic possibilities for Facebook; and now, in a
| real-life epilogue, is concluding by pulling back the curtain
| on how horrible these people are. And by extension this
| company.
| alain94040 wrote:
| The book has great stories. You could skip the job pitch
| part and jump straight to once she joins Facebook, that's
| fine too.
| derwiki wrote:
| Sheryl inviting the author to go to bed with her, and then
| holding it against her when she didn't. That was my double-
| take moment in the book.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| What is the thing? (you can rot13 it for spoilers)
| kreddor wrote:
| It's hardly just one single thing. The book is full of absurd
| scenes all the way through.
| HexPhantom wrote:
| For a company that supposedly runs on data and strategy,
| they're shockingly bad at anticipating how people will react
| when they try to bury criticism
| armandososa wrote:
| Did you find the author/narrator very unlikable?
|
| [mild spoilers ahead]
|
| I was tempted to stop reading after the shark attack story when
| she wakes up in the hospital and declares "I saved myself".
| Ugh. But I think it makes narrative sense: why would a good
| person stay at the company after all she has witnessed? It also
| makes the company leaders seem so much worse in comparison.
|
| One more thing: Is it credible that she had such a high profile
| job for so long and still be worried about money?
| bombcar wrote:
| > One more thing: Is it credible that she had such a high
| profile job for so long and still be worried about money?
|
| Read threads at bogleheads for a month or so. The eighth post
| that is a variation on "we have fifteen million dollars in
| cash, and more in stock, can we afford to buy a used 2008
| Accord" and you'll go insane.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| Cash in USD? They aren't hedged at all against
| hyperinflation. Wait for a few more gold bars before buying
| that Accord.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| > why would a good person stay at the company after all she
| has witnessed?
|
| Wait, is the angle of the book that she's a good person? That
| can't possibly be right... it's a book about all the horrible
| things _she tried to help Facebook do_.
|
| The title of the book doesn't suggest she was disappointed in
| their morals. It suggests she was disappointed in their
| ability to do their jobs.
| armandososa wrote:
| > Wait, is the angle of the book that she's a good person?
| That can't possibly be right...
|
| Well, she paints herself as an idealist who believes
| Facebook can be an agent of [presumably positive] change,
| so at least she thinks of herself as good in some sense of
| the word. That's what I found intriguing about that shark
| attack prologue. If it had been written by a third person
| or if this were a novelization, it would feel like a
| character-revealing moment, telling the audience that she's
| actually selfish and self-absorbed, and setting
| expectations for her behavior before getting into the
| story.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Well can you please spoil the shark attack thing? With a
| bit SPOILERS tag at the top if you like?
| ssimpson wrote:
| Many times its easier to look back over a period of time and
| see the differences than when you are gradually exposed to
| those things over time. Thats kind of how I'm understanding
| her recollection about it all. I do tend to take things with
| a grain of salt, not all Americans are as ridiculous as some
| of the people she makes us out to sound like. She does paint
| broadly with the "international community is all good and
| Americans are all morons" brush, again grain of salt.
|
| About the money thing, I think she was probably compensated
| better at some point, probably when she was more involved
| with sandberg and zuck. But also sounds like she was working
| constantly so she may not have had time to worry about it or
| worry about spending it. I'm only ~20 chapters in, when they
| move to MP.
|
| Overall I like the author/narrator, we all tell our stories
| from our perspective and I just keep that in mind.
| mtzaldo wrote:
| Sounds like the book is similar to the almost famous movie main
| idea.
| foobarkey wrote:
| Its a good book I read it, the only thing that she messed up
| though is not letting her exec level shares vest and be quiet
| until then imo :)
| kbrtalan wrote:
| just the opposite. She put her money where her mouth was and
| didn't trade her dignity for some cash
| foobarkey wrote:
| Yes correct in some absolute ethical context, but would have
| been easier to fight with a few hundred million budget to pay
| for legal fees
| RistrettoMike wrote:
| While her boss continues to sexually harass her? Doesn't sound
| like a mistake to me. There's more to life than money, as the
| author makes quite clear throughout the book, IMO.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| Did she say that she renegotiated her compensation? Because
| early in the book she wrote that unlike basically everyone else
| she's working with, she poorly negotiated her comp and that
| she's working for a regular and unimpressive salary while her
| coworkers are flashing luxury brands that she can't afford.
|
| I've stopped reading after the Myanmar episode so I don't know
| if she's ever renegotiated her package.
| grunder_advice wrote:
| Whenever these kind of articles pop up, I always think how sad it
| is that PyTorch, Llama and many widely used opens source projects
| are tied to Meta.
| Aeolun wrote:
| They are open-source. Shouldn't we be happy that at least
| something good comes of that sentient pile of cash?
| conartist6 wrote:
| So get a group of other sympathetic people and fork them.
|
| This is virtually the only place where you have a chance to
| take power from them by your actions.
|
| "The best way to complain is to create things," and yes that's
| a poster I got for free back when I worked at Facebook.
| diggan wrote:
| > fork them
|
| This requires all of the "source" to be available. For
| PyTorch and a bunch of other projects, this is trivial as all
| the source is straight up on GitHub. But for proprietary
| things like Llama, it's really hard to fork something when
| you don't even have access to what they used to build it
| (software-wise, not even thinking about the hardware yet).
|
| How could you fork something like Llama when Meta don't even
| speak clearly about what data they used, literally none of
| the training code is available, and you have to agree to
| terms and conditions before you're "allowed" to do anything
| with it?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > you have to agree to terms and conditions before you're
| "allowed" to do anything with it
|
| I don't have experience with this so I'm taking it at face
| value; if this is true, it's so strange that I have an idea
| of this being an "open" model. As in, not that they PR'ed
| to make people believe it but that people _who were
| required to accept those terms_ seem to believe it (as
| users seem to repeat it). Seems a little bit of critical
| thinking should dispel that notion. Are there any, more
| reasonably open models? Is LLaMa just called open because
| it's the most accessible?
| diggan wrote:
| > Are there any, more reasonably open models? Is LLaMa
| just called open because it's the most accessible?
|
| Indeed there are! They aren't exactly SOTA, but they're
| 100% open source and you could build them yourself from
| scratch, granted you had the compute, knowledge and time
| for it. OLMo 2 from Ai2 is probably the most notable one.
|
| I think Llama is called "open source" because that's what
| Meta, Zuckerberg and the Llama website says it is, and
| people take it at face value. Then people see "Oh but
| it's free, who cares about the license?" not understand
| how we got here in the first place...
| diggan wrote:
| Lets say Meta goes under tomorrow (won't happen, but bear with
| me) and stops making new Llama releases.
|
| Would the community be able to take over the project and train
| new models, assuming they have access to the same hardware?
| Obviously, the community doesn't have access to similar
| hardware, but even if it did, would the community be able to
| continue releasing Llama models?
|
| And if the answer to that is no, why is that and how could
| Llama be considered open source if no one could pick up the
| torch afterwards (even theoretically), even if they had access
| to hardware for training?
| grunder_advice wrote:
| No. You need a research lab, compute time and talent to train
| LLMs.
| mr_toad wrote:
| And truckloads of data.
| diggan wrote:
| > No. You need a research lab, compute time and talent to
| train LLMs.
|
| Right, but even if you had those, could you actually train
| a Llama model from scratch? You'd still have a lot of work
| in front of you, compared to a "regular" open source
| project where you have everything available already,
| download the source and hit "compile" and you have it done.
| caseyy wrote:
| There are many things to be said about open-source projects
| and, more broadly, the capabilities of the open-source
| community.
|
| The most capable parts are for-profit organizations that
| release open-source software for their business imperative,
| public benefit companies that write open-source software for
| ideological reasons but still operate as businesses, and a
| tiny number of public benefit organizations with unstable
| cash flow. Most other efforts are unorganized and plagued by
| bickering.
|
| Llama itself is challenging to take over. The weights are
| public, but the training data and process is not. It could be
| evolved, but not fully iterated by anyone else. For a full
| iteration, the training process and inputs would need to be
| replicated, with improvements there.
|
| But could another open-source model, as capable as Llama, be
| produced? Yes. Just like Meta, other companies, such as
| Google and Microsoft, have the incentive to create a moat
| around their AI business by offering a free model to the
| public, one that's just barely under their commercial model's
| capabilities. That way, no competitor can organically emerge.
| After all, who would pay for their product if it's inferior
| to the open-source one? It's a classic barrier to entry in
| the market - a thing highly sought after by monopolistic
| companies.
|
| Public benefit companies leading in privacy could develop a
| model to run offline for privacy purposes, to avoid mass
| consumer data harvesting. A new open-source ideological
| project without a stable business could also, in theory, pop
| up in the same pattern as the Linux project. But these are
| like unicorns - "one in a million years (maybe)."
|
| So, to answer your question, yes, Llama weights could be
| evolved; no, an entirely new version cannot be made outside
| of Meta. Yes, someone else could create such a wholly new
| open-source model from scratch, and different open-source
| groups have different incentives. The most likely incentive
| is monopolistic, to my mind.
| diggan wrote:
| I think you've kind of answered a different question. Yes,
| more LLM models could be created. But specifically Llama?
| Since it's an open source model, the assumption is that we
| could (given access to the same compute of course) train
| one from scratch ourselves, just like we can build our own
| binaries of open source software.
|
| But this obviously isn't true for Llama, hence the
| uncertainty if Llama even is open source in the first
| place. If we cannot create something ourselves (again,
| given access to compute), how could it possibly be
| considered open source by anyone?
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| I think the fact that all (good) LLM datasets are full
| with licensed/pirated material means we'll never really
| see a decent open source model under the strict
| definition. Open weight + open source code is really the
| best we're going to get, so I'm fine with it coopting the
| term open source even if it doesn't fully apply.
| diggan wrote:
| > we'll never really see a decent open source model under
| the strict definition
|
| But there are already a bunch of models like that, were
| everything (architecture, training data, training
| scripts, etc) is open, public and transparent. Since you
| weren't aware those existed since before, but you now
| know that, are you willing to change your perspective on
| it?
|
| > so I'm fine with it coopting the term open source even
| if it doesn't fully apply
|
| It really sucks that the community seems OK with this. I
| probably wouldn't have been a developer without FOSS, and
| I don't understand how it can seem OK to rob other people
| of this opportunity to learn from FOSS projects.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Not all of the community is OK with this, lots of folks
| are strongly against OSI's bullshit OSAID for example.
| Really it should have been more like the Debian Deep
| Learning Team's Machine Learning Policy, just like last
| time when the OSI used the Debian Free Software
| Guidelines (DFSG) to create the Open Source Definition
| (OSD).
|
| https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/ml-policy
| caseyy wrote:
| I understand I was supposed to say "no" and question the
| open-source label. We've heard many arguments that if
| something can't be reproduced from scratch, it's not true
| open-source.
|
| To me, they sound a bit like "no true Scotsman". Llama
| _is_ open source, compared to commercial models with
| closed weights. Even if it could be _more_ open source.
|
| That's why I looked at it in a broader sense -- what
| could happen in an open-source world to improve or
| replace Llama. Much _could_ happen, thanks to Llama's
| open nature, actually.
| diggan wrote:
| > Llama is open source, compared to commercial models
| with closed weights
|
| Yeah, just like a turd is a piece of gourmet food if
| there is no other good food around.
|
| Sorry, but that's a really bad argument, "open source" is
| not a relative metric you use to compare different
| things, it's a label that is applied to something depend
| on what license that thing has. No matter what licenses
| others use, the license you use is still the license use.
|
| Especially when there are actually open source models out
| there, so it isn't possible. Maybe Meta feels like it's
| impossible because of X, Y and Z, but that doesn't make
| it true just because they don't feel like they could earn
| enough money on it, or whatever their reasoning is.
| caseyy wrote:
| > Yeah, just like a turd is a piece of gourmet food if
| there is no other good food around.
|
| I didn't mean it's on a continuum, as you assumed.
| Apologies for phrasing it unclearly. I meant that the
| weights are public. They are open; there is no debate to
| be had about it. Generally and broadly, that is already
| considered open-source.
|
| And we all understand what "open-source" means in the
| context of Llama - it doesn't mean one of the idealized
| notions of open source, it means open weights.
| diggan wrote:
| > Generally and broadly, that is already considered open-
| source.
|
| No, just because something is public doesn't mean it's
| open source, those are two very different things. If I
| upload code on my website without any license, that code
| is not now suddenly open source just because it's public.
| Just like Llama isn't suddenly "open source" because
| Meta's marketing department says so, their own legal
| department still call Llama proprietary, don't you wonder
| why that is?
|
| > And we all understand what "open-source" means in the
| context of Llama - it doesn't mean one of the idealized
| notions of open source, it means open weights.
|
| You, and some others (including Meta) are using a
| definition Meta came up with themselves, probably in
| order to try to skirt EU AI regulations as it's different
| for "open source" models vs others. I'm not sure why you
| as an individual would fall for it though, unless I'm
| missing something you have nothing to gain by spreading
| PR from Meta, do you?
|
| The existing definition of open source (before Meta's
| bastardization) is not a "idealized" definition, is the
| one we built an enormous ecosystem on top of, who taught
| a whole generation of programmers how to program and
| connected people together, without putting profits first.
| caseyy wrote:
| Llama 3 license: https://github.com/meta-
| llama/llama3/blob/main/LICENSE
|
| Calm it with the ad hominem attacks. It's not the place
| for it.
| diggan wrote:
| > Llama 3 license
|
| And here I've written an overview if you find it easier
| to have it summarized: https://notes.victor.earth/youre-
| probably-breaking-the-llama...
| pabs3 wrote:
| Its unlikely all the training data for Llama is publicly
| available, let alone under an open source license. If Llama
| actually had an open source license (IIRC it doesn't), that
| would still make it a Toxic Candy model under the Debian Deep
| Learning Team's Machine Learning policy. That means no-one
| could replicate it exactly, even if they had the boatloads of
| cash it would take to buy enough hardware and electricity to
| do the training. Eventually the community could maybe find or
| create enough data, but that would be a new different model.
|
| https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/ml-policy
| lolinder wrote:
| AI models aren't really iterative in the way that other
| software is. Llama 4 is a completely different product from
| Llama 3, with different parameter counts and even different
| modalities. The only reason it gets to be called Llama 4 is
| that the company that made it is the same and it's convenient
| to not have to come up with new names all the time, not
| because there's any sort of continuity with Llama 2.
|
| Fine tunes are the correct analogy to iterative software
| development--they take the existing code (weights) and
| improve upon it and modify it--and fine tunes _can_ be
| produced with what Meta has released.
|
| The bigger problem with Meta's claim that it's open source is
| that they've attached a bunch of strings to the license that
| prevent you from using it in a bunch of different ways. It's
| not open source because it's not open, not because weights
| aren't source.
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| Be thankful they are open source at all. See OpenAI for the
| alternative.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| > There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like
| Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who
| accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game
| of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet).
|
| Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern
| ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for
| them just end up getting exiled? Have the elites through history
| always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon?
|
| If you're wildly successful at something with significant real
| world influence, why would you care so strongly about something
| as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?
| Being good at any kind of game is mostly a function of how much
| time and energy you've invested into it. If you claim to be an
| extremely hardcore worker who has any kind of family life there
| just aren't any leftover hours in the day for you to grind a top
| position in a game. And anyway, if you're playing games for fun
| and to bond with people, you probably shouldn't be playing
| tryhard optimal strategies every game, and should instead explore
| and experiment with more creative strategies. This is a lesson
| that took me a while to learn.
| js8 wrote:
| > Have the elites through history always been this insecure or
| is it a modern phenomenon?
|
| Yes. As a kid, I read a legend that one of the Charlemagne's
| knights got so annoyed for losing a game of chess that he
| killed his opponent with the chessboard.
| laserlight wrote:
| > this insecure
|
| I agree that such an event would demonstrate insecurity. I
| would also argue that past elites were not "that insecure",
| because they put their lives at risk by waging wars. Of
| course, later elites figured out ways to address the
| downsides.
| pjc50 wrote:
| There's a frame question in this, and the history of
| duelling. Is your image, or self-image, in matters of honor
| or social status more important than your life? Is it
| secure or insecure to risk your life simply because of an
| insult? To what extent does "security" in this context boil
| down to the capacity for violence, rather than anything
| else?
| 542354234235 wrote:
| But duels were instituted primarily to curb vendettas,
| deadly street brawls, and retaliatory assassinations that
| aristocrats regularly engaged in. At least with a duel,
| the violence was limited to one death and a settlement to
| the honor of all involved. It was in _improvement_ to the
| situation they were facing at the time.
|
| But the idea of honor itself was a necessity for most of
| history, when there was no central government to enforce
| contracts, punish violence, etc. Your reputation was one
| of the only protections you had. Whether your family was
| known to exact revenge to those that wronged you or as
| weak pushovers would affect someone's decision to kill
| one of you, steal your things, or make a deal with you
| and keep everything for themselves.
|
| You had to show that anything someone could gain at your
| expense would be outweighed by your commitment to take
| more back in revenge.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's hard to speak broadly about this I think but since we
| already are. Military aristocrats like knights were at the
| least risk among combatants in an armed conflict, being
| better armed, armored, and more likely to be mounted
| compared to the levied militias or even professional
| soldiers, later in the early modern era.
|
| And social norms at the time were to take them hostage and
| ransom them back to their family or allied higher lord if
| possible, so their chances of surviving a lost battle were
| much higher than that of the men they were leading. So even
| in this context they are already figuring out "ways to
| address the downsides."
|
| Vs the like, the normal people who would _also_ be called
| on to die in battle, but then the rest of the time would be
| living under the capricious and frequently violent rule of
| these certainly-no-more-than-average-emotionally-secure men
| with more or less unchecked power over their daily lives.
|
| What we have now developed from what they had then and a
| lot of the dynamics are quite similar. The violence is more
| abstract but that's exactly what the current crop of tech
| billionaires is trying to change.
| tux3 wrote:
| Success has a part of skill, and a part of luck. It hurts to be
| reminded about skill issues.
|
| Board games aren't as simple as time invested. I could spend my
| whole life studying chess, and some 13yo prodigy will handily
| beat me blindfolded, while juggling three other boards.
|
| Board games cannot be conquered with wealth or a successful
| business. Or, rather, they can, but only by pressuring your
| underlings into letting you win; giving you the feeling you
| crave.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Naw, the rare super talented 13yo child that excells at such
| games will have also spend an incredible amount of time
| learning everything there is about it - leaving very little
| time to pursuit outside of that discipline to improve
| themselves.
|
| There is a grain of truth to what you're saying, obviously -
| as Magnus has proven when he started to enter chess
| tournaments... Outplaying people with decades more
| experience. But you're also ignoring that he spend pretty
| much every waking moment of his thinking life playing chess.
| sampullman wrote:
| But if you knew people were letting you win, wouldn't that
| ruin the feeling forever?
|
| It seems like there must be another component, but maybe it
| is just that simple.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| If they let me win, that is since I have power over them.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| This is the more interesting answer to me because it's a
| reminder that everyone is playing a different game.
|
| I used to play games to win, but now I play games to
| maximize the collective enjoyment of playing the game.
| This shift began with my spouse (who is a very sore
| loser) but continued with my children. I still let them
| lose sometimes because I want them to know how to enjoy a
| losing game, but I (selfishly) want them to enjoy games
| as much as I do, so that's my focus, and I will play to
| lose (as non-obviously as possible) frequently.
|
| When I play games against good players now, I notice that
| I've lost a lot of skill in the kind of strategic
| ruthlessness required to win. I found this surprising,
| because playing in a way where you're trying to "fix" the
| outcomes for other players and modulate the mood of the
| game based on outcomes still requires a great deal of
| strategic insight and clever play. I guess the additional
| attention to the social and emotional dynamics must
| naturally reduce focus. It's kind of a shame, because you
| can't maximize enjoyment with a skilled player without
| being skilled, but I suppose the trade off is that there
| will always be more unskilled players who can benefit
| from enjoyment maximizing play than skilled players who
| will suffer from subpar opponents. Naturally, skilled
| players are already getting a lot out of the game, or
| else they wouldn't be playing enough to become skilled.
| corimaith wrote:
| Board Games in the same vein as grand strategy/4x with a
| dizzying number of rules like Catan or HOI4 are very much
| initially a function of time invested, otherwise you
| literally have no idea what you're doing.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Probably have been told their whole lives that they are so
| smart, clever, and special, that they will (and rightly should)
| always win. So any loss immediately looks to them like foul
| play by their opponent(s). Even if it's just a casual game.
| Anyone telling them otherwise doesn't last long in their orbit.
| As they gain power, they naturally grow a bubble of sycophants
| who reinforce their "I always win" beliefs.
| vintermann wrote:
| There's also no shortage of people willing to tell Zuck and
| Musk (from a relatively safe distance, like in public here at
| HN) that they're insecure manbabies born into wealth who
| don't deserve a fraction of the power they've managed to claw
| themselves. I suspect that we, and the desire to show us
| wrong (or at the least spite us) are also part of the
| equation for why the current crop of billionaires are as they
| are.
|
| Not that this means we're wrong, exactly.
| enaaem wrote:
| From an Eastern philosophy point of view, low ego with high
| confidence, is a skill that can be trained. It is also a
| skill someone can get worst at. That being said, I don't
| think that Zuck and Musk would have become low ego people
| without internet criticism, since they are on the
| completely wrong path.
| exe34 wrote:
| For PS1M/year after tax, I'd tell Zuck anything he wants to
| hear from 9 to 5, excluding weekends, bank holidays and 28
| days of annual leave.
|
| We all have a price really.
| esafak wrote:
| You could make more than that without compromising
| yourself. Aim higher.
| exe34 wrote:
| I'd have to put in effort. I've already got other things
| taking up my spare brain cell.
| pixl97 wrote:
| You mean "us jealous poor people who are mad that he is
| bright and successful".
|
| I've known a few people in the hundreds and millions of
| dollars in wealth category and that seemed to be their go
| to response when anyone had to say anything negative about
| their behaviors.
|
| In the US at least, never underestimate the amount of
| calvinism and prosperity gospel that has creeped into every
| facet of our lives.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Here on HN, we're not telling Zuck and Musk anything. We're
| telling each other things about Zuck and Musk. Zuck and
| Musk aren't dropping by to find out what we think of them,
| ever.
| vintermann wrote:
| Figuratively speaking, we're telling them, since we're
| saying it loudly in public. You bet they know people are
| saying it. They might even peek in - we know some of
| their friends (arguably friends) who do, and Musk is
| among other things famous for being a bit of a social
| media addict.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Rich people's bubbles are thick, and their "outside-the-
| bubble" communication tends to be write-only. I highly
| doubt Zucc or Musk spends any time at all on places like
| HN or Reddit, and their comms on their respective social
| media platforms tend to be broadcast sending/writing and
| not reading comments or feedback. They rely on the
| sycophants in their orbit to give them the summarized,
| sanitized, positive feedback, and downplay/hide the
| negative.
| vintermann wrote:
| We know Musk spends time on X. We also know he reads as
| well as writes, because he often replies to random
| things.
|
| But even for a slightly wiser billionaire who does what
| you suggest - they wouldn't do that unless they knew they
| would get public hate, and were bothered by it. You don't
| have a thick bubble unless you understand that you need
| it.
| mherkender wrote:
| I think it's easy to unknowingly surround yourself with yes-men
| and become insulated from failure. Losing then seems like an
| exception to the rule, a bug.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Given this, I don't want to imagine how much Elon Musk is
| suffering right now for the bullying he gets and for Tesla,
| which have higher stakes than a tabletop game.
|
| And I don't feel bad for it
| aredox wrote:
| He doesn't care about Tesla anymore. His president will kill
| EV subsidies and give them to coal. He never cared about the
| mission of Tesla, and anyone working at Tesla who still
| believes in it is a sucker.
| generic92034 wrote:
| So, why is he not selling all his Tesla stocks, then?
| solumunus wrote:
| One cannot simply sell all of their stock if they own
| that much.
|
| I don't think Elon cares about Tesla as a vision anymore,
| but does he care about being "the richest man in the
| world" or at least one of them. Absolutely, and TSLA is
| the reason that's true.
| Balinares wrote:
| That's not how it works. You can't sell without someone
| buying from you, and if you're selling everything then
| buyers will know your stock is worthless and will not
| exactly be rushing to take you up on the offer, except at
| whatever severely depressed prices will generate a profit
| margin from liquidating your assets.
|
| He's much better off propping up the stock with a bit
| more grifting for as long as that will last and living
| off loans taken with stocks as the collateral.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I think they don't have to pay the same amount of taxes
| if they use the stock as collateral for getting loans
|
| Chances are there are some considerations which I don't
| know about
| Biganon wrote:
| Because as soon as he starts selling them, they'll
| devaluate immensely
| aredox wrote:
| Because he can afford not to, for now.
| hylaride wrote:
| IIRC, he borrowed against them for a lot of stuff,
| including the Twitter acquisition. It's probably why he's
| freaking out a bit and returning to it. It's also not the
| first time he's had liquidity problems. Tesla literally
| did come weeks away from bankruptcy on a few occasions in
| the 2010s as he often put the cart before the horse. The
| infamous "refundable deposit" for the car back then that
| ended up being almost twice as much as promised was
| essentially an unsecured loan. People were almost out all
| their money.
|
| Bethany McLean (a journalist that was among the first to
| start questioning Enron's numbers and wrote the book "the
| smartest men in the room" on it that also became a
| documentary) has been following Elon Musk for well over a
| decade.
|
| She once said "Whenever Elon is lashing out is when he's
| under enormous stress". Also, he has a large cult of true
| believers who believe a man who's taken credit for others
| work as his own all his life. Watch this documentary
| called "the cult of the dead stock"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5Bd6YxifCo ; it's like
| that x100.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Tesla literally did come weeks away from bankruptcy on
| a few occasions in the 2010s as he often put the cart
| before the horse.
|
| Yet another thing Tesla should have faced sanctions on -
| you'd never have known this by listening to any earnings
| call or looking at any financial filings from Tesla at
| that time (and at one point I think the number was <10
| days).
| hylaride wrote:
| I really do wonder if outright financial fraud was
| occurring. There was a period of time where they were
| going through CFOs like water over Niagara Falls (whom I
| assume were refusing to sign off on the books?).
| 542354234235 wrote:
| First of all, there has been a significant selloff by
| Tesla top executives, including over $10 billion by Musk
| in the past 3 years [1,2,3]. The main reason he can't
| sell of more is that he is still fighting in court to get
| his insane $56 billion executive bonus, which would be
| primarily in Tesla stock [4]. I say insane because it is
| over 500 times larger than any bonus given by any other
| company ever and is equivalent to giving every other
| Tesla employee an almost half a million-dollar bonus. I
| think we will see a lot more sell offs once the outcome
| of that legal battle is done, whether it comes out
| positive or negative for Musk.
|
| More broadly, I think Tesla's general valuation is a
| house of cards that his been hyper inflated by years of
| Musk lying to investors about future sales, future
| products, and future features. He promised a million
| driverless taxi's that would make $30,000 profit each
| year would be coming "next year" in 2019 [5], that full
| self driving was coming in an update "next month" in 2020
| [6] and wildly incorrect capabilities of basically every
| product ever released.
|
| [1] "four top officers at the company have offloaded over
| $100 million in shares since early February [2025]...
| Elon Musk's brother, Kimbal Musk, who also sits on the
| board, unloaded 75,000 shares worth approximately $27
| million last month"
| https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tesla-board-members-
| executiv...
|
| [2] "Musk sold a total of 41.5 million shares of Tesla
| stock between November 4 and December 12 [2024]... The
| sales came not long after a October 19, 2022 earning call
| in which he told investors 'I can't emphasize enough, we
| have excellent demand for Q4.'... But when Tesla reported
| fourth-quarter sales, they were far weaker than forecast,
| and that sent stocks down 12%, the worst day of trading
| for the stock in more than two years."
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/04/business/musk-tesla-stock-
| sal...
|
| [3] "Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday he does not plan
| to sell any more shares of Tesla for at least the next
| two years, after the billionaire and nascent Twitter
| owner offloaded nearly $3.6 billion worth of stock this
| week [2022] as Tesla's share price tumbled." https://www.
| forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/12/22/musk...
|
| [4] https://www.investopedia.com/elon-musks-multi-
| billion-dollar...
|
| [5] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/22/tech/tesla-
| robotaxis/index.ht...
|
| [6] https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/tesla-level-five-
| absurd-say...
| Jevon23 wrote:
| In order to get into Zuckerberg's position in the first place,
| you need to have a highly competitive personality type. And
| competitive people want to win at EVERYTHING, all the time.
| It's a constant compulsion. Even if they might intellectually
| understand the distinction between "just a game" and "actual
| serious time", they don't "feel" that distinction in their
| bones. They have no off switch.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| I think that while the trait itself is fairly common the
| ability to bully and pressure everyone around you to give in
| to this level of petty and demeaning deference is quite rare.
| You only see it in powerful people because they're the only
| ones who can actually make people do this.
|
| I have an aunt like this and she's super annoying and largely
| ostracized and in constant conflict with people around her,
| but if she had $175 billion she could probably surround
| herself with people who would indulge her.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Money is a potent and addictive hallucinogenic neurotoxin.
| We have a culture where everything is run by addicts, with
| predictably disastrous consequences.
| dgfitz wrote:
| s/money/power
|
| Money is a means to an end.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The two sour losers I know just refuse to play any game at
| all. Cooperative games or team games they think are kinda
| fine though of they are "forced to". They just can't handle
| being targeted as individuals.
|
| Maybe Zuckerberg has a lack of self reflection?
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I'm like that and really I have lots of free time because
| of not playing any competitive games
|
| Downside is I obviously don't use that free time to do
| anything I'm not already skilled at, like art or music or
| writing or exercise (except for rock climbing which I
| manage to not be competitive at)
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye. My problem is the opposite. I am a way too good
| loser. It has its drawbacks too but they are less
| emotionally obvious maybe.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| The Bill Gates Chair Jump is another great example of this.
|
| https://youtu.be/YUGk30Wy8vU?t=175
| imiric wrote:
| What a ridiculous video that's reading way too much into a
| silly 5 second clip.
|
| Bill Gates may be competitive, but this specific event, and
| the whole idea that it somehow represents a shift, is
| completely unrelated to the current topic. People have
| different private and public personas, and even present
| different personas to different people. This is completely
| normal, and often the only way to cope with being a
| celebrity, especially for introverted personality types.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| It's only 5 seconds edited down to match your attention
| span. Exceed it, I suppose, because the fact that
| personas exist is not the pertinent part, it's the
| glimpse past BillG's persona to see the compulsive
| competitive behavior: inventing a chair game, "cheating"
| at it, and instead of brushing it off as silly fun (which
| everyone would have accepted) getting increasingly
| flustered until he walked out of an interview.
| imiric wrote:
| Way to assume what my attention span is.
|
| Speaking of which, if you watch the (nearly) full
| interview[1] instead of that 5 second clip, you'll
| realize that the chair jumping bit had nothing to do with
| the reason he walked out of that interview. I couldn't
| find the full version, but you can see that towards the
| end he gets annoyed at the constant prodding to get him
| to admit some wrongdoing. The entire segment is made to
| portray him as some out-of-touch rich guy and tyrant that
| abuses his employees and competitors. Just poor
| television all around, more interested in promoting
| sensationalism for engagement purposes, than showing an
| honest image of the person. The chair jumping bit is
| proof of this, given that it's the only thing the public
| remembers.
|
| Extrapolating that bit to make some grand assumption
| about his personality is beyond ridiculous.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgwHIwEwGLQ
| rottc0dd wrote:
| I think there are some similar remarks on Bill Gates in
| another good memoir by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen [1].
| Even on his school days, Gates was so sure he will not have a
| competition on Math, since he was the best at math at his
| school. When he went to Harvard, (which I somehow remember as
| Princeton(!) as pointed out by a commenter) and saw people
| better than him, he changed to applied math from Pure math.
| (Remarks are Paul's)
|
| > I was decent in math and Bill was brilliant, but I spoke
| from experience at Wazzu. One day I watched a professor cover
| the black board with a maze of partial differential
| equations, and they might as well have been hieroglyphics
| from the Second Dynasty. It was one of those moments when you
| realize, I just can't see it. I felta little sad, but I
| accepted my limitations. I was OK with being a generalist.
|
| > For Bill it was different. When I saw him again over
| Christmas break, he seemed subdued. I asked him about his
| first semester and he said glumly, "I have a math professor
| who got his PhD at sixteen." The course was purely
| theoretical, and the homework load ranged up to thirty hours
| a week. Bill put everything into it and got a B. When it came
| to higher mathematics, he might have been one in a hundred
| thousand students or better. But there were people who were
| one in a million or one in ten million, and some of them
| wound up at Harvard. Bill would never be the smartest guy in
| that room, and I think that hurt his motivation. He
| eventually switched his major to applied math.
|
| Even Paul admits, he was torn between going into Engineering
| or Music. But, when he saw his classmate giving virtuoso
| performance, he thought "I am never going to as great as
| this." So, he chose engineering.
|
| Maybe it is a common trait in ambitious people.
|
| Edits: Removed some misremembered information.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Man-Memoir-Cofounder-
| Microsoft/d...
| technothrasher wrote:
| Huh. I remember being miles ahead of my peers in computer
| science in high school. When getting to college and finding
| people most definitely better than I was, I was incredibly
| excited to finally find such people, not scared away.
| rottc0dd wrote:
| Excuse me for generalizing the point. That's not fair to
| do just based on these anecdotes. But, I can also
| understand their perspective.
|
| Paul continued to be a guitar player all his life and
| hosted jamming sessions in his home. I started with piano
| very late in my life and not very regular, but I am just
| happy to join the fun party.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| Congratulations on learning piano. I think everyone who
| is capable of learning an instrument should consider it.
|
| Rachmaninoff once said, "Music is enough for a lifetime,
| but a lifetime is not enough for music." So, no matter
| when one starts, there would never be enough time to
| truly master the craft.
|
| I believe it is better for one to start late and enjoy it
| than start early and burnout.
| rottc0dd wrote:
| Thanks a lot. It is really fun. But, I don't have adult
| company in my neighborhood.
|
| If take "What if I don't became great with this" anxiety
| out of the equation, it feels just more fun and life
| seems a little more colorful being a beginner.
| keerthiko wrote:
| in my experience, people who grow up as the biggest fish
| in a small pond (whether concerning just fields they care
| about, or in general) are always 99% of the time, one of
| these two when they end up a middling fish in the big
| pond: like you, happy to find peers and inspiring
| exemplars to collaborate with and learn from, or those
| who hate that they are not the best anymore.
|
| the former group probably leads the healthiest & happiest
| life fulfillment while pursuing their interests -- i'm
| heavily biased though because i too fall into this
| category and am proud of this trait.
|
| the latter group consists of people who either spin their
| wheels real hard and more often than not burn out in
| their pursuit of being the best, or pivot hard into
| something else they think they can be the best at (often
| repeatedly every time they encounter stronger
| competition) like gates & co, or in rare cases succeed in
| being the best even in the more competitive environment.
|
| this last .001% are probably people whose egos get so
| boosted from the positive reinforcement that they become
| "overcompetitive" and domineering like zuck or elon, and
| let their egos control their power and resources to
| suppress competition rather than compete "fairly" ever
| again.
|
| i think there's a subset of people from both main groups
| that may move from one into the other based on life
| experiences, luck, influence of people close to them,
| maturity, therapy, or simply wanting something different
| from life after a certain point. i don't have a good
| model for whether this is _most_ people, or a tiny
| percentage.
| technol0gic wrote:
| well put
| swatcoder wrote:
| I think the more common outcome you're not seeing, for
| the "other" group, is that they just go back to smaller
| ponds where they excelled in the first place, and often
| make strong contributions there.
|
| Once it's been observed that there are bigger fish, you
| can't really go back to the naive sense of boundless
| potentiality, but you can go back to feeling like a
| strong and competent leader among people who benefit from
| and respect what you have.
|
| Your comment focuses on the irrepressibly ambitious few
| who linger in the upper echelons of jet-setting academia
| and commerce and politics, trying to find a niche while
| constantly nagged by threats to their ego (sometimes
| succeeding, sometimes not), but there's many more
| Harvard/etc alum who just went back to Omaha or Baltimore
| or Denver or Burlington and made more or less big things
| happen there. That road is not so unhealthy or unhappy
| for them.
| keerthiko wrote:
| this is a very good point, and a blind spot in my comment
| because IME people who left the small pond in the first
| place were dissatisfied and unfulfilled there.
|
| it is absolutely possible that after experiencing the
| bigger pond, people can develop purpose in their
| "original" pond based on values like community and
| relationships, or even simply dislike the vibes in bigger
| ponds and want to undo as much as they can. this is a
| super valuable thing to society and humanity for the most
| part, as perhaps more change can happen this way than big
| things happening in big places.
|
| personally i struggle with this, because whenever i re-
| enter a smaller ecosystem (including/such as the one i
| grew up around) i feel like everyone has a distorted view
| of the bigger pond and self-limit themselves, which is a
| contagious energy i can't stand.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| That's not a common reaction with humans. When people are
| the best, there's a huge serotonin rush. Like literally
| this is measurable in humans.
|
| Serotonin regulates dominance hierarchies and is
| associated with happiness. It's so biological in nature
| that the same effect can be witnessed in lobsters. People
| or lobsters high in dominance have more serotonin and are
| generally happier.
|
| Your story is not only anomalous. But it's anomalous to
| the point where it's unrealistic too. I can't comment on
| this but if you did not feel the associated come down of
| serotonin I'm more inclined to say you're not being
| honest with yourself more then you're a biological
| anomaly. There's likely enough variation in genetics to
| produce people like you so I'm not ruling it out.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| I don't think they said anything about their serotonin.
| They just described their reaction to the situation. If
| we were able to ask lobsters about their self-experience
| we might learn something about them too.
| nadir_ishiguro wrote:
| You sound like Jordan Peterson.
| Llamamoe wrote:
| It sounds like the commenter above is just less insecure
| about themselves and more excited for opportunities to
| discuss and learn than you and whoever you're describing
| here are.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| No im saying dominance hierarchies are the natural order
| of things and it's ingrained in biology.
|
| Pretending that hierarchy doesn't matter and that you
| don't care where you are in that hierarchy is lying to
| yourself.
|
| It's like saying the janitor is equal in respect to the
| software engineer. We don't like to admit but the janitor
| is less respected and looked down upon. I'm annoyed by
| people who pretend it doesn't matter.
| ewzimm wrote:
| I don't know if some people are just wired differently,
| but I can back up the feeling of not caring at all where
| I fall in a hierarchy or how much people respect or don't
| respect me.
|
| The things I find most thrilling always relate to being
| challenged. Finding someone better than me qualifies.
| Having ideas challenged or being proven wrong are the
| most positive experience I've had, especially being
| forced to change deeply held beliefs. I mention this
| because it's one of those things that I always hear
| people say that everyone hates, but I've always felt the
| opposite, just from a pure chemical feeling perspective.
| I don't think I could possibly be unique in that
| experience.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| Human instinct is a complex of different things acting in
| opposite directions, including things that work against
| hierarchy.
|
| I'm shocked that you think this is an unbelievable
| reaction, I know lots of people who really do think like
| that.
|
| I wonder if you might find C S Lewis's lecture on the
| "inner ring" interesting.
|
| https://archive.org/details/1944-the-inner-ring
| aoanevdus wrote:
| In pure math at a school like Harvard, the standout kids
| like the ones in that quote are probably trying to become
| tenured math professors. There are very few such
| positions available. You can shoot for the stars, and if
| you succeed, make about the same as the average software
| engineer. More likely, get stuck a postdoc. So most
| students give up pure math at some point. If you realized
| you weren't cut out for it in freshman year, you got a
| head start over the people who got a math phd before
| finding out the hard way.
|
| This pressure didn't exist in computer science because
| there were plenty of tech jobs for anyone competent (not
| sure if that's still true in 2025). And you didn't need
| to be a genius to build something cool.
| grandempire wrote:
| Math can also be taught very young with compounding
| effect, but you're very unlikely to be exposed to the
| coaching and expertise at a young age. Of course the few
| in the world who combine aptitude with exposure are the
| kind of people you will find at Harvard. If you're not
| one of them you may be a decade behind.
|
| I also had a math professor who believed in extreme
| differences within the research community. He said only a
| top advisor would actually be engaging with real research
| and be able to bring you with them.
|
| > More likely, get stuck a postdoc.
|
| I still can't understand why the outcomes for math Phds
| are so bad. They have extremely general intelligence
| which is applicable to any jobs I've had. I think it's
| some combination of being unable to sell, unable to
| explain what they do, and still having their aspirations
| defined by professors.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| It's because it's considered settling for lesser to "sell
| out to industry."
|
| Kinda reminds me of the old "amateur athlete" paradigm.
|
| It's not that you can't get a good job with a math PhD,
| it's that you can't get a good job _and_ the respect of
| your peers /community. I'm sure there are plenty of
| companies that would be thrilled to hire math PhDs, they
| just don't also offer a ton of opportunities to work on
| cutting edge (math) research and publish papers.
| marcianx wrote:
| A less unflattering interpretation might be that once they
| saw the level of skill required to contribute to a field,
| they switched to a field that they could more meaningfully
| contribute to.
| rottc0dd wrote:
| Yeah, but these are also about people who are not even
| starting off at a field. These are teenagers. It really
| stood out that they can think where they can make most
| impact in the world at such an young age.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| What are you talking about? Our society harasses every
| teenager to think again and again and give definite
| answers to exactly that kind of question. It's completely
| normal and exactly like every other young person.
| xeromal wrote:
| Agreed, it's very impressive. The distribution of
| capability in the human race is incredible.
| overgard wrote:
| I think the reality though is you don't need to be in the
| top 99.999% to contribute to a field, you just need a
| unique take/voice. Trying to be the best at anything is a
| bad strategy in a connected world
| grandempire wrote:
| Especially for smart kids who are used to getting in that
| positive feedback cycle of rewards and admiration.
| jrpelkonen wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Gates went to Harvard, not Princeton.
| rottc0dd wrote:
| You are right. I should have looked it up.
|
| > I was decent in math and Bill was brilliant, but I
| spoke from experience at Wazzu. One day I watched a
| professor cover the black board with a maze of partial
| differential equations, and they might as well have been
| hieroglyphics from the Second Dynasty. It was one of
| those moments when you realize, I just can't see it. I
| felta little sad, but I accepted my limitations. I was OK
| with being a generalist.
|
| > For Bill it was different. When I saw him again over
| Christmas break, he seemed subdued. I asked him about his
| first semester and he said glumly, "I have a math
| professor who got his PhD at sixteen." The course was
| purely theoretical, and the homework load ranged up to
| thirty hours a week. Bill put everything into it and got
| a B. When it came to higher mathematics, he might have
| been one in a hundred thousand students or better. But
| there were people who were one in a million or one in ten
| million, and some of them wound up at Harvard. Bill would
| never be the smartest guy in that room, and I think that
| hurt his motivation. He eventually switched his major to
| applied math.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| And to understand that there are people who are much
| better, to internalize it and change the major also
| requires some intelligence. I wish I had that insight
| instead of banging my head against the walls, barely
| passing while others sailed through and continued to Phd
| with half my effort.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| There's a very very similar story about Jeff bezos and
| physics.
|
| https://youtu.be/eFnV6EM-wzY?si=Nc_EqhXEFJVuQWS6
|
| I'm not making this up. Seems like a shared personality
| trait among these people.
| apercu wrote:
| "Oh well, I'm not going to be Andres Segovia, so I guess I
| will never pick up a guitar."
|
| I think that attitude comes from people who are deeply
| unhappy. They need therapy.
| wyclif wrote:
| When I was 18 years old and a new classical guitar
| student, I was very fortunate to hear the Maestro in
| concert. I even got to meet him briefly afterward because
| my music professor had some connection to him.
|
| I was blown away at the time by what was possible and
| that, even though he was very old at the time and had to
| be led out onstage by the arm, needed help getting
| seated, and had the guitar placed in his lap, what he
| could still play was so far advanced of anyone in my
| class who were all in attendance.
|
| The temptation (and I have felt this many times since
| then after hearing various guitarists) could have been "I
| should just quit now because I'll never be that good."
| But I'm glad I didn't succumb to that and decided that
| "I'd rather not sound like anyone else" and still feeling
| pleasure and accomplishment from playing on my own terms.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| I wonder if our professors knew each other?
|
| My classical guitar instructor was well acquainted with
| Segovia, and he himself, was a student of Julian Bream.
| However, my instructor was without a doubt one of the
| most angry people I think I have ever interacted with. He
| was somewhat better known for his arrangements and less
| so as a performer.
|
| > "I should just quit now because I'll never be that
| good."
|
| I never had to think about this because my instructor
| would often tell me this. XD
| imp0cat wrote:
| Mastery comes with age, no way around that.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pi7WcHqBNU - Here are
| some bits of wisdom from Japanese master chefs, both
| young and old.
| cratermoon wrote:
| In light of this, it's weird how the software industry,
| especially startup culture, is so rife with age
| discrimination.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| > Even Paul admits, he was torn between going into
| Engineering or Music. But, when he saw his classmate giving
| virtuoso performance, he thought "I am never going to as
| great as this." So, he chose engineering.
|
| Coincidentally, I had a very similar experience, and made a
| similar decision to switch to software engineering.
| However, the irony is that I am also just a bad, if not
| worse, at software engineering. Oh well, not a day goes by
| that I regret my decision.
| fifticon wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is the correct and intuitive reason. In
| a competition to be 'ever above everything else', tragically
| it selects for the most pathologically ruthless behaviour
| pattern, be it Musk or Putin. If there were a contestant even
| more unscrupulous than you, he'd take your place. So, as long
| as we allow/tolerate obscene wealth, we invariably get this.
| And if we try to avoid it the wrong way, we get Stalin.
| eru wrote:
| > In order to get into Zuckerberg's position in the first
| place, you need to have a highly competitive personality
| type. And competitive people want to win at EVERYTHING, all
| the time.
|
| Many competitive people want to win, but they want to win the
| real game, not a rigged version.
| Jensson wrote:
| Some people view rigging the game as a part of a larger
| game.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Yes, that is a convenient escape hatch for justifying
| amoral behavior.
| daxfohl wrote:
| "If you're not cheating, you're not trying."
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| To be fair, some games effectively to force you to move
| outside normal set of rules eventually ( ie. Monopoly,
| when bank money supply dries out ).
| eru wrote:
| Diplomacy encourages cheating, but only if you don't get
| caught.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| There is no real game in the fog of business development.
| You invent your own and see if it works.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Many competitive people want to win, but they want to
| win the real game, not a rigged version._
|
| There are far, far fewer of these people than you think.
| Lance Armstrong was the best, and he cheated to win anyway.
| Barry Bonds was the best, and he cheated to win anyway. Tom
| Brady was the best, and he cheated to win anyway.
| hackeman300 wrote:
| The thing Tom Brady is accused of (deflating footballs)
| is scientifically proven to be a result of the ideal gas
| law. The NFL admitted they had no idea that was a thing
| when they levied the accusations at him.
|
| Even if you believe the NFL and it was "more probable
| than not" that he was "generally aware" of a scheme to
| deflate the balls, let's not pretend that accusation is
| even in the same universe as what Bonds and Armstrong did
| verteu wrote:
| Though a far cry from steroids & doping, DeflateGate was
| found NOT to be explainable by the ideal gas law.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20191107043435/https://static
| .nf...
|
| "we have concluded that it is more probable than not that
| Jim McNally (the Officials Locker Room attendant for the
| Patriots) and John Jastremski (an equipment assistant for
| the Patriots) participated in a deliberate effort to
| release air from Patriots game balls after the balls were
| examined by the referee
|
| ...
|
| Our consultants confirmed that a reduction in air
| pressure is a natural result of footballs moving from a
| relatively warm environment such as a locker room to a
| colder environment such as a playing field. According to
| our scientific consultants, however, the reduction in
| pressure of the Patriots game balls cannot be explained
| completely by basic scientific principles, such as the
| Ideal Gas Law, based on the circumstances and conditions
| likely to have been present on the day of the AFC
| Championship Game. In addition, the average pressure drop
| of the Patriots game balls exceeded the average pressure
| drop of the Colts balls ...
|
| ...
|
| Based on the testing and analysis, however, Exponent
| concluded that, within the range of likely game
| conditions and circumstances studied, they could identify
| no set of credible environmental or physical factors that
| completely accounts for the Patriots halftime
| measurements or for the additional loss in air pressure
| exhibited by the Patriots game balls, as compared to the
| loss in air pressure exhibited by the Colts game balls.
| Dr. Marlow agreed with this conclusion. This absence of a
| credible scientific explanation for the Patriots halftime
| measurements tends to support a finding that human
| intervention may account for the additional loss of
| pressure exhibited by the Patriots balls."
| fallingknife wrote:
| Perhaps he failed to cheat, but the text messages that
| came out make it very clear that he attempted to.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| >Many competitive people want to win, but they want to win
| the real game, not a rigged version.
|
| Apply the phrase to the staff member he lost to, and the
| situation makes sense. The staff member wants to win the
| real game (of remaining a high-salary Facebook employee),
| and will throw an otherwise inconsequential game of Catan
| to maintain that position's security.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| In my personal experience the will to win and the
| willingness to cheat in general correlates.
| xeromal wrote:
| The do anything to win mentality often includes bending the
| rules where they can. Someone listed some top people in
| their various sports below but I'd include Lebron too. Dude
| is the best basketball player the world has ever seen at
| least when considering longevity but he still flops often
| to get what he wants even though he doesn't need to to win.
| He's just going to get every edge.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| The game of capitalism is to win by any means necessary.
| Rigging the game and evading the law is part of game
| itself. All winners play the game this way.
| eru wrote:
| What does any of this have to do with capitalism?
|
| Have you ever seen a succession struggle in eg any old
| monarchy?
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Capitalism is a system that allows people to make wealth
| based on trade. The winners in this game are the people
| at the top of the hierarchy. All these type A
| billionaires are the ultimate winners of the game. Zuck
| is a winner.
|
| In communism the system says there are no winners.
| Everything needs to be fair.
| mionhe wrote:
| The "system" in this case being the guy at the top who
| has taken all the power.
|
| Please feel free to point to the real world exception,
| because I can't find it.
| eru wrote:
| There's plenty of exceptions. PR China just after Deng
| was a good exception, and so was the Soviet Union after
| Stalin.
|
| But they were only exception in the lame technical sense
| that you didn't have a single 'guy at the top' in charge,
| but a sharing of power by eg something like the
| Politburo.
| eru wrote:
| > In communism the system says there are no winners.
| Everything needs to be fair.
|
| I'm glad you take them at their word. May I interest you
| in some beach front property?
|
| In any case, there's plenty more systems than just these
| two.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| A few years back (2015ish?) I read a big magazine profile of
| Michael Jordan in his post-basketball life and I was really
| surprised by how unhappy he seemed - extraordinarily
| competitive at everything, even casual games of golf, running
| up huge gambling debts, etc.
|
| This is a guy who was the most dominant athlete of his
| generation, arguably the greatest the ever play the game, and
| yet he can't turn it off, he can't relax and rest on his
| laurels. The same personality quirks that drove him to win at
| basketball mean he can't tolerate losing in any arena.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| Arguably, to be great at modern sports, you have to be good
| at multiple unrelated thing (On field strategy, Physical
| Conditioning, Actually the sport itself, playing politics,
| doing all of that while listening to coach), either you
| have that kind of drive to be the best at all of them or
| you'll just be a good athlete
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| Reminds me of this post[0] from a few weeks ago:
|
| >A couple years back, I got a job offer from an investment
| bank to help them win zero sum games against people who
| didn't necessarily deserve to lose. I had tried very hard to
| get that offer
|
| https://www.hgreer.com/PlayingInTheCreek/
| dsr_ wrote:
| It's not competition that they like. It's winning.
|
| Competitive athletes expect to lose. They don't want to lose,
| but there's only one winner (or three podium spots) in any
| given contest. They turn "not wanting to lose" into their
| motivation for getting better, still knowing that they are
| fairly likely to lose. The competition is the point, and when
| they lose, they are still a little happy if they did better
| than they did last time.
|
| The people who want to win regardless of the competition,
| regardless of the rules: we call those people bullies.
| jollyllama wrote:
| I can recall being this way as a small child. So had I not
| been disciplined as a child so that I would not be a sore
| loser, did this blunt something that would have led to my
| being more "successful"?
| ip26 wrote:
| I suppose I assumed "choosing your battles" _had_ to be a
| skill they were also good at. Only 24 hours in a day.
| stevage wrote:
| I have trouble believing that highly competitive people enjoy
| winning against people who aren't trying to win. Catan has a
| lot of luck, you'd expect to lose a lot of games.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > If you're wildly successful at something with significant
| real world influence, why would you care so strongly about
| something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a
| video game?
|
| I think that successful people tend to be people who pay a lot
| of attention to "winning" in as many situations as possible. If
| you accept losing as a part of life and move on, you're not
| going to be successful, because you don't spend time thinking
| how you could've won. Of course this looks funny in situations
| where one cannot win, but it's really helpful when it comes to
| fixing your mistakes, allowing you to be successful.
| Extasia785 wrote:
| > but it's really helpful when it comes to fixing your
| mistakes, allowing you to be successful.
|
| It would be helpful if they'd take a loss as a learning
| opportunity. But as stated in the original quote they threw a
| tantrum and accused the opponent of cheating, taking away no
| lesson to improve the next time around.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| used to be such accusations were grounds to seek satisfaction
| in a duel.. might be time to revive that practice
| bmitc wrote:
| > If you're wildly successful at something with significant
| real world influence, why would you care so strongly about
| something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a
| video game?
|
| Deep running narcissism, bordering on sociopathy or
| psychopathy.
| aredox wrote:
| Because they are psychopaths and sociopaths.
|
| Anyone with a conscience would worry about having the work of
| your lifetime being used in genocide. Zuck isn't like that. He
| doesn't care. What he cares is winning at board games.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Have the elites through history always been this insecure or
| is it a modern phenomenon?
|
| This is very Roman Emperor behavior. Or Chinese Emperor, for
| that matter. It has pretty much always been the case that power
| and privilege lets you get away with bad behavior while
| simultaneously holding your subordinates to onerous standards
| and/or inflicting punishment on a whim.
|
| Building a court who will steer you away from bad ideas rather
| than surrounding yourself with yes-men requires active effort,
| and enough humility to be aware of that risk.
|
| The other constant historical trope is of course the abuse of
| power for sexual purposes.
| genezeta wrote:
| In the 1800s in Spain, king Ferdinand VII, was famously keen on
| playing billiards while being a really bad player. His
| opponents were known to, not only play badly, but play so that
| he would get easy positions to shoot.
|
| "Asi se las ponian a Fernando VII" is even nowadays a popular
| -though not that widely used today- expression to tell someone
| the task in front of them is an easy one nobody can fail.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I think it is part nature, part nurture.
|
| To get where they are, they need to be quite smart,
| competitive, and ruthless.
|
| As soon as they succeed, they become magnets to yes-men and
| people trying to ride their coat-tails.
|
| So you end up in a position where the majority will ask "how
| high?" when you tell them to jump, and who will never question
| you.
|
| Do that for a couple of decades, and something has to change -
| psychologically. You become condition to it.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >I think it is part nature, part nurture.
|
| Really rich people aren't any different from the rest of us.
| You quickly realize that what sets them apart is privilege.
| You see behaviors in the wealthy that if they were poor
| they'd be locked up for. "They just let you do it if you're
| rich" comes to mind.
| ajb wrote:
| There is also a feedback effect. Most people are part of
| groups which aren't strongly selected for moral character,
| but the rich and powerful become surrounded by people who are
| after money and power, unless they deliberately manage to
| avoid that. So some of their bad behaviour is because the
| availability heuristic tells them that that's how most people
| behave, and fills them with cynicism and contempt
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| He should have eaten his own dog food and played the games
| inside the Metaverse where he could have had the environment
| ensure his desired outcome. But maybe the Metaverse itself is
| now a painful reminder of failure.
| teekert wrote:
| Right? I had a sort of respect for the Zuck, same partner for a
| long time, seems nice to his children, does charity... And then
| he gets one of those mega yachts and he can't stand loosing at
| board games. So disappointing.
| diggan wrote:
| Surprise surprise, probably the image you had of Zuckerberg
| was not an intimate look into his personal life but instead a
| carefully crafted image created by an professional agency
| whose life and blood is creating neat images of famous
| people.
|
| Somehow, actual real life details are starting to come out
| (he does seem more "daring" as of late, might be why),
| destroying the picture painted by the professionals for all
| this time.
|
| Celebrity worship really needs to end, including the worship
| of the celebrity programmer. We're all humans, with a bunch
| of flaws, and it's easy to forget when what you're consuming
| is a fake impression of someone.
| exe34 wrote:
| > crafted image created by an professional agency whose
| life and blood is creating neat images of famous people
|
| Melon should fire his!
| immibis wrote:
| Probably did.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| There is definitely a point where we need to stop assuming
| that people who are good at building tech companies are, by
| default, good at _anything_ else.
|
| They might be, sure. But we shouldn't assume it.
| Swoerd123 wrote:
| Imagine being so spineless, so utterly desperate for power,
| that you're willing to contort your public persona just to
| appease a man who made lying a brand. Zuckerberg didn't just
| sell out--he gift-wrapped his integrity and hand-delivered it
| to Cheetolini.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I'd think the ruining society for profit part would be a red
| flag.
| bix6 wrote:
| You should read about what he did on Kauai. He fell in love
| with the community so he stole their birthright.
| krapp wrote:
| > Have the elites through history always been this insecure or
| is it a modern phenomenon?
|
| The modern phenomenon, relative to history in general, is that
| upsetting an elite doesn't get you immediately killed or sold
| into slavery. But yes, they have always been like this. Behind
| every great fortune is a crime, and absolute power corrupts
| absolutely.
| astura wrote:
| Many many many years ago I used to like playing Scrabble
| (knockoff) on Yahoo Games.
|
| I quit playing completely when my opponent accused me of
| cheating because I made a high point move and was winning.
| doubled112 wrote:
| First person shooters were like this back before I stopped
| playing them online.
|
| Get decent and dominate a few rounds? Here's a kick ban, must
| be cheating. Couldn't be because they keep bunching up.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| These guys are sort of like a type of inherited wealth. They
| created companies at a time where you could go public and have
| no accountability to a board with power.
|
| When you take a genius and drown them in good fortune... you
| sometimes get a sense of personal infallibility.
| croisillon wrote:
| i see it in local politics a lot too, people don't dare to
| contradict the leaders, who in turn end up believing they are
| right on everything, it's a sad thing really
| cess11 wrote:
| At the Versailles court of the Louies there were constant
| parties and games, gambling and otherwise. It wasn't to bond or
| for fun, it was to keep the aristocracy too busy to threaten
| the dictatorship, as well as letting the king exert an
| immediate influence over them through a borderline insanity.
|
| Infamously the first or second Versailles Louis, I forgot
| which, got very aggressive around the topic of toilet
| excretions, basically forcing aristocrats to try and handle
| being drunk and desperately needing both to piss and stay in
| his vicinity. The ceremony around the parties and the court in
| general over time got more and more intricate and maddening,
| causing the aristocracy to spend more and more resources on
| getting clothes and drinks and showing up at the right time and
| doing the right thing and being on top of the fashion of the
| day.
|
| It would be weird if a late modern corporate dictator didn't
| apply similar tactics, since they are known to work and didn't
| come to an end until the guillotines rolled into town. Things
| like sleepovers in the office, ceremonial games, constant
| 'after work', oddball demands regarding clothing and behaviour,
| intimate surveillance and gossiping, and so on.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Things like sleepovers in the office, ceremonial games,
| constant 'after work', oddball demands regarding clothing and
| behaviour, intimate surveillance and gossiping, and so on.
|
| That sounds more like a cult than a company.
|
| I don't understand why anyone would put up with that, if they
| had any other alternative. And most people do have
| alternatives.
| hylaride wrote:
| > I don't understand why anyone would put up with that
|
| To paraphrase McBain's answer to "how do you sleep at
| night?"
|
| "On top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies".
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO0JaecRWy0
| hermitcrab wrote:
| People with the skills to earn lots of money can
| generally also get well paid jobs at companies not run by
| sociopaths.
| hylaride wrote:
| Finding those companies is hard, especially when there's
| an obvious winner. Hell, I'd have joined facebook (not in
| hindsight, though) in the early 2000s because the
| specific challenges they were facing would have been
| novel. That being said, I'd likely feel terrible for what
| FB became had I did.
|
| I visited the FB campus ~2015 on the invitation of some
| former colleagues that worked there. It felt very culty
| at the time and I left with the vague feeling that I
| always got when I left the house of my spoiled and over-
| privileged friend that I had in grade school. How they
| were working with the scale of data that they had to deal
| with was very cool, though.
| pixl97 wrote:
| With the number of people that have been swept up in cults
| over history the entire idea that "people can just easily
| leave" doesn't seem to pan out well.
| cess11 wrote:
| Corporations are commonly run as cults, at least to some
| extent. It could be demands of loyalty ('we're a family'),
| personality cult, dress code, 'teambuilding exercises' and
| so on.
|
| The alternatives usually involve a threat of more
| uncertainty or misery.
| cafard wrote:
| Louis XIV had a notably insecure childhood, with portions of
| the nobility were in open rebellion. When he came of age, he
| set about to make damn sure that they were under his thumb.
|
| But the parallel seems lacking to me: Musk and Zuckerman
| can't jail recalcitrant managers.
| cess11 wrote:
| Sure, every tyrant has a story that superficially allows
| some shift of blame.
|
| They could, though. It's just that they likely would have
| to do something more involved than depriving them of their
| contracts, which is often enough to get rid of the problem
| and unlike an aristocracy where bloodlines and births set
| limits there are now institutions that produce replacements
| 'at scale'.
| lordnacho wrote:
| You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that
| you won the lottery. You want to feel they you deserve your
| position through hard work and talent. You're living in a
| society where people are credulous, to some degree they believe
| that hard work and talent are related to success.
|
| So what will happen? Everyone you hire ends up patting you on
| the back, telling you what a great guy you are.
| mercacona wrote:
| I wish I could upvote you twice.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are
| related to success
|
| Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are
| either zero or negatively correlated to success? I don't
| think the correlation is 1.0, but I firmly believe that it's
| positive for both.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| > Does anyone actually believe
|
| > I firmly believe that it's positive for both.
|
| Alright, setup an experiment and prove it. Should be easy.
|
| Speculation is free. Can't ever be wrong in the land of
| uncertainty.
| overgard wrote:
| Yes, it's totally sensible that someone would setup an
| experiment to prove a conjecture in a comment thread that
| will be forgotten in a couple hours. Totally reasonable
| ask.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| Guess there's nothing we can do then. Beliefs are all
| that matter.
| ajb wrote:
| What they want to believe is that their wealth is in
| proportion to their hard work and talent. But even ignoring
| luck, in a "tournament market", rewards are a strongly
| nonlinear function of inputs. Being no 2 in a market which
| is a natural monopoly has limited rewards.
| remus wrote:
| I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well correlated
| with becoming wealthy (say >$10m), but I think you then
| need a big injection of luck to take you from wealthy to
| ultra wealthy.
| zfiber wrote:
| It's not just luck. It's about how far would you go
| against the human principles. Remember, zuck is a prime
| ideological person who never had any ethics on respecting
| other people's privacy. His well known textual
| conversation with a friend on calling people "dumb fucks"
| for giving out their data for using "facebook" is one of
| the many examples.
| apercu wrote:
| > I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well
| correlated with becoming wealthy (say >$10m)
|
| Statistically, no.
| N_Lens wrote:
| Nah bro all the poors are just lazy bro /s
| scruple wrote:
| How many are born into it? If I think about the people
| that I personally know who are worth 8-figures or more
| they were each born into wealth. I wouldn't ever say that
| they also don't work hard and have talent, because they
| truly do, but it doesn't apply to their wealth.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| I think it was a Steve Jobs quote, paraphrase "it's 5%
| the idea, 95% implementation".
|
| Lots of very intelligent and talented people out there.
| But when you have the good fortune of coming up with a
| great idea (Facebook in the mid 00's) you have to use
| your talent to relentlessly implement it.
|
| This is what separates the plebs from the ultra wealthy.
| Intelligence + talent + idea + implementation = success
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| I think it was a Tutankhamun quote, paraphrase "it's 5%
| the idea and the implementation, 95% having been born
| into a family who are very wealthy and who also happen to
| do a good job instilling the innate belief in you that
| dominating in business is everything".
|
| There's a shockingly large number of people out there
| with buckets of "intelligence + talent + ideas" who never
| get the opportunity to move to the "implementation" phase
| of anything as they're too busy surviving, and the world
| is all the poorer for it.
|
| As if that cruel ignominy weren't enough on its own, we
| are also blessed with the spectacle of ignoramuses piling
| up and blaming the "plebs" for a situation they've no
| control over. What a double whammy.
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| > Facebook in the mid 00's
|
| Timing plays a huge role in this too.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Talent and hard work _at what_ is what 's missing from
| these discussions, I think.
|
| I literally don't even know what kind of work I should do
| if I wanted to make a billion dollars. I think it's
| mostly delegating, and convincing people to give me
| ownership of things that throw off money that I get, or
| to invest in things for which I have such ownership so my
| ownership becomes more valuable. But in concrete terms, I
| don't even know what to do to make that happen, like,
| step 1 of that process, I have no idea. Just being
| talented at programming and working hard at it (more
| talented than I am, and working harder than I do, even)
| doesn't seem to be a great way to get there. You have to
| focus on and have talent for activities that cause
| capital to end up owned by you, and I have zero idea
| where to even start with that kind of thing.
|
| Meanwhile, I was socialized as a kid into a smear of
| multiple Fussellian "Prole" categories, plus his
| "Middle", so I have to hype myself up and _still_ feel
| bad just to hire a plumber and not hover around them
| because I feel like I ought to be helping (and definitely
| feel like I 've failed on some level any time I choose to
| do that instead of doing the work myself), and the notion
| of owning a business but not working at, or just being a
| kind of hype-man for it mostly for my personal benefit,
| weirds me the fuck out, it feels fragile and strange. Why
| would people let me do that and make so much money from
| it? It's so weird; I get that's how things work, but the
| idea of _doing_ it feels scary and kinda gross, and I don
| 't mean because of risk of failure.
|
| I think I'd need a huge mindset shift and a totally
| different skillset to get actually-rich. I'd need to be a
| different person entirely. Meanwhile there's a long list
| of things I am or could become talented at, and could
| work hard at, and that produce real value, that might
| make me a living but will never get me past seven or
| maaaaybe with a ton of right-place-right-time luck ten
| digits of lifetime earnings, let alone net worth.
| achenet wrote:
| "if hard work was all you needed to get rich, every woman
| in Africa would be a millionaire".
|
| The clothes I'm wearing right now were probably made by a
| sweatshop laborer working 12 hours a day under awful
| conditions, getting paid something like 1% of what I make
| in my tranquil 7 hour workday sitting comfortably at a
| computer.
|
| I therefore think that just hard work has an almost zero
| correlation to success by itself.
|
| If you add in "addressing a valuable market", then yes,
| hard work helps, in that more effort spent addressing that
| market will likely yield higher rewards. But working hard
| on something people don't want will not yield success, in
| my view.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| "The horse was the best worker in the _kolkhoz_ , but
| never became its chairman". Heck, there is an entirely
| too depressing to read (but probably mostly correct)
| theory about how the office politics work [0] and I
| imagine it roughly translates to the other fields as
| well. Putting lots of efforts into some random thing most
| likely won't make you rich and/or powerful. It's putting
| the effort into becoming rich and powerful that gets you
| there -- but that takes a rather particular personality
| and skill set.
|
| [0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
| principle-...
| asoneth wrote:
| I don't personally know any people who believe that hard
| work and talent have _zero_ positive correlation with
| success. However I know many people who believe that
| parents ' socioeconomic status, genetics, luck, birthplace,
| and lack of scruples are all much more significant factors.
|
| I choose to actively reject that mindset because doing so
| motivates me to focus on elements within my control, but if
| I'm being honest I think they are probably correct, at
| least from a statistical perspective.
| fooList wrote:
| >Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are
| either zero or negatively correlated to success?
|
| On average or for a particular person? Maybe on average
| there's an effect (r=.4), so there will be many people for
| whom that correlation is in their individual case actually
| negative. Some struggle with this notion, and assume
| success must signal talent or hard work in individual
| cases. How one defines success matters a lot too. If one is
| comparing zuck to some random CEO, say collison, can you
| say zuck is more hardworking or talented? He is more
| successful on paper, but I doubt he is significantly more
| hardworking or talented.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Enormous numbers of humans work hard and are talented at
| the things they do. Hard work and talent gets you a middle-
| class existence, at least if you were born in the right
| country and with the right resources to go to university,
| etc.
|
| In the case of Zuck, he basically _did_ play a lottery
| ticket, and a perfect confluence of being in the right
| place at precisely the right time yielded some success. A
| million other programmers, working just as hard and just as
| talented, were trying to make their web app hit at that
| time and failed.
|
| That's how life is. It _is_ a lottery ticket that Zuck is
| super rich. And it 's a strawman to act as if pointing this
| out means that hard work and talent don't matter.
|
| And FWIW, the overwhelming predicate of significant
| business success is sociopathy. I am kind of a broken
| record on this, but I think Meta's entire business is
| basically the oxycontin of the online world, and that
| everyone involved should feel absolute shame about the
| negative value they bring to the world. Non-sociopaths
| would have felt shame and changed course when they realized
| they were getting rich on the mentally ill, conspiracies,
| misinformation, etc.
| jajko wrote:
| > The overwhelming predicate of significant business
| success is sociopathy
|
| Bingo. Now good luck getting such message into heads of
| star-stuck young folks who dream of faang and similar
| jobs thinking there is some respect to get there in 2025,
| when its all about money.
|
| I work in banking, much better job than startup/faangs
| could offer here in Europe, at least people aren't so
| naive when joining. Had a discussion with my boss
| recently and we figured we have around 40% of management
| visibly falling under various sociopathic definitions.
| Not requirement per se but certainly helps thrive up
| there.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| > dream of faang and similar jobs thinking there is some
| respect to get there in 2025
|
| Something that has bothered me in recent times is how
| much more concerned people are with _where_ they work as
| opposed to _what_ they work on. I honestly believe people
| would design software to kill puppies and kittens so long
| as they could tell people they work at a Big N company.
|
| Not to mention, I think a vast majority of the products
| and services that come out of these Big N companies have
| increasingly started to reflect this mentality each
| passing year and have so for the past decade or more.
| lordnacho wrote:
| You can believe it's positive, but not buy the idea that
| someone is millions of times more hard working or talented
| than ordinary people.
|
| The guy who has made billions needs the stronger form of
| this karma-like idea.
| viraptor wrote:
| But negative, but success is correlated to success so much
| that at some point work and talent are irrelevant. Let's
| say Zuck has an idea to make something. He has enough
| people around him discussing ideas that he can basically
| pick one he likes and it's already pre-filtered. Then he
| can give it to basically anytime he chooses, with arbitrary
| skills threshold and resource allocation. Then he's got a
| whole support network to make it work. And if it falls? A
| loss of a few millions means nothing to him and he can try
| again.
|
| Every step of that is inaccessible to someone hardworking
| and talented. So let's say you got lucky once or was born
| with wealth available to you - you can skip the whole
| talent and work thing.
| apercu wrote:
| I think you can certainly make some of your own luck via
| hard work, but there is a difference between actually
| making on your own, and starting on 3rd base.
| scruple wrote:
| I have no idea. What I do know is that there's no degree of
| hard work or talent that will make me a billionaire.
| onion2k wrote:
| I'd argue that every billionaire has a talent for
| persuading capable people to join them on a journey.
|
| Having that skill alone isn't enough because you also
| need to pick the right journey at the right time, but not
| having that skill definitely means you won't be a
| billionaire.
| devin wrote:
| Meh. If you get lucky once and make a chunk of money or
| were born into money, people will associate that success
| with skill rather than luck, and follow you hoping that
| luck repeats. You don't need the skill if you can point
| at a big house and a nice car.
| scruple wrote:
| This makes me think of early employees in a startup that
| goes through an IPO or acquisition. Skill and talent get
| you through the door but heaps and heaps of luck lead to
| that event. Having personally won a (minor) startup
| lottery I got to see the luck factor first hand.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| My take: "winning the lottery" in a Facebook sense
| _requires_ a _floor_ of talent and work _at the early
| stages_ , but the odds of winning don't _correlate_ with
| how much talent and work exists, nor are continued talent
| and work _required_ once a critical mass of success has
| occurred. External factors - being in the right place at
| the right time, having some cushion of familial wealth, etc
| - dominate once you 're over the floor.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I do.
|
| 108 Billion humans have ever lived on planet earth. 8
| billion-ish currently.
|
| Most of them live lives that in no way reflected on their
| hard work and talent, but rather their circumstances,
| starting with where and when they were born but
| encompassing a million different contingencies outside the
| control of their hard work or talent.
|
| So do you think you have talent and hard work greater than
| 99% of those many billions? If you're posting on HN you've
| probably got "success" in that extreme even if you've never
| applied yourself or excelled in anything of any note.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Pick any of those 8 billion. Have them work half as hard.
| Have them have half as much talent. Do their outcomes
| remain the same , get better, or get worse?
|
| You're arguing that there are other factors that also
| influence outcomes (and that those other factors are
| stronger forces).
|
| I agree with that point, but that's not a refutation to
| the notion that the coefficients on talent and hard work
| are positive, nor a convincing argument that success is
| unrelated to those two factors.
| siavosh wrote:
| Can anyone benefit from working 10% harder or smarter?
| Undoubtedly. But success isn't linear. It's clear from
| the zeitgeist that the ultra-rich and powerful--past or
| present--aren't working a million percent harder or
| smarter; their positions are more accurately explained by
| structural advantages. The first million might be 95%
| hard work and talent. The next million, probably a bit
| less so.
| Jensson wrote:
| > It's clear from the zeitgeist that the ultra-rich and
| powerful--past or present--aren't working a million
| percent harder or smarter; their positions are more
| accurately explained by structural advantages.
|
| Millions of people had an equal or better starting
| condition than Mark Zuckerberg so we aren't really
| lacking privileged people, but vanishingly few of those
| do become ultra wealthy.
| siavosh wrote:
| I'm not going to get into the role of luck, but more
| curious -- how many ultra-rich individuals do you think
| can exist on the planet earth?
| Jensson wrote:
| Point is that wealth is a pretty minor part here compared
| to luck and skill, as otherwise people born wealthy would
| dominate the startup world. Instead its people born to
| upper-middle class families that dominates it.
| siavosh wrote:
| I broadly agree with your point, but you're overlooking a
| critical dimension: once someone successfully identifies
| and exploits a niche (through a combination of skill and
| luck), the subsequent growth >can< often become largely
| independent of further skill or luck. At that stage,
| wealth through some basic intelligence compounds itself,
| regulatory capture can then occur, monopolistic behaviors
| can emerge--none of which are necessarily admirable
| traits in a society. But we're talking about different
| parts of an elephant and I don't think we disagree, but
| stepping back what we may disagree about is my opinion
| that ultra wealth (I'm not talking about millionaires or
| low level billionaires) but the wealth of Musk/Bezos/Zuck
| is a bug of the system, not a feature.
|
| Humorous analogy: Imagine you're playing a video game
| where, through a mix of skill and luck, you stumble upon
| an incredibly overpowered weapon. With even minimal
| competence, this weapon lets you easily acquire even more
| powerful gear, initiating a self-reinforcing loop that
| rapidly propels you to dominance. Soon enough, your
| advantage reshapes the entire game--limiting access to
| similar weapons for other players. The game stops being
| fun, or as some might put it, it becomes fundamentally
| unfair.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This is a basic feature of capitalism and every other
| acquisitive social system.
|
| Without forced redistribution of wealth/power that set
| hard limits you're going to get a runaway, and the whole
| thing melts down.
|
| This won't happen if the people with wealth/power care
| about consequences and have the wisdom to model outcomes
| accurately. But the kinds of people who care about
| consequences in capitalism are unlikely to be chasing
| huge wealth in the first place.
|
| The system _cannot work._ It 's fundamentally manic
| depressive, alternating between irrationally exuberant
| booms and catastrophic crashes, and consuming talent and
| raw materials for self-defeating ends.
| lordnacho wrote:
| > otherwise people born wealthy would dominate the
| startup world. Instead its people born to upper-middle
| class families that dominates it.
|
| Those are just two different points on the "wealthy"
| scale. If you zoom out on a global level, they are not
| very far apart.
|
| The kind of upper-middle class family that produces
| startup founders tends to be from the rich countries.
|
| It makes perfect sense that it's the pretty wealthy and
| not the super-wealthy. There's more of the UMC, and they
| only need a certain amount of social/economic capital to
| roll the dice.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| It's not just about starting condition but also the level
| of psychotic desire to profit at any cost.
| Throw9444 wrote:
| I imagine first you'd have to define success in a way
| others might agree with. And talent, for that matter--
| most notable talents can't be easily exploited by
| capital.
|
| But, I do know for sure that being wealthy is correlated
| to neither skill nor hard work, but savvy leverage of the
| skill and hard work of others. That shit has to end. You
| should make proportional to the work you put in.
| Shareholders and investors are even worse.
|
| But whatever. I do not expect the world to improve at
| this point. We're just stuck in a shitty place (as
| humanity) and asked to be grateful for the insight of the
| rich.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >You should make proportional to the work you put in.
|
| Throughout the 20th century we have seen what such a
| social structure leads to: millions of deaths from
| hunger. And always, without exception: the transition to
| work-based economy - and in the next decade the
| population becomes many times poorer and a huge
| percentage of the population dies of starvation.
|
| So no thanks. Between shareholders and investors, and
| starvation, I choose shareholders and investors.
| 3np wrote:
| Saying it's literally 0 implies a belief that free will
| doesn't exist (predeterminism), right? If so, who are you
| trying to convince here? :p
|
| It's complex.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| To play devil's advocate: Free will not existing doesn't
| mean that your environment doesn't affect your outcomes.
| On the contrary, in fact. So convincing you means that I
| am the environment that affects you.
| 3np wrote:
| I don't see how that complicates things?
|
| This is the thread GP was supposed to be a reply to:
|
| > > Does anyone actually believe that hard work and
| talent are either zero or negatively correlated to
| success?
|
| > I do.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Circumstances and luck are hugely important, but you have
| agency even if you don't have full control.
|
| Any of us could get hit by a meteor or drop dead at any
| minute, but working harder towards goals in aggregate
| moves us towards those goals, so I don't understand how
| this logic works?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| That's assuming that free will actually exists, which is
| an open question at this point.
| theonething wrote:
| I agree with you that there is positive correlation.
|
| I also believe those two things are correlated with
| genetics (and of course environment/upbringing)
| amalcon wrote:
| A lot of people seem to think of success as the sum of a
| bunch of independent variables: positioning + insight +
| hard work + talent + luck - scruples ... Then, they argue
| about the relative magnitude of each term.
|
| It's obviously more complex than this, but I think it's
| more useful to think of it as a product. You don't need a
| high value in any of them to succeed, but a tiny value in
| even one means you need an astronomical value somewhere
| else.
| t43562 wrote:
| At school I used to play marbles. I had no skill whatsoever
| so I did "set ups" where I put a marble down and other kids
| threw theirs from a standard distance to hit it. If they
| missed the marble was mine. More valued marbles got more
| chances.
|
| I got "marble rich" because I knew who the good players
| were and when one came a long I put my foot over my marble.
| Once you knew the trick it was impossible not to win on
| average and be a few marbles better off every day. Even a
| slight positive over a few weeks turns into a lot.
|
| At a certain point I stopped finding this desirable and
| felt a bit guilty about it - the marbles were of no use to
| me really and it was enough to know that I had the trick of
| succeeding.
|
| I wonder if this is roughly how people get wealthy in real
| life other than that they don't think "enough".
| wiz21c wrote:
| They become rich because 1/ they got marbles to start
| with 2/ they like marbles when marbles are a thing 3/
| they figure out a trick nobody has figured out (and it's
| just a trick, not much genius in there) 4/ they want more
| marbles 5/ they don't care if they loose (so they can
| take risk)
| blitzar wrote:
| Do you actually believe that Mark Zuckerberg worked harder
| and is more talented than (rounded to the nearest person)
| every other person on the planet?
| const_cast wrote:
| Neither talent nor hard work have anything to do with
| helping humanity.
|
| The reality is that our measurements of success don't
| correlate with "goodness", they correlate with getting
| stuff done. And you can do lots of evil stuff pretty
| easily.
|
| The reason so many rich people seem evil is because they
| are. You don't become rich via charity. You become rich by
| exploiting others and siphoning their success to yourself.
|
| It's just plainly evident in every sector of our economy.
| You don't have to pay for the bad shit you do. Look at
| tobacco. Tobacco is a zero-value or negative-value
| industry. The sheer existence of tobacco actively makes the
| world a worse place.
|
| But guess what? They don't pay for your COPD medicine. They
| don't pay for your congestive heart failure. But they will
| happily take your money for a carton.
|
| All bad costs are externalizer, and all profit is kept. The
| end result is obvious. The more good you do, the stupider
| you are. The more evil you do, the more money you make.
| sershe wrote:
| Are you sitting in a room while typing this? At the
| margin to reduce the odds of heart attacks, you should be
| at a walking desk outdoors, or ideally not arguing on the
| internet at all. Someone trying to "help humanity" should
| decide the threshold of acceptable self harm for you,
| just like you feel free to decide it for smokers; then
| after determining how you should live, they can declare
| that the alternatives make the world a worse place.
|
| If I was asked about the best correlate for being evil,
| honestly trying to make the world a better place by
| determining how specifically others should live would be
| on top of the list by a huge margin.
| const_cast wrote:
| > If I was asked about the best correlate for being evil,
| honestly trying to make the world a better place by
| determining how specifically others should live would be
| on top of the list by a huge margin.
|
| Really? Telling people, "hey, don't give other's poison,
| that's bad"... is worse than giving other's poison? You
| actually believe that?
|
| To give some context, I used to smoke. For a long time!
|
| Nobody wants to smoke. The only people that want you to
| smoke are the people literally extracting value out of
| your rotting corpse.
|
| Look, if you actually think those people are better, then
| whatever. Clearly this isn't something I can dispute or
| even try to argue against so who cares. Just... find some
| medication or something, I don't know. This pathetic,
| self-destructive method of thinking can't be right.
| sershe wrote:
| Yep, I used to smoke too. I wanted to smoke and i still
| sometimes miss social and contemplative aspects of it 17
| years after stopping, even though any chemical cravings
| stopped in a couple months
|
| On the later part, your comment was very insightful too,
| cause you are a perfect example of what I'm talking
| about.
|
| 1) You decide for others what is good for them,
| implicitly treating their judgements with contempt.
|
| 2) When someone suggests that people might have different
| thresholds and tradeoffs and you probably wouldn't like
| it if someone who disagrees with you would make life
| decisions for you with the same moral certitude as you do
| in 1, you respond with "This pathetic, self-destructive
| method of thinking can't be right.", dismissive contempt.
|
| The person coming across in these comments is a self-
| important possibly power-hungry psychopath - exactly what
| I was talking about. A mini version of the people behind
| everything from great leap forward and collective farms
| to white man's burden. I mean you gotta tell these wrong-
| thinking people how to live their lives correctly, cause
| you are right and their objections are just some mental
| defect!
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Tobacco actually has some value: It produces a craving,
| which can be satisfied temporarily. Being able to fulfill
| _some kind of_ desire, even a contrived one, is the
| value. Or rather, the addiction of smoking created a
| desire that can definitely be satisfied.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Who should be promoted and/or given a raise?
|
| The person working hard with the same company for 15 years
| with extensively proven track record and well known impact
| across the organization?
|
| Or the interview candidate with 5yrs experience?
|
| Yet every time, companies roll out the red carpet for the
| new guy. He's probably at least half bluffing and the new
| company has little concrete evidence of his past
| performance.
| tpoacher wrote:
| To throw some controversy onto the mix, they are related,
| but in the same way that [some race] is correlated to [some
| behaviour] in the extremes of the probability distribution,
| but mostly makes no difference at the overwhelming core of
| it.
|
| And therefore when people say [some race] makes no
| difference in [some behaviour], and other people say "Why
| is it always [some race] when we see [some behaviour]", and
| others say "the observation that [some race] leads to [some
| behaviour] is false because 50% of the time I see [some
| other race] being worse than [some race] in terms of [some
| behaviour]" they are all completely right, but just
| focusing on different properties of the distribution.
|
| So back to your example, yes, in the extremes, many people
| who are ultrawealthy may have had those behaviours. But by
| far and large those behaviours don't make much of a
| difference to the overwhelming majority of the population,
| and therefore it's likely that other factors were far more
| important in terms of making an ultrawealthy person
| becoming ultrawealthy in the first place. At best, someone
| who was destined to be ultrawealthy didn't make it because
| they didn't have those behaviours, but that's more like
| winning the lottery and being too forgetful to go cash it
| in, rather than having characteristics that will help you
| win the lottery in the first place.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In the case of talent and hard work, I think it works the
| other way: the vast majority of people will see better
| results in their "normal/broad-middle" lives from
| increases in hard work or, said otherwise, suffer
| negative outcomes from lapses in effort [getting fired
| for lack of attendance or having worse health outcomes
| from a lack of exercise being concrete examples].
|
| It's not that interesting or relevant to me whether Musk,
| Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos had talent or work ethic as
| significant elements of their success. It is interesting
| and relevant to me as an adult, parent, and mentor the
| role that talent and hard work play in outcomes for my
| family and the students I mentor.
|
| I strongly doubt it's anything other than a positive
| correlation and believe that the correlation is relevant
| for normal people.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| To add, it isn't just hard work and talent but also the
| willingness to take a calculated risk when an opportunity
| presents itself. Most talented and hard working people I
| know are so risk averse that they would let multiple
| opportunities to make billions pass them by.
| camdenreslink wrote:
| Hard work and talent are related to success. But when the
| outcome is "become the richest person in the world", hard
| work and talent are a rounding error compared to luck. Does
| anybody really think Zuckerberg is even in the top 5%
| hardest working or talented people in the world? A decision
| as inconsequential as rewriting Facebook to a different
| language in the early days could have derailed the entire
| enterprise. There is a lot of luck involved.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| Yes, I would absolutely consider Zuckerberg as one of the
| top 5% most talented people in the world. Frankly, that
| isn't a particularly high bar whatsoever. Haven't you
| ever been amongst the general populace?
|
| You've committed the typical sin on this site of
| overrating technical prowess and underrating business
| acumen. There's a reason so many founder CEOs from his
| era ended up getting sacked while he's maintained control
| and Meta has become the behemoth it is. Next you're going
| to tell us how Steve Jobs was a charlatan and a cheat.
|
| Is the act of buying a lottery ticket a "rounding error"
| when it comes to winning the powerball?
| camdenreslink wrote:
| I think you underrate the talent of people in the general
| populace. There are very talented people everywhere. It
| rarely translates into wealth.
|
| By the way, the act of buying a power ball ticket is
| essentially a rounding error. The odds of winning the
| grand prize (which is what we're talking about here) is 1
| in 292,201,338. That is for all intents and purposes the
| same as zero.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| Seriously, I work at a FAANG and Zuck would be in the top
| 5% most talented people at my company. Hands down. That
| doesn't take away from all the things he's clearly
| _terrible_ at, one being actually caring about other
| people, but still clearly an exceptional engineer and
| business mind.
| sitkack wrote:
| Cut it with the FAANG exceptionalism, I worked for
| multiple FAANGs, you need to reevaluate many of your
| opinions. The biggest skill people at FAANGs have is
| getting hired at a FAANG and that is it.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| I don't know where you got the idea that I have faang
| exceptionalism, quite the opposite
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| The United States has ~4.25% of the world population, but
| 8 of the 10 richest people in the world live in the
| United States.
|
| Even if you _just_ take the advantage of being born in
| the United States (which, fine, exclude Musk from that
| list then) 7 of the 10 people on the list, including
| Zuckerberg, are among 5% "luckiest" people in the world
| just based on where they were born.
|
| This is eliminating any luck they got from hereditary
| wealth, geographical location, and catching the surge of
| value in their respective industry at the exact right
| time.
| techpineapple wrote:
| I think they're like linearly correlated to a point and
| then other things take over.
|
| I do think that the primary factor that can lead to
| billionaire status aside from luck is sort of moral
| flexibility / shamelessness / irrational risk tolerance
| above and beyond hard work and talent.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| For most of human history yes, the amount of hard work you
| did was negatively correlated with success. Kings, Queens,
| and Pharos sat on thrones while peasants built the
| pyramids, farmed the land, etc.
|
| Even today high effort jobs tend to be low paying, paper
| shuffling, or keyboard tapping tends to pay better.
| drumdance wrote:
| I think that, broadly speaking, hard work and talent
| strongly predict success. But the circumstances can
| dramatically affect the magnitude. I have no doubt that
| Zuck would've been successful in 1880, but not one of the
| richest people who ever lived. The leverage that comes from
| being an introverted hacker type was not as great then.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| It's obviously a combination of talent, hard work and luck.
| Usually in that order. The luck in Zuck's case was being in
| the right place at the right time. Obviously he made the
| most of it with talent and hard work.
| ajuc wrote:
| Depends on what you define as talent.
|
| For example there're studies that intelligence over 120 is
| negatively correlated with success as a leader.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Skill and effort obviously has a part in explaining success.
|
| That aside, I can't be the only person tired of people
| bringing envy politics to this forum, trying to shoehorn
| wealth into every single discussion involving someone who is
| wealthy, as if that's the only, or even a valid, way to look
| at everything they do.
| m463 wrote:
| I kind of wonder if they have to dominate to be the
| unquestioned leader.
|
| Like Steve Jobs dominating the whiteboard, or Elon Musk
| angrily emailing in early Tesla after not being mentioned by
| PR at the beginning.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| > You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge
| that you won the lottery.
|
| Yes, but where does this drive come from?
|
| I haven't the faintest idea, however we can extrapolate from
| some facts.
|
| One fact is that they have a lot of money. Duh... But also
| money is the key metric to measure success, so a lot of other
| people flock around those who have money so that it rubs a
| bit off of them, that Midas touch.
|
| Suddenly these ultrawealthy are surrounded by an endless wave
| of gold diggers. The immediate thing that follows is flatter,
| and then echo chamber.
|
| Now imagine that goes for years and years. Slowly this
| metaphorical richy's whole world views -- and also how he
| view himself, his identity and his relationship with the
| things around him -- gets tied absolutely to that notion that
| _he is right_.
|
| For this imaginary person, losing a game isn't just am
| innocent loss anymore. It's a direct question of his own
| identity.
|
| I think this explains a lot, but I'm not psychologist so it's
| just a wild guess.
| Nurw wrote:
| In addition, I think you have to be sort of selfish to become
| ultra-wealthy. At some point people who believe that they
| became rich not by their own merit would start to distribute
| some wealth around. While selfish and egotistical people
| would hoard all their wealth, compounding it into ultra-
| richness.
| eth0up wrote:
| There's a trove of truth in this <lottery / denial>
| perspective. It happens on all levels of success. But what a
| profoundly different world it would be if wholesome humility
| was the default tendency. I'm not saying it would be a
| panacea, but understanding the dynamics, even intuitively, of
| the myriad interdependencies that allow our every action
| would be a humble leap in a better direction.
|
| For me, the only thing anyone deserves is what everyone else
| deserves, and everything else _is_ a form of lottery. There
| 's simply no place for arrogance other than delusion. It's
| good to remember who built the foundations you've succeeded
| on, and if not beyond one's capacity, with a little dose of
| reverence, respect or something other than self immersion.
| Zuckerborg is a mirror for many.
| benterix wrote:
| I had a conversation with one of these types. He honestly told
| me, "I really feel I am superior to most people". He was very
| frank with me. (And, in the things he did, he was actually much
| better than most people - he did have great talent but also
| spend almost all of his time on that.)
|
| So my pet peeve theory is when they feel they are not superior
| and other people are better than them in activities that
| involve logical thinking for example, they feel extremely
| uncomfortable as their perception of themselves gets weaker,
| hence these strange behaviors.
| HexPhantom wrote:
| When someone builds their whole identity around being "the
| smartest person in the room," any situation that challenges
| that (even something as trivial as losing a game) can feel
| like a threat to their entire self-image. It's not just ego,
| it's almost existential.
| klabb3 wrote:
| It's part of the pathology. So much so it's violating otherwise
| core tenets of their culture and customs:
|
| Look, today meritocracy and brutal honesty are absolutes,
| they're considered critical, exactly to overcome biases that
| stand in your way. The Zuck types are 100% believers in this
| (heck they accelerated it), yet they still need positive
| affirmations like winning board games.
|
| Most people (especially smart and opportunistic ones) fold
| because they know winning a private board game means nothing.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I know these types of people, a lot of them, but I am not one
| of them. I was a student at Harvard, I've dated the daughter of
| a film studio owner, the daughter of the then-owner of Gucci,
| I've worked at an Academy Award winning VFX studio, I know
| celebrities and CEOs, and I married an Academy Award winner. I
| know these people.
|
| There is a mechanism in high wealth investment circles that
| seeks very ambitious and simultaneously low self knowledge
| individuals to invest heavily. They tend to be driven and
| charismatic in that drive, while being very ignorant of their
| negative impact on others. Many high net worth individuals see
| themselves in such youth, and invest in them, their ideas and
| their drive. They create psychopaths, and celebrate their
| mistakes as fuel for control of them later. This mechanism I am
| describing is very powerful, dominating.
| DragonStrength wrote:
| No one deserves that much more than others. No one believes
| they don't deserve what they have. People work backwards to
| justify why they need so much more power, control, and wealth
| than others. Worse for Zuck b/c his special shares.
|
| The ambition/success feedback loop never stops, which is why
| the folks on top seem somehow less secure and content than the
| rest of us. Most of us figure out we probably won't be the #1
| anything pretty early in our journey and stop fixating on
| comparison and focus on maximizing ourselves.
| HexPhantom wrote:
| Most people have to make peace with not being 1, and in doing
| so, they actually get a shot at real contentment. But when
| you're at the top, the game never ends. There's always
| another metric to dominate, another threat to neutralize,
| another narrative to control.
| RiceRichardJ wrote:
| > If you're wildly successful at something with significant
| real world influence, why would you care so strongly about
| something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a
| video game?
|
| It's possible that exact personality trait is what drove them
| to such success in the first place. Perhaps like an obsession
| with winning.
| myflash13 wrote:
| We all have personal quirks which would appear silly if
| publicly known. But most of us are not billionares, so these
| quirks do not come to light, or do not seem that strange in
| ordinary people. "Not wanting to lose at board games" is
| actually quite a mild personal quirk compared to some of the
| things I know about myself or about my close friends. I know a
| guy who spends 20 minutes picking out tomatoes.
| Arainach wrote:
| There is a huge difference between not wanting to lose and
| getting angry when someone doesn't let you win.
| preommr wrote:
| > If you're wildly successful at something with significant
| real world influence, why would you care so strongly about
| something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a
| video game?
|
| All the other comments are about Zuckerberg being an out-of-
| touch egomaniac, but I think this is a reflection of people.
|
| We want our leaders to be infaliable and we use the stupidest
| metrics to judge people. Remember how Ed miliband eating a
| sandwich became a scandal? For every one person that would see
| losing as not a big deal, there's like ten people that will
| think "this guy can't win a game of settlers of Catan, and he's
| running the company???".
|
| I am reminded of that joe rogan clip where he's just in awe of
| Elon Musk because of his Diablo rankings or something. People
| feed into the mythology.
|
| It's all stupid and insane, but I don't see how anyone can look
| at the current state of politics or the stock market and not
| say that the world is full of crazy things that just run on
| vibes.
| KeithBrink wrote:
| I was interested in this anecdote about the board games, but it
| seems like there's at least some dispute about how true or
| inflated this story is:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-board-game-c...
|
| I think it's easy to believe a narrative like this about
| someone generally disliked, but the reality about basically
| everyone is that we have good moments and bad moments. People
| that are famous are constantly being watched and evaluated.
|
| Given the inevitability of those bad moments being observed and
| reported, I don't think it's a good foundation for evaluating
| someone's character. In this case, it's mostly useful for
| confirming an already negative point of view.
| achenet wrote:
| from the article you linked, it seems that Zuck told everyone
| else to gang up on the next hardest player so he could win.
|
| That they went along with it is... kind of in line with what
| Wynn-Williams said. Would they still have all teamed up on
| Zuck's opponent if Zuck hadn't been their boss?
| palata wrote:
| Sure, one single anecdote doesn't say much.
|
| But at this point it would be hard to say that Zuck is not a
| toxic individual. Not everyone is toxic.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Have the elites through history always been this insecure or
| is it a modern phenomenon?
|
| I don't think _all_ the superrich _are_ this insecure. Like,
| the obvious examples of this sort of behaviour are Trump (golf,
| in particular), Musk (video game nonsense), Zuck (this). But
| all three of those are very obviously fucked-up, socially
| maladjusted people in _other_ ways, too. Potentially the issue
| is more that being very rich allowed them to _get away_ with
| this behaviour; poor weirdos have more incentive to suppress it
| because people will only accept it from rich weirdos.
|
| Though the phenomenon of "adult manbaby gets upset when not
| allowed to win game (especially by his partner)" is
| _absolutely_ out there, even for non-absurdly-rich people; see
| any subreddit about relationships for examples.
| mwigdahl wrote:
| That phenomenon is certainly not exclusive to men. All it
| takes is someone insecure enough to feel that losing a game
| threatens their sense of worth as a person.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Nah, definitely not exclusive to men, but you do see it
| more from men. I think possibly at least partially because
| it _is_ seen as somewhat more socially acceptable from men
| than from women; the boy who never grew up is viewed more
| favourably than the girl who ditto.
|
| > All it takes is someone insecure enough to feel that
| losing a game threatens their sense of worth as a person
|
| You also need them to think that they'll get away with this
| behaviour, whether it be just being very rich, or because
| there is some societal tolerance of Homer Simpson-esque
| emotionally immature men, or for some other reason.
| phaedrus441 wrote:
| I think you'll see this kind of thing in many professions. Some
| doctors, who are highly specialized and highly trained in their
| field, act like they should automatically be great at skills
| they barely have experience with, and then get frustrated when
| they don't immediately excel or when people with less
| impressive credentials end up being better at something.
|
| My family member who taught flying to hobbyist pilots always
| said physicians were the most dangerous students because of
| their "know-it-all" attitude.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| People who have built empires who then surround themselves with
| Yes Men is probably the strongest indicator they're about to
| lose it all
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the
| modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over
| backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have the elites
| through history always been this insecure or is it a modern
| phenomenon?
|
| There is a long history of wealthy elites wanting to always
| win, even at games, and who want to be the center of attention.
|
| Kaiser Wilhelm II had many of the same characteristics seen in
| today's ultrawealthy elites. When he commanded forces in German
| military exercises his side was always the side that won
| because it was his side.
|
| "Wilhelm II's reign marked a departure from the more restrained
| leadership of his predecessors, as he sought to assert direct
| influence over the German Empire's governance and military
| affairs. This shift toward a more "personalist" system, where
| loyalty to the Kaiser outweighed true statesmanship, weakened
| the effectiveness of German leadership and contributed to its
| eventual strategic missteps."
|
| Source: https://www.deadcarl.com/p/the-kaiser-and-his-men-
| civil-mili...
|
| Lots of historical echos in the state of the world today.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >This shift toward a more "personalist" system, where loyalty
| to the Kaiser outweighed true statesmanship, weakened the
| effectiveness of German leadership and contributed to its
| eventual strategic missteps."
|
| I'm not convinced there has ever been a positive or
| constructive outcome from cults of personality.
| HexPhantom wrote:
| I think it's less a new phenomenon and more a timeless one -
| we've just digitized the palace
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Being ultra wealthy/famous/powerful would have a lot of
| negative psychological pressures that would likely effect all
| of us in that situation. Personal growth is difficult.
| Acknowledging negative parts of ourselves is difficult. Many
| times, we are forced to confront something negative about
| ourselves because of how it effects our lives and our
| relationships.
|
| I think we have all had that friend at some point that was a
| poor sport. They were poor losers, gloating winners, and just
| unpleasant to play games with. Usually that person stops
| getting invited to game night, or you have a "come to Jesus"
| talk with them about their behavior. The social pressure of
| losing friends is a powerful motivator.
|
| But what if that person has an unlimited supply of people that
| would validate, flatter, and reinforce their bad behavior? When
| you are thinking about who to hang out with from your unlimited
| rolodex, you will likely subconsciously lean towards people
| that make you feel validated, understood, respected, etc.
| Slowly, by degrees, over years, you could find yourself
| surrounded by sycophants, where you more and more validated and
| catered to, and are less and less used to hearing constructive
| criticism of your behavior.
|
| It reminds me of how highly processed "junk" foods can short
| circuit a lot of our physiological mechanisms around
| overeating. Basically unlimited availability of junk food is
| part of why obesity is has shot up. Being ultra
| wealthy/famous/powerful is the highly processed food of the
| psyche. It doesn't mean every rich person become
| psychologically unhealthy but it makes the rates of it shoot
| up.
| mcpar-land wrote:
| One of my favorite tweets:
|
| > Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth,
| new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000
| pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In
| terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked
| in the head by a horse every day
|
| https://x.com/Merman_Melville/status/1088527693757349888
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's an old problem. Medieval kings had this problem. One way
| around it was the fool/jester, who could (within limits) say
| the things that nobody else was free to say.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| It's a personality trait that leads him to success.
|
| Yes Zuckerberg won the lottery. But at the same time his
| business acumen and ruthless personality put him in a position
| to win the lottery.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I know a number of wealthy folks, many of them, actually really
| decent people. They deserve their wealth, and I have no issues
| with it. They tend to have somewhat different value systems
| than I do, but we get along, anyway.
|
| I have learned that one word they pretty much _never_ hear, is
| "No."
|
| Even the very best of them, gets used to having every whacked-
| out fever dream their Id squeezes out, treated like God's Word.
|
| People who aren't very good at self-analysis and self-control,
| can have real problems with it.
|
| We are watching a bunch of _very_ public examples of exactly
| this, right now.
| nartho wrote:
| How wealthy are the wealthy folks you know ? a quant or faang
| principal engineer making 1.5-2 million/year is wealthy and
| worked hard to get there (although, luck is still a big part
| of it) yet they're much closer in wealth than a fast food
| employee than they are to the super rich. Someone who has
| accumulated 50 millions of assets is wealthy, yet they'll
| never afford a super yacht or the lifestyle that billionaires
| can afford.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Multi-millionaires (not billionaires), but they are
| business owners and finance folks.
|
| They own a mansion and a yacht (Bugs Bunny reference).
|
| But you are correct. Different orbit from the ultra-
| wealthy. They still hang out with plebes like me.
|
| However, if this happens to _these_ folks, then you can bet
| that it also happens to the next valence level.
| ido wrote:
| the principle engineer may have a lot of money but also
| still has a job with a boss and thus probably still hears
| (or know they can potentially hear) "no".
| sgarland wrote:
| > And anyway, if you're playing games for fun and to bond with
| people, you probably shouldn't be playing tryhard optimal
| strategies every game, and should instead explore and
| experiment with more creative strategies.
|
| Agreed. I have played some truly awful strategies in games
| (Azul: Queen's Garden comes to mind) where it was clear within
| a round or two that it was doomed to fail; my wife / gaming
| partner expressed dismay that I was doggedly continuing, but to
| me, I had to see it through without introducing other variables
| so that I could definitively know (modulo luck of tile draw)
| that the strategy sucked. I thoroughly enjoyed losing.
|
| EDIT: if anyone is curious, the strategy was to maximize high-
| point (5/6) tokens above everything else, eschewing end-round
| bonuses, brief tactical shifts, etc. Turns out it's really hard
| to collect enough sets of them to count at game end, and you're
| giving up compounding points along the way.
| conductr wrote:
| It's more so related to power. Once you've acquired enough
| power, it consumes most people. They don't like having their
| power challenged or put in a weakened state. Many of these
| people are acquiring power via some form or their "genius".
| Technical wunderkind, military strategy genius, etc. So that
| drives their ego. But, they probably know they're not actually
| a genius and plenty of people could have done what they did but
| they got lucky. So they end up getting defensive and insecure
| when anything challenges their power, risks to expose their
| genius as a fraud, etc. They're operating on a mental house of
| cards and are volatile due to it. For regular people, they seem
| to be triggered by small things like losing a card game but
| it's probably just that, a trigger that unleashed a wave of
| pent up insecurity.
| apercu wrote:
| > Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern
| ultrawealthy?
|
| Who says it's limited to the ultra wealthy? My network has a
| lot of people who have net worths of under $5-6 million USD and
| a lot of them are highly insecure.
|
| I've witnessed several of them going out of their way to tear
| down people who are fitter or more attractive than them as
| well.
|
| Look at the manbaby actions through that lens and you might get
| some insight.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Hmm. So highly insecure people have to "win" (however it's
| defined at the moment) in order to bury their insecurities
| for the moment, but ultra wealthy individuals 1) have more
| power, so they can make it so that they win more often, and
| 2) are noticed more (or at least by a wider circle), so when
| they do it, a lot more people pay attention.
| apercu wrote:
| >so when they do it, a lot more people pay attention.
|
| It makes sense, media glamorizes these people and amplifies
| their actions, and some of the insecure folks crave
| attention. Look at that one guy who somehow works harder
| than all of us but is able to tweet all day every day...
| ubermonkey wrote:
| The game thing is just the tip of the iceberg.
|
| There's lots of talk in the entertainment world, from the long-
| term famous, about how money and fame tend to be fundamentally
| warping. Bill Murray said to Pete Davidson that, once it
| happens, nearly everyone is an asshole for about two years.
| People fawn all over you; they do things for you. They give you
| things for free. You can get things normal people can't get. If
| you're making a few million a year, you have economic power
| beyond nearly everyone you've ever known. At a certain level,
| travel is a whim, not a slog through TSA and airport lines. And
| you lose the ability to deal with pushback of any kind.
|
| The smart ones -- the ones with some capacity for self-
| awareness -- course-correct. The others don't.
|
| But in Hollywood, one assumes, the bubble is far less perfect
| than the one around someone like Zuck, whose power over
| Facebook is absolute and inviolate, and who has money and power
| beyond almost every other person on the planet. So there's only
| a very small chance of any course-correction, and thus he stays
| an asshole, and that assholery extends to insisting that he win
| at trivial board games.
| onion2k wrote:
| _f you 're wildly successful at something with significant real
| world influence, why would you care so strongly about something
| as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?_
|
| Zuck 'earning' another billion probably means nothing to him. I
| doubt he can even keep count. All of that sense of self-worth
| that people derive from their career or wealth is lost in the
| noise of Meta's stock price for him. But winning a board game
| is tangible. It's right there in front of him, as a direct
| result of his own actions. He can _feel_ that.
|
| If you couple that with him being surrounded by people who know
| that losing to him makes him feel good, and that Zuck is more
| generous when he's happy, you can see why people lose on
| purpose.
| zzzeek wrote:
| you're getting the order of events backwards. it's not "Become
| a billionaire, then become a baby who insists they be allowed
| to win board games". The order is, _first_ you 're an entitled,
| manipulative jackass with absolutely no bottom for unethical
| behavior and zero tolerance for "losing", _then_ become a
| billionaire by being so brazenly shitty in all areas of life
| and getting people to go along with you. Caveat, you have to be
| a white guy for this to work and it works much better if you
| already inherited millions from your dad.
|
| As an exercise, apply this rule to all the other billionaires
| you know.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I tend to agree with you, but I also tend to believe that
| indeed, having a billion dollars (read: having no
| constraints) will tend to bring out the worst in anyone.
|
| Another way to say this is, most people who earn obscene
| wealth who would be offended by the obscenity of it would
| work hard to give most of it away. Those who are not offended
| by the obscenity of it will be happy to keep it, so there's a
| selection bias to it.
| jonplackett wrote:
| There's a podcast I love called Real Dictators.
|
| It looks at loads of dictators from history - Stalin, Hitler,
| Saddam Hussein.
|
| What they all have in common is a love for loyalty and
| subservience. And they demand loyalty and subservience be
| constantly proven. Often in very weird and trivial ways.
|
| Eg. Saddam Hussein liked to have a BBQ where he would cook (but
| not eat) and make the food inedible spicy. Then he would force
| his top people to eat it while he laughed at them.
|
| They of course had to keep up the pretence that the food was
| delicious and pay him lots of compliments.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > If you're wildly successful at something ... why would you
| care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential
| as a board game or a video game?
|
| > And anyway, if you're playing games for fun and to bond with
| people...
|
| I see you answered your own question.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| It's weird how moments can go from "we were playing a game
| when.." to "The New York Times is covering a game we played 15
| years ago". What I've heard from people who were in the game
| was that he wanted to go to bed so he was trying to negotiate a
| quick end to the game. There was a time at a con where I did
| something similar (i.e. we had to finish, we couldn't just
| leave the game setup and play later.)
|
| Everything is viewed through a mirror darkly.
|
| "HE FORCED OTHERS TO KNEEL BEFORE HIM, EVEN IN BOARD GAMES!1!"
| vs. "He wanted to go to bed so made a dickhead comment that
| would let him both win and sleep." Think back to your 20s,
| which feels more likely.
| bix6 wrote:
| I don't understand why people try and justify or defend these
| tech villains. What has Mark done to defend you? Besides
| harvest and sell your data.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| I don't care about Mark Zuckerberg. I don't use Facebook,
| Instagram, or anything else Meta. I avoid it all, actually.
|
| I'll turn around on you: Why defend people who will distort
| every utterance just to score points on whatever is in the
| public's cross-hairs at the moment? Why support it? Why
| defend it?
|
| Saying that a statement isn't accurate isn't the same as
| defending or holding water for the subject of the
| statement. If Zuckerberg said "the sky was blue" and
| another person started saying "Zuckerberg is a liar, so
| obviously the sky can't be blue" you're not defending
| Zuckerberg by stating that the sky is blue.
|
| The world is in a perpetual information war. People and
| groups are constantly trying to make their version of
| reality stick by using every bullshit rhetorical tool at
| their disposal against whatever person or thing they deem a
| valid target.
|
| I'm sick of it, almost everyone is sick of it.
| tayo42 wrote:
| That's interesting becasue at least with Zuckerberg, he entered
| a local bjj tournament under a fake name.
|
| And tbh if you eventually do find yourself against him your
| going to want the opportunity to say you submitted him. No
| one's letting him win at a tournament
| paulcole wrote:
| > Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern
| ultrawealthy
|
| It makes a better story in a tell-all memoir?
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| I think power sometimes leads to this kind of insecurity, but a
| bigger factor is that people with narcissistic personalities
| often succeed because ordinary people are unaccustomed to
| dealing with them. Narcissists often come off as unusually
| competent, confident, and intimidating. This leads normies to
| want to follow them and give them what they want.
|
| Narcissists are always extremely insecure, usually because
| someone crushed their ego during childhood. (There also exist
| people with intact egos who are simply arrogant; I'm not
| talking about them. The arrogant are easy to distinguish from
| narcissists after you study them a bit.)
|
| My point is that Zuck was probably very insecure before the
| creation of FB, and he became rich partially _because_ he was
| an insecure narcissist.
| siavosh wrote:
| It raises the question: where is the crack in this structural
| system, and how can we pry it open? Perhaps the vulnerability
| lies in the desire of the ultra-rich and powerful for societal
| respect--whether born of love or fear hardly matters. How
| should society respond? Mercilessly mock them.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Have the elites through history always been this insecure or
| is it a modern phenomenon?_
|
| It's always been this way, more or less.
|
| If you look back at the ultra-wealthy in any age, you'll find
| just these sorts of people. It's in 20th-century literature.
| It's in classic literature. It's in the Bible. It's probably in
| ancient Greek literature, but I'm not well-versed there.
|
| At least in the early part of the last century, there was some
| hope. A number of ultra-wealthy people decided that instead of
| building a faster steam engine or racing to pump more oil,
| they'd engage in benefiting society as an alternative penis-
| measuring contest.
|
| They were happy to pour the equivalent of today's billions into
| projects like paying artists to spend 30 years documenting the
| fading culture of the American Indian, or funding scientific
| expeditions to improve our understanding of ancient history.
|
| Today's billionaires are, instead, trying to one-up each other
| on getting 12-year-old girls addicted to their apps.
|
| Yay, progress.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > If you're wildly successful at something with significant
| real world influence, why would you care so strongly about
| something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a
| video game?
|
| Billionaires are highly psychologically disordered individuals.
| This is an expression of unrestrained narcissism in a "man" who
| has fully neglected to grow character as an individual, because
| his obscene wealth allows him to get through life with the
| emotional maturity of a teenager. Same with Musk, same with
| Trump, same with most other billionaires. Bill Gates is another
| great example.
|
| People hate to admit it, but apparently having a billion
| dollars either makes one a narcissist, or it takes being a
| narcissist to make a billion dollars. Either way, just from the
| data we have in front of us, there's a very strong correlation
| there.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| The problem is also the justification stories they excrete to
| justify the wealth the capital machine pours on them. The whole
| gods choosen, superior, natural strong willed aristocratic
| uebermensch bottled into one cyst of sycophants. Totally unable
| to connect with "easily distracted by the trivial" normies,
| barely able to talk to the monomaniacs they once where
| themselves. Not a good show.
| tasuki wrote:
| At my work, we play much much better board games than Settlers
| of Catan and Ticket to Ride. I feel for Zuck and his
| colleagues.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| The need to dominate can be a favorable trait for success. It
| can also be all consuming that you can't easily turn off.
| Like...ok Zuck, you won the f'ing lottery. You could spend the
| rest of your life on an island or helping orphans, but you
| still work at Facebook - why? Because he's wrapped up in it.
| It's a miracle Bill Gates managed to step down.
|
| It can also be unsettling to know that, just as easily as you
| killed off competitors, competitors could unseat you.
|
| So yea, you might sleep a bit easier at night if you can just
| win at the things you can control, like that darn Settlers of
| Catan game.
|
| Also someone who reflexively accuses the other of cheating
| while playing a game likely has a hard time admitting they
| failed at something. Not an admirable trait in a leader.
| arp242 wrote:
| John Major, who was prime minister of the UK in the 90s, has
| talked a bit about how isolated a position like that makes you,
| and how unprepared he was for it. Few of the normal pressures
| of life apply you in a position like that: you can't get fired
| (not really), you don't have to accept consequences (not
| really), and perhaps most importantly: you don't have anyone
| tell you "you idiot, that's fucking mental". No one that you
| can just dismiss anyway.
|
| I can't find the interview right now, it was a while ago, but I
| thought it was pretty interesting. Major was a man in his 50s
| when he became PM. Zuck was in his early 20s. You have to
| wonder what that does to a person. People like Zuck are more or
| less like child actors that made it big: everyone bends over
| backwards to deepthroat them and they've got a view of the
| world that's just delusional. I'd feel sorry if it wasn't for
| the highly negative and caustic effects.
| archagon wrote:
| Deep-seated insecurity?
|
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/11/08/elon-musk-almost-need...
| emmelaich wrote:
| That story is disputed, to say the least.
|
| Dex Hunter-Torricke:
|
| > _There 's a story about when I was playing Mark Zuckerberg at
| Catan. Sarah suggests I was deliberately letting Zuckerberg win
| the game, and "brazenly" dismissing her strategic guidance.
| It's a lovely anecdote that positions our heroic narrator as
| some sort of principled mind surrounded by a sea of yes men or
| something, and that we all liked to let Zuckerberg win. Yeah,
| except that's not what happened at all._
|
| Read on:
| https://www.threads.com/@dextorricke/post/DHCUpnssuuw/theres...
|
| I for one don't believe it.
| throaway1989 wrote:
| Maybe you just hate to lose, which drives you to relentlessly
| pursue "success?"
| dfxm12 wrote:
| They _think_ their wealth, position, etc. is a result of merit.
| However, they _know_ their wealth was not earned, but given. At
| best, they were born into a position of privilege and simply
| used their existing, unearned, wealth to build more.
|
| Losing at a board game forces them to confront the fact that
| they aren't any more clever than their peers. They didn't get
| to where they were on their wits alone; they started the game
| with a few routes already developed.
| mapt wrote:
| Being an Olympic gymnast or marathon runner or boxer is not,
| broadly speaking, healthy. These pursuits require you to make
| sacrifices that push your body to extremes, to its physical
| limits, and not only you are selected for a very particular set
| of traits, there are also lots of health and psycho-social
| compromises that are entailed by those traits and by your
| training process. That is the cost of competition.
|
| Likewise running a company. You guys are, to be blunt, freaks.
| It requires very particular psychological and social
| conditioning to be in that place doing that thing, it demands
| specific types of personality traits and adaptations, and that
| probably doesn't make you, the successful CEO, a well-balanced,
| "normal" person.
|
| Now take that person, who is a little bit alien in the first
| place, and ask what happens when they can choose everything
| about their surroundings, when they get fitted for their
| GERDpod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtV33YSKOJk . They
| still have the same personality quirks, traumas and experiences
| that got them to this place, but now they're rich beyond
| imagining, every whim trivially achievable except power over
| other people (and that only minimally constrained). Like a
| person stuck in a perpetual state of orgasm, the question of
| whether they like it or not and really isn't relevant to
| whether we're going to be inviting them to the cookout or how
| they're going to behave in church. Any interaction, they're
| going to make it weird. Because they're weird. Their situation
| is weird, and the mentality that brought them to that situation
| is independently weird. A normal person would have pursued
| normal fulfilling things in life, and they chose
| entrepreneurial ambition.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Good point, and it made me think about a more general point
| about people:
|
| It's often the same underlying trait that gives someone
| qualities that we like/admire but also the qualities we don't
| like.
|
| When we evaluate each other, we sometimes have thoughts like
| "she has <good quality>, but if only she'd work on <bad
| quality>".
|
| Over the years I finally realized that's not how we work. Our
| traits aren't always connected to isolated levers that we can
| pull independently.
|
| The really good sales guy might exaggerate fibs in personal
| convo. The girl that moved from Germany to Mexico to start a
| successful hostel also has a hard impulsiveness that's hard
| to get along with. The really attentive mother is risk-averse
| to a point of absurdity. All examples of friends off the top
| of my head. Or me: I can find happiness anywhere that I am
| (good), but it also means I don't have the drive to rock the
| boat when I should (bad).
|
| There doesn't necessarily exist the possibility of preserving
| the good part if you were to fix the bad part since the fix
| might require changing the underlying trait.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Probably he is insecure? Put too much into how much people
| think about him. And believes that being a big person he needs
| to be the best at everything, while - and this is a positive
| trait actually - he knows that he is not that big, needs to
| overcompensate and project much more than he possesses - which
| is a common trait on Facebook. Overreacts to the ubiquitous
| life experience of loss.
| jrvieira wrote:
| they know deep down that they don't deserve their status which
| makes them insecure and needing to constantly defend the
| narrative that they are in fact better.
|
| you'll see this behavior fade in the presence of someone who
| they themselves perceive as superior by whichever metric
| K0nserv wrote:
| The book is a good read and she also testified in front of the
| Senate Judiciary Committee[0], repeating many of the claims from
| the book under oath. One of the striking things is that it's
| clear that Mark and several others from Facebook perjured
| themselves in prior hearings. I expect there will be no
| consequence for this.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3DAnORfgB8
| grafmax wrote:
| As long as we have this concentration of wealth in this country
| we are going to have this selective enforcement of laws based
| on class lines.
| piva00 wrote:
| I believe it will take at least a couple of generations after
| a new political ideology is cemented in the USA to change
| anything.
|
| Market fundamentalism has been the game since the 80s with
| Reagan, it was building up to it but Reagan was the watershed
| moment when it really gripped. You see it everywhere now,
| here on HN especially, any deviation from the dogma of market
| fundamentalism is met with the usual retort about
| "innovation", "growth", and all the buzzwords implemented to
| make it seem to be the only alternative we have. Any
| discussion about regulation, breaking down behemoths wielding
| massive power, betterment of wealth distribution, workers'
| rights, etc. will attract that mass who are true believers of
| the dogma.
|
| To undo this will require a whole political ideology from the
| ground up in the USA where the two parties are just two sides
| of the same coin, I really cannot see how this can
| realistically change without a series of major crises, bad
| enough that people will rise and understand who exactly is
| fucking them... It's sad to realise there's much more pain to
| happen before it might spark real change, we are kinda bound
| to live in the aftermath of the erosion of society brought by
| "shareholder value"-hegemony.
| jfengel wrote:
| Weirdly, right at the moment the US economy is tanking
| because of severe departures from market fundamentalism. By
| the people who most claim to be pro capitalism.
| piva00 wrote:
| There's no departure from market fundamentalism, the
| belief in shareholder value being supreme is still very
| much the current Zeitgeist.
|
| As much as the USA's administration is jerking around
| with trade, the fundamental principle of what governs any
| corporation is still market fundamentalism: returning
| value to shareholders, nothing else.
| immibis wrote:
| Capitalism is incompatible with free markets. Capitalism
| means all the wealth goes to those with the most capital,
| while free markets means the wealth flows freely in all
| directions.
| piva00 wrote:
| To me that is the biggest win in public discourse from
| capitalists: conflating markets with capitalism, as if
| free markets could only exist under unbounded capitalism.
| Which, as you say, is incompatible. Capitalism does not
| want free markets, nor foster free markets, the best end
| result for a capitalist is the abolition of a market
| under the control of a monopoly.
|
| Markets are fundamental, and a natural result of human
| socioeconomic order. Capitalism not at all.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Capitalism means all the wealth goes to those with the
| most capital, while free markets means the wealth flows
| freely in all directions
|
| I don't understand this distinction, why wouldn't capital
| accumulate under free markets? The freer the market the
| more capital accumulates.
|
| In a freer market that today you would have to pay a
| massive toll every time you went to the grocery store,
| because the road owner has monopoly on that route, that
| would lead to much more wealth accumulation.
| jfengel wrote:
| When all of the capital ends up in a small number of
| hands, the market ceases.
|
| Each capitalist tries to corner the market, but if they
| succeed, the resulting monopoly isn't a free market. In
| theory a competitor arises, but it takes only an instant
| to shut it down and restore the monopoly.
| krapp wrote:
| >I don't understand this distinction, why wouldn't
| capital accumulate under free markets?
|
| It would, which is why businesses support deregulation -
| not because they believe in vigorous competition for the
| sake of consumers, but because they want as little
| friction and consequence standing between themselves and
| oligarchy as possible.
|
| A market in which the wealth "flows freely in all
| directions" is socialist, not capitalist. "Fair" markets
| are regulated, and by definition not free.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| In economics perfect markets mean that your company that
| raises spherical cows has no moat against others doing
| the same. If you do something to gain profits to become
| rich someone else joins the market to compete those
| profits down to zero. This reduces inefficiency and makes
| everyone rich.
|
| Deregulation is sold as getting closer to this, in
| reality it means the money collects wherever the market
| breaks down, monopolies, network effects, externalities,
| concentrated special interests, middlemen, oligarchies,
| gangsters, landlords etc.
| jfengel wrote:
| Shareholders are pretty grumpy right now. They've lost a
| ton of money.
|
| I'm sure that some economist will asset that this will
| produce more shareholder value in the long run. But the
| stock market suggests that shareholders do not currently
| believe that.
| immibis wrote:
| We might have just exited from the era where shareholders
| mattered.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| You might find this recent talk on neo-liberalism, by
| journalist and activist George Monbiot, interesting:
|
| https://shows.acast.com/rhlstp/episodes/rhlstp-book-
| club-134...
| piva00 wrote:
| I haven't listened to the talk but read Mobiot's book
| when it came out last year :)
|
| On the same vein, I'd recommend "Capitalist Realism" by
| Mark Fisher, Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine", and even the
| original "A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto" by Charles Peters to
| understand how the term is slippery and diverged a lot
| from the original manifesto.
|
| And I'm not an anti-market, full-blown communism person.
| The feeling I have is that all the aftermath from the
| dogmatic implementation of an unsound ideology has
| brought much of our contemporary malaise, the allowance
| of finance to take over the real economy, the productive
| economy, has just eroded any semblance of a good market-
| driven society. I'm against that, the supremacy of
| finance over all other economical activity, it's a cancer
| that festers on every single big corporation.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Amen to that. Thanks for the reading recommendations.
| However my book backlog is a bit out of control. ;0)
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >And I'm not an anti-market, full-blown communism person
|
| Also, it is interesting that you feel the need to say you
| aren't a communist before criticising the current system.
| I guess that is a sign of just how entrenched it is.
| sepositus wrote:
| I see it more as a sign of how few mainstream
| alternatives have been proposed. I've been guilty of
| generally assuming a communist bent when I see a
| negatively zealous response to the "free market"
| ideology. I don't act on the assumption, but from my
| experience, it tends to be the most common result.
|
| Our political system seems hell-bent on only ever having
| two solutions to a problem, though.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| We seem to be stuck at a local maxima[1]. The current
| system works great for the 0.001% who have all the money
| and the power, so it isn't in their interest to change
| it. But there definitely seems to have been a failure of
| the imagination amongst the 99.999%. Too distracted by
| social media and our phones perhaps?
|
| [1] There is a lot to dislike about the current system,
| but there have been far worse ones (feudalism, communism
| etc).
| sepositus wrote:
| > Too distracted by social media and our phones perhaps?
|
| I think this is a significant contributing factor. It's
| becoming increasingly difficult to have any semblance of
| a meaningful conversation with those around me. I don't
| really know how to describe it other than an apparent
| "dumbing down" of the average person. I despise elitists,
| and I hate to even act in a way that might come off as
| elitist, but I simply have no other explanation for what
| I am seeing. People just want to talk about the latest
| trend on TikTok and have no interest in applying anything
| close to intellectual thought to what's happening around
| them.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| 2000 years ago it was 'bread and circuses'. ;0)
| grafmax wrote:
| These crises are occurring right now so I don't think it
| will take multiple generations. The rise of neo-fascism,
| the climate crisis, and the escalating warmongering toward
| China - a nuclear power - should be seen as symptoms of a
| system breaking down because it prioritizes profit over
| people. Intensification of capitalism's worst tendencies is
| the capitalist's last stand. It's either going to end in
| mass destruction or people throwing off their chains.
| samiv wrote:
| This is very much what professor Richard Wolff is saying.
|
| What you're witnessing down is the systemic failure and
| breakdown of a system (capitalism) that is completely out
| of control and ultimately starts to attack the very
| institutions that enable it in its greedy search for
| "growth" (i.e. producing more wealth for the already
| wealthy).
|
| The system will eventually collapse.
|
| Recommended video, an interview with Prof Wolff
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeWiKOEkfj8
| grafmax wrote:
| Fascinating interview. Here is Immanuel Wallerstein
| making a similar point in 2009:
|
| https://youtu.be/nLvszWBf6BQ?si=vooaKzrHHyRj9sHz
| samiv wrote:
| Not necessarily..
|
| During the Great Depression the Americans did pull together
| and demanded from President Roosevelt a social reform. That
| was called the New Deal Coalition.
|
| This time though the fight will be much harder because even
| the democrats are so strongly indoctrinated in the "free
| market" idolatry that they are much closer to the
| republicans than any true social democratic movement (such
| as labor unions) that would actually be needed in order to
| help the American working (and soon ex-middle) class.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal_coalition
| gen220 wrote:
| I think you and the person you're replying to agree.
|
| We won't get a New Deal Coalition Part 2 without our own
| Dust Bowl (climate-change/industrial-agronomy-induced
| disasters, and the massive disruption to peoples way of
| lives that accompanied it) and Great Depression to
| conclusively demonstrate that industrialized,
| financialized oligarchy "doesn't work".
|
| The two-party system was just as much captured by "free
| market" idolatry pre-FDR as they are today. There was
| nearly three decades of socialistic organizing in
| response to crisis in the 1890s-1920s before we finally
| had those principles manifest in one of the two major
| political parties in the executive branch, with FDR in
| 1932.
|
| We're barely into the nascency of our own century's
| progressive era. If history's any guide, it'll probably
| take decades and it will get much, much worse before it
| gets better. :/
|
| I re-read Grapes of Wrath recently, and it was an uncanny
| feeling: like I was reading something that was both near-
| future Sci-Fi and a memory-holed but relatively-recent
| history.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| "The big thieves hang the little ones." Czech Proverb
| empiko wrote:
| It's actually Roman: Magni minores saepe fures puniunt
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Where does it come from? I Googled "Magni minores saepe
| fures puniunt" and mostly found pages in Czech.
| hadeson wrote:
| "Magni, inquit, fures minorem puniunt" - Appeared in
| Pseudo-Caecilius Balbus.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I found it here:
| https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caeciliusbalbus.html
|
| And from: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011605246
|
| "The so-called Caecilius Balbus is mainly an ancient
| Latin translation of a Greek collection of maxims. "
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Citizens United has enshrined this in law by allowing
| wholesale purchase of politicians via the current campaign
| finance system.
| losvedir wrote:
| I mean, I guess the obvious question is if one person lied
| under oath (her) or several (all the people that her testimony
| implies perjured).
|
| The book sounds pretty outlandish. That's not to say that Zuck
| and co aren't just a whole gang of melodramatically evil and
| stupid people, but it _a priori_ it seems just as probable to
| me that she 's the one that is? I don't know much about her. Is
| she a reliable witness?
| 3np wrote:
| Maybe you should, you know, read the book or court files or
| something before publicly speculating.
| losvedir wrote:
| Maybe I should ask people who have read the book if she's a
| reliable witness and it's worth my time reading?
| vmurthy wrote:
| I read the book. It's a very interesting read. A few things stood
| out ( no spoilers )
|
| - Casual indifference at exec level to atrocities happening
| because of FB/ Meta.
|
| - Money/power does make you insensitive
|
| - Tech bro view of the world permeates most decisions that Meta
| takes.
|
| - Casual sexual harassment for women ( follows from the tech bro
| worldview I guess )
|
| - US centric world view influencing how execs treat world
| leaders.
|
| All in all worth a read or two!
| diggan wrote:
| Maybe I'm jaded, but this is how I understand all US technology
| companies to be run. In fact, I'd be surprised if all of those
| things weren't true for most of the enormous "tech bro"
| companies coming from SV.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| There's a reason the Silicon Valley TV show's humor was so
| biting.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| I would put Meta, the Elon Musk companies, Uber, and some
| others in a separate category from Amazon, Apple, and Google.
| To be sure, Amazon, Apple, and Google have done some very
| immoral things, but there does seem to be something in the
| culture of those companies that understands that they wield
| enormous power and that sees value in acting responsibly -
| even if it's just because they think being cartoonishly evil
| isn't in their long-term interest. I do think there's been a
| change in ethos from the Jobs/Bezos/Page/Brin generation of
| leadership to the Musk/Zuckerberg generation.
| HexPhantom wrote:
| The casual indifference part really got to me too.
| rubzah wrote:
| Then you realize that Facebook has been extraordinarily
| active banning Palestinian posts and accounts over the last
| year. So the "casual indifference" is at the very least
| selectively applied.
| belval wrote:
| > Kaplan fires off an email stating that he's just realized
| that refugees don't have any money
|
| Maybe they just realized that Palestinians don't have any
| money.
| bena wrote:
| > - Money/power does make you insensitive
|
| This is something I try to be acutely aware of in myself. Not
| that I have any level of wealth worth mentioning.
|
| I started working at a company where they just give me stuff. I
| can go to work in clothes my employer gave me, eat my meals
| there, use the phone they pay the plan for, etc.
|
| It _does_ affect you. I first noticed it when I went to buy
| some triviality. Something small I needed for something or the
| other. Something that would have been just given to me at work.
| The line to checkout was long and while waiting, I just thought
| "Why can't I just fucking go? It's not even $10. What does it
| matter?"
|
| So now I try and be mindful of what I receive and to be sure to
| acknowledge it at least mentally.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't think I ever connected that "Lean In" was from a
| C-suite member of Facebook and I certainly didn't know how
| morally bankrupt it was. The case is made pretty well in the
| book that Sheryl does not practice what she preaches.
| vmurthy wrote:
| From the book, it appears that Sheryl used Meta as a platform
| for promoting her own image and book rather than do the
| things that prevented a lot of bad. It's beyond sad
| hinkley wrote:
| Sounds like she got sued over it. But not over
| propositioning direct reports for sex in front of her
| entire team.
| lud_lite wrote:
| Don't mess with a Kiwi I guess :)
|
| That said FB sounds evil not careless.
| meigwilym wrote:
| The banality of evil.
| sdl wrote:
| Evil and careless can be one and the same. They (FB) could not
| care-less about the consequences of their actions on other
| peoples' lives.
|
| "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." - Elie
| Wiesel
| immibis wrote:
| Leave it to a Kiwi to be naive about someone's intentions.
| There's a reason New Zealand scores well on the corruption
| perception index. Emphasis on perception.
| ewest wrote:
| I'm responding to TheAceOfHearts, I can't seem to reply directly
| to the original comment.
|
| The question was "if you're wildly successful at something with
| significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly
| about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or
| a video game?"
|
| You kind of answered the question yourself. He cares so much
| because he is successful in something else and has extended that
| need for success into other areas of his life. It seems this is
| common among successful people, they try to be successful in
| everything else in their lives, perhaps not realizing they might
| have got lucky in one area and are convinced they can apply that
| to all other areas of their lives.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This book probably could have been written about any major
| company. Our corporate system's built-in moral imperative that
| profits must be optimized above absolutely everything else
| virtually guarantees that these kind of people end up at the top
| of each and every one of them.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| It's very odd that we consider corporations to have personhood
| in the U.S., if you were to actually describe most of these
| top, predatory companies like Nestle, Meta, etc. and their
| action as something "a person" did we would all immediately say
| that person should be jailed, is evil and that allowing them to
| interact with the general population is too risky. That person
| once in jail would assuredly never pass a parole board.
|
| Companies should either be treated as people or as companies,
| what we have is a ongoing classification error that makes all
| natural persons lives worse as our rights are subordinate to
| unnatural persons. It's insane how we build our own cages.
|
| That being said, the environment is bad but not all individual
| companies are the same and saying so is not only false but
| creates an environment of acceptance and equivocation. "Pay
| ratio" is often a good indicator of where on the evil spectrum
| a company is... If only every company could have the moral
| standards of a HEB or Costco the world would be better than it
| is.
| baritone wrote:
| I look forward to reading the book, but I'm not anti-Zuck.
|
| Individuals can change the world. Groups with ideology can change
| the world.
|
| This is why many of us are here at HN- for the discussion of
| ideas and for idealism.
|
| Few want to be supreme jerks that ruin things on a massive scale.
|
| Zuck, if you're reading this- thanks for being part of the thing
| that allowed me to continue communication with my friends when
| they weren't nearby, and thanks for continuing to provide that
| for my children.
|
| Are things fucked up? Were lives ruined? Sure. We all fuck shit
| up and ruin lives, some of us more than others. Then we own up to
| that as much as we can and use what we have left to try to
| continue doing what we did before to try to make the world a
| better place.
| thrance wrote:
| The great man theory [1] has been thoroughly debunked at this
| point. I you feel grateful for old Facebook, do thank the
| thousand nameless engineers that actually built it, not the
| single man that took all the credit (and money).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
| madebylaw wrote:
| Where is it "thoroughly debunked" in that link?
| piva00 wrote:
| Very few people actively try to be supreme jerks and ruin
| things, that's very abnormal behaviour for a human being.
|
| It's much more common that your inner narrative keeps finding
| justifications for why what you are doing is important, and the
| damage you are causing is either justified or not perceived as
| so damaging.
|
| The issue is the system we live under doesn't really
| incentivise moral and ethical behaviour, the rewards to be
| reaped are much larger if you act immorally, people like Zuck
| are able to tell themselves what they are doing is ok for
| "making the world a better place". But there's no reward for
| making the world a better place, the reward is for you showing
| revenue growth, user growth, and Zuck chased that even though
| there was an inflection point where the "good" was outweighed
| by the "bad".
|
| > Zuck, if you're reading this- thanks for being part of the
| thing that allowed me to continue communication with my friends
| when they weren't nearby, and thanks for continuing to provide
| that for my children.
|
| All of that could still have existed without all the appendages
| included to extract more money from the machine. Without
| creating feeds of content measured by "engagement" to the point
| it became detrimental to the users themselves, all the good
| Meta has done could have existed if morals and ethics trumped
| profit-seeking. And for that I do not thank Zuckerberg, at all,
| even though I do understand he is also a product of the system,
| in the end he (and Meta) abused one of the most powerful
| feelings of humans (connection among each other) to extract as
| much money as they could without regards to the dangerous side-
| effects that many pointed out were happening when Facebook was
| growing, there was no care about anyone, you and I were
| swindled.
|
| It's unfortunate, I hope you can see that, for all the good
| provided over years on fostering connections, it was just
| spoiled in the end by his greed, and carelessness.
|
| We can do better than that, no need to thank Zuckerberg for
| fucking us over.
| sam-cop-vimes wrote:
| This is a disappointing take on the state of affairs. The book
| is trying to say the execs couldn't care less about the harm
| their platform was causing. This is not about "screwing up"
| inadvertently. This is about prioritising money over everything
| else.
|
| Yes, individuals have the power to change the world. Some of
| them in positive ways and some in horrific ways. By all
| accounts, Zuck and the top execs at FB firmly belong in the
| latter category.
| achierius wrote:
| > We all fuck shit up and ruin lives
|
| Part A sure, but I can say with some certainty that _most_
| people do not ruin lives. It 's just hard to have that much
| influence over other people. If you want to be particularly
| pessimistic, you might be able to argue that many people ruin
| their children's lives -- But even that's a stretch.
| righthand wrote:
| Who hasn't ruined a life or two for excessive monetary gain?
| Surely every person on earth right?
|
| Thanks Zuck for ruining lives, selling out the public to
| advertising and performing psychological experiments on your
| users, so this guy could send text across the wire. Something
| not possible before Facebook apparently.
| netsharc wrote:
| What a disgustingly ass-kissing take. To pull the Godwin:
| Hitler built the autobahn, should I thank him for allowing me
| the thrill of going 200km/h (I need a better car...), sure 17++
| million of lives(1) were ruined, but whatever!
|
| And yes your beloved communication medium helped the Burmese
| commit genocide...
|
| (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victims_of_Nazi_Germany
| dartharva wrote:
| You talk as if you'd have had no other means of communication
| had Facebook not existed. Your delusion would have been funny
| had you not also implied you intend to subject your children to
| the same poison too.
|
| Please, for God's sake, don't.
| UnreachableCode wrote:
| > "[Zuck] blows key meetings because he refuses to get out of bed
| before noon."
|
| Is this meant to be taken literally or is it an expression for
| arrogance?
| gmac wrote:
| Can't see any reason not to take it at face value. It's not a
| common phrase or expression.
| ttw44 wrote:
| I suddenly now imagine Zuck no differently from some of my
| unemployed friends.
| RistrettoMike wrote:
| I read the book. It's something that comes up & happens
| multiple times, and the potential meetings being described are
| with various global _heads of state_.
| xdkyx wrote:
| This may be a little naive from my side, but I'm wondering - is
| every big tech company the same as Meta and it's leadership? Or
| is there something special, a perfect storm of circumstances that
| we only hear so much about so many instances of outright - can't
| even find the right word here - evil, stupidity, brashness?
|
| If we assume that every big (let's say FAANG) company is the
| same, why we hear about Meta time and time again?
| dunsany wrote:
| Have you heard the stories about Uber?
| ozornin wrote:
| I haven't. What stories?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Because Zuckerberg is a worse human being than the senior
| people in the other FAANG companies.
| moolcool wrote:
| I think Facebook's core product is inherently evil in a way
| that other FAANG's core products may not be.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| It doesn't have anything to do with this though. It has to do
| with having so much power and money in a "meritocracy" and
| the mental gymnastics needed to maintain those two opposing
| propositions.
|
| Meta's core product is a machine to sell ads, just like
| YouTube, TikTok, Netflix (now), etc. It's not that unique.
| And these stories are all over the valley for even much less
| powerful individuals
| akudha wrote:
| I haven't used FB in over a decade, so maybe I am not up-
| to-date. While YouTube and FB are both machines to sell
| ads, I'd take YouTube over FB any day. I can pay YouTube a
| few dollars and avoid ads, YouTube is an _insanely_ useful
| learning tool as long as I avoid politics /influencer-
| idiots and comments - is there _any_ useful part of FB?
| Maybe marketplace, not sure. Is it even possible to avoid
| ads on FB?
| andrewchilds wrote:
| I say this as someone with an extremely negative opinion
| of Facebook/Meta/Zuck: there are communities that only
| exist on Facebook, in the form of private groups. If you
| want to reach those communities, you have no other choice
| but to meet them where they are. Same problem with
| Twitter/X...
| rsynnott wrote:
| Zuckerberg is unusually powerful in the company, due to how
| it's structured (note that few companies of this sort of size
| are run by their founders...), and he's unusually unhinged.
| myroon5 wrote:
| 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'
| Arainach wrote:
| Bias disclaimer: I've worked at multiple FAANGs and Meta isn't
| one of them, but as with anyone in the industry I've had
| friends at all of them.
|
| Meta feels very different - both at the top, with Zuckerberg's
| immunity from the board, full control, and personality "quirks"
| on public display - but also at the lower levels. Every company
| has a stable of people who will do what they're told to collect
| a paycheck but Meta had a much higher ratio of people -
| including people I know, respect, and consider very smart in
| other aspects - who bought in to the vision that what the
| company was doing was good for the world even in a post-2016
| world when all of the consequences of social media and Meta's
| specific actions were fully evident.
|
| My Amazon friends won't defend the bad things Amazon does, my
| Alphabet friends love to gripe, my Microsoft friends....you get
| the idea. But my friends at Meta would repeatedly try to defend
| bad things in a way the others don't.
| rozap wrote:
| The Koolaid is stronger at Facebook, because it has to be.
|
| It does feel slightly cathartic to reject someone's resume
| for having any time at Facebook on it.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| Sounds like a net negative filter. I'd recommend you try
| prevent personal biases from playing this big of a role in
| hiring decisions.
| busterarm wrote:
| Not really. Any FB experience post-2011 is a pretty
| strong signal that the potential hire has a weak ethical
| foundation, if not overtly unethical inclinations.
|
| Maybe if you only interned there or it was your first job
| and you left before 2 years.
| rozap wrote:
| Really? I think it's pretty normal to use your moral
| compass to take into account someone's work history
| during hiring decisions.
|
| Did they work for a tobacco company, advertising harmful
| products to kids? I think that's bad, but you're right,
| it is a personal bias. Some argue that tobacco is
| actually fine.
|
| Did they work for a buy-now-pay-later company which
| sneakily traps people into debt cycles? Again, I think
| that's bad, but it is just my opinion. And some people
| can argue that bnpl companies are good because they
| provide low cost* loans to consumers to buy Coachella
| tickets. *until you miss a payment then you're fucked.
|
| Did they work for the Trump 2024 Campaign? Plenty of
| people voted for him so it's just like, my opinion man.
|
| Or, did they work for Facebook, an antisocial,
| anticompetitive growth at all costs company which is
| absolutely a net drain on society. But hey - they did
| produce, er, buy, a messaging app which allows you to
| keep in touch with your family.
|
| And I could go on and on.
|
| There are plenty of smart people with a moral compass.
| I've been blessed to have worked with many - truly it has
| been a joy. There are also unscrupulous, smart people who
| will do any work as long as the money is there. I've also
| worked with those types, and it's not as pleasant. The
| best projects I've been a part of have had teams of
| people who truly care about the customer, they aren't
| trying to outsmart or trick them.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| My prior comment is poorly worded around what my intent
| was.
|
| I think it's important to separate the person from the
| machine. {company} has done {things I
| disagree with}, and {candidate} was working for them
| during this period.
|
| vs {candidate} has done {things I
| disagree with}
|
| Sure there is overlap and gray area, but, not "reject
| someone's resume for having any {company}" level.
| rozap wrote:
| Good clarification, and I agree there's a venn diagram
| that doesn't totally look like a circle - but for me it
| nearly does look like a circle :)
| nfRfqX5n wrote:
| Those comparisons are completely disingenuous
|
| Lots of products came out of Facebook that have no moral
| implications at all
| rozap wrote:
| Every single product from facebook is or will be a
| vehicle for advertisement. Every vehicle for
| advertisement must be optimized for ad delivery.
| Optimizing for ad delivery chases attention above all
| else, including the end user's wellbeing.
|
| At the end of the day, every facebook product must
| optimize for this singular business goal. Even if you
| don't see it at the moment you ship whatever feature,
| that is the truth.
| globnomulous wrote:
| > reject someone's resume for having any time at Facebook
| on it.
|
| I know some lovely, brilliant people who work at Meta or
| have. None of them carry around any such delusions or
| deserve this kind of condemnation.
|
| Or if they do, then so do engineers who have worked at
| Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, or any other of a host
| of countless corporate tech companies -- which would be
| just as silly.
| busterarm wrote:
| I share this experience -- had a friend who left from IG to
| form a startup and came back to FB a couple of years later.
| His entire perspective on the company shifted and he left
| after only 2 months. Complete disillusionment at all levels.
| "This is not the same company."
|
| That said, I do think this kind of behavior extends across
| the industry. I've seen all sorts of wild things like
| founders&insiders starting a separate encrypted messaging
| company just so they had an app to send messages between each
| other about all of the illegal shit that they were doing in
| the main company.
| optymizer wrote:
| I was the TL on a Facebook app feature driven by us, the
| engineers, that was 100% in the category of "good for humanity
| and it solves a problem for billions of people". I had to fight
| internal org leads to launch it, because there was almost no
| benefit for FB.
|
| Jane leaked the feature and put this entire 'evil Facebook'
| shade on it, with no real proof, just wildly false speculation
| based on what she thought the feature is. That's when I
| realized how easy it is to present anything Meta works on
| through the lens of "stealing people's data" and "ads bad".
| Oculus headsets? VR ads. Smart glasses? AR ads. Spyware.
| Facebook app feature? Must have some privacy issue.
|
| I'm not saying it's not deserved, with all the scandals, just
| that at some point it was getting a bit ridiculous with all the
| "Facebook bad" articles, at least one of which I knew first-
| hand was complete nonsense. It did seem like news outlets were
| grasping at straws to write yet another article to put Facebook
| in a bad light.
|
| It's low-hanging fear-mongering fruit that gets the clicks and
| it's hard to disprove (not that PR/Legal would let us refute
| anything in the first place) because the trust is broken.
| dogleash wrote:
| You did something good while working for the devil, people
| were right to be suspect. You gain no redemption points from
| pointing out the people describing facebook as evil
| misunderstand the precise bounds of facebook's evil.
|
| Also, you didn't address parent's question about the
| uniqueness (or lackthereof) of Meta. Feeling targeted because
| people on the outside don't have the visibility to properly
| understand the nature of the evil is shared with at least 3/4
| of the remaining FAANG letters.
| getnormality wrote:
| Odd reply to a post containing relevant information.
| Dismissing misinformation because "people were right to be
| suspect"? Acting as a judge denying redemption points the
| poster didn't ask for?
| jkestner wrote:
| What was the app feature you worked on?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Who was Jane?
|
| Tell us the feature so we can evaluate your claim. Absolute
| certainty, bitter criticism, and expectation of unearned
| trust do not build confidence in your ability to judge what
| is good for humanity.
| gessha wrote:
| It should be Jane Manchun Wong but she has covered a number
| of FB features.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| I worked at a FAANG company that was not Meta. I'm not going to
| defend everything they did, but the culture was set up in such
| a way that people at all levels of the organization considered
| how their decisions would impact customers, and they had some
| sense of obligation to question harmful decisions.
|
| Afterwards, I went to a startup, and the company leadership was
| shockingly callous about doing things that would harm
| customers. Some lower-level people spoke up about it, but
| nobody in a leadership position seemed to want to hear it.
| charles_f wrote:
| Their product is somewhat different though, Amazon sells
| _stuff_ and cloud. Microsoft sells business tools and cloud.
| Google sells Gmail, a declining search engine and cloud. Apple
| sells iphones and macs. Facebook sells people 's data,
| advertising and opinion.
|
| Not that others wouldn't and don't manipulate the market and
| lobby policy, and exploit humans in bad ways, but the basic
| precept makes it that Facebook needs to protect something
| fundamentally more immoral than others, hardened behavior and
| corruption is somewhat to be expected.
| drdrek wrote:
| This is exactly the type of people the cultural purge in big tech
| came to flush out. Trying to change a multi billion dollar
| company from the inside is delusional, self serving, narcissistic
| and ineffective. Who the hell do you think you are in the great
| machine of 100,000+ employees companies, of billions invested in
| them.
|
| The change is going to be political, regulatory. These companies
| always can't change until regulation is there, and then they
| miraculously adapt. If you took big tech money for 7 years you
| were not part of the solution.
|
| The lengths some people will go to self explain why they were not
| egotistical is amazing! This is not an expose, everything is well
| known, this is a books worth of convincing herself she is a good
| person after all.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I don't understand your "delusional, self serving, narcissistic
| and ineffective" / "egotistical" point. All of this would apply
| to people trying to change things from the outside too.
|
| Who the hell do you think you are in the great machine of
| hundreds of millions of US citizens, or billions of people
| globally, to think you can effect political and regulatory
| change?
|
| And yet, this is how things change, by people working to change
| them, from either the inside or the outside. Maybe your point
| is right that anyone trying to be a change agent is self
| serving and egotistical. But don't fool yourself that there is
| some big difference here between internal and external
| activists.
| drdrek wrote:
| You are equating "Hard" with impossible. Its impossible to
| turn a for profit company against itself from the inside, its
| hard to push for regulatory change. One system is built to
| create shareholder value, the other is to create social
| value. Its like a vegan working in a pig farm for 7 years to
| change the industry from the inside, at some point you need
| to ask yourself, is she just whitewashing her time there.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This just isn't true that one thing is hard and the other
| is impossible. Both things are nearly impossible to a
| similar degree.
|
| What system is "built ... to create social value"? You mean
| government?
|
| My friend, I'm sorry, but no. Government is built to wield
| power. Bending that power toward social value is just as
| hard as bending a business toward ethical behavior.
| omegaworks wrote:
| I don't think this is about convincing anyone that she's a good
| person. She's forthright about her instincts and values and the
| institutions she worked at that fostered her understanding of
| the world.
|
| She documents in detail critical moments where Facebook
| executives made decisions that exemplified their incompetence
| and damaged their potential impact.
|
| That the "cultural purge" in big tech is flushing out people
| with these instincts is precisely why the industry is flailing
| and groveling at the feet of power, for they have no internal
| compass save for growth for growth's sake.
|
| Everyone can see that now laid bare on these pages, and these
| companies that rely on their user's willingness to exchange
| details about their personal lives for cheap dopamine hits may
| find that generosity well run dry.
| dartharva wrote:
| That's what the author (the linked blog's author, not the
| book's) also believes and concludes his post with.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Lina Khan just needed a couple more years.
| concordDance wrote:
| Disgruntled ex-employee disparaging their old colleagues and
| bosses is extremely common, I don't get why this is getting so
| many upvotes...
| K0nserv wrote:
| Speculating about her motives isn't fruitful, because her
| motives don't matter particularly. It has many upvotes because
| the information in the book is newsworthy and relevant for a
| place like HN.
| nuorah89 wrote:
| ex-employes can be disgruntled for good reasons
| sanderjd wrote:
| Because it's an interesting and positive review of a popular
| book about the industry covered by this forum. It would be
| really weird if an article like this _didn 't_ get upvoted
| here...
| dkga wrote:
| Will definitely read the book after this readout.
|
| Trying to get Xi to name his child is both completely tone deaf
| to the point of being offensive, and incredibly debilitating for
| his child's self-esteem as just a bargaining chip.
| xyst wrote:
| It's a good memoir and like the author of this review. I too only
| picked it up because of Mark/Meta's attempt to suppress the
| promotion of it. Listened to a couple of chapters on an audiobook
| service before picking up physical copy and was hooked.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Zuck learns Mandarin. He studies Xi's book, conspicuously
| displays a copy of it on his desk. Eventually, he manages to sit
| next to Xi at a dinner where he begs Xi to name his next child.
| Xi turns him down.
|
| I do wonder what the point of amassing all that money and power
| is, if it means you end up grovelling to a despot like Xi (or a
| would-be despot like Trump).
| kashunstva wrote:
| Just riding that hedonic treadmill, probably. Once you have
| bought all the properties you want, airplanes, helicopters and
| yachts, I imagine your hedonic set-point adjusts to that level
| and you begin to cast about for what's missing. (What's missing
| of course, is what all these people can't seem to find, which
| is an unwavering set of human-centred values.)
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Once you have several mansions, a helicopter and a super
| yacht, the only possible reason to want more is for status.
| And you have to be some sort of sociopath to use that much of
| the world's resources just have a yacht 5m longer than the
| other guy.
| hinkley wrote:
| Chronologically, this event happens a good bit before Mark
| realizes just how much power he has. I don't know if he would
| repeat that behavior now.
| hudo wrote:
| I read the book.
|
| After the part where she was giving a birth to her child, while
| still writing emails and doing work stuff, I take everything she
| said with a grain of salt. As a father, the way she prioritised
| work to family through out many years of her work at FB, I find
| it very repelling and disgusting.
|
| I believe that Zuck&team are slimy greedy spoiled brats, but I
| could also say few things about her. Which make me wonder what is
| actual truth, book is very biased.
| 3np wrote:
| Judging authors parenting is way off topic.
| yapyap wrote:
| It's jarring when people refer to having read something and then
| it turns out they listened to the audiobook.
|
| This is not a jab on this specific blogger but a general thing.
|
| There should be a term for listening to an audiobook that's not
| reading but does refer to a book on audio level, or just say you
| listened to the book.
| DreaminDani wrote:
| Reading an audiobook is reading. As a partially blind person,
| it is the only way I can read comfortably. I'm not sure how a
| different word would help. If one was reviewing the audiobook,
| specifically, they might call it out in order to comment on the
| narration quality, etc. But if you listened to the book, you've
| read it.
| righthand wrote:
| I don't agree. Your eyes sending signals to your brain is
| different than your ears. It is a different way to digest
| information. People tend to remember 20% of what they hear
| and only 10% of what they read. While the hearing is greater
| it doesn't include the same process of acquiring information.
| "Listening is reading" is a false generalization just because
| you were able to gather the same information doesn't mean you
| "read" the book. I don't consider a person in a wheel chair a
| "walker" but I would go for a "stroll" (roaming) with them.
| ujkiolp wrote:
| pls consider strolling away
| eviks wrote:
| What's wrong with "listening" as that term?
| prophesi wrote:
| Some of the books that have stuck with me for the longest are
| the ones I listened to during the years I had a grueling 45+
| minute commute. The only downside I've found is that it's a lot
| harder to find and reference passages you've found of interest.
| Otherwise I think it's a perfectly valid method of ingesting
| information. If you listen while doing something that really
| should require your undivided attention, then I'd agree that it
| falls short to reading the text.
|
| They also state up front that they listened to the audiobook,
| so I'm not sure how much value there'd be in defining a term to
| differentiate reading versus listening to a book.
| bix6 wrote:
| Why does our country continue to exalt people like this? Can we
| have some compassion up top for once?
| havaloc wrote:
| To be fair, Catan really brings out the worse in people, despite
| it being a friendly Euro game. It's worse than Monopoly in a lot
| of ways.
| yubblegum wrote:
| "Careless" is doing some seriously heavy duty lifting here.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Yeah, that's rather the point of the article. They are careless
| in many ways as the author points out.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I assumed the word choice was a reference to this line from The
| Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald:
|
| "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up
| things and creatures and then retreated back into their money
| or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them
| together, and let other people clean up the mess they had
| made."
|
| Given the way the novel is written, this is intentional
| understatement.
| hinkley wrote:
| That's what she is referring to.
|
| That line is quoted either in the foreword or the first
| chapter.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| It's nice to know that despite playing fast and loose with the
| facts, the film The Social Network does capture something
| fundamentally true about Zuckerberg's psychology. The
| pathological need to dominate can be disguised when you're the
| underdog, but the more power you accrue the more it becomes the
| sole motivation. To paraphrase Robert Caro, "power does not
| corrupt, it reveals."
| lithocarpus wrote:
| I think power also can and often does corrupt. Partly due to
| the corrupting pressure that comes at a person who has power.
| hinkley wrote:
| David Brin has it as "absolute power attracts the absolutely
| corruptible."
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Compliments to the author of this piece, Cory Doctorow, who I
| believe coined the useful term "enshittification". He has
| consistently championed consumer rights (presumably at a
| significant risk of having powerful people come after him) and
| lots of other worthwhile causes. And his writing is excellent.
| 0xCafeBabee wrote:
| Anyone else notice how losing at simple board games seems scarier
| to billionaires than losing millions in business? Makes you
| wonder if it's because they can't control the outcome with money
| or power...
| WoodenChair wrote:
| I used the form on the author of the book's website a few weeks
| ago to invite her on our books podcast:
|
| https://sarahwynnwilliams.com
|
| She didn't respond, which is fair enough, it's probably not big
| enough to be interesting to her. But then I got auto-added to her
| PR mailing list. I didn't ask or consent to be on the PR mailing
| list (all the page says as of now is "To contact Sarah, please
| complete the form below"). Seems I was just added because I used
| the "contact" form.
|
| Auto-adding someone who contacts you to a PR mailing list is a
| dark pattern. Seems she learned something at Facebook. I found it
| ironic.
| aredox wrote:
| She certainly didn't code that contact form. Still an oversight
| from her, but...
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| But what? It's her website and is ultimately responsible. "I
| didn't code it" is not an excuse.
| aredox wrote:
| Do you assume full responsability for all the dependencies
| of all the software you write _and_ use?
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| That's neither here nor there.
|
| This a very specific situation where someone comes to my
| website/company, takes an action they believe is safe,
| and gets a bunch of spam. That would absolutely be my
| responsibility - it's where the buck stops.
| azemetre wrote:
| It's similar to how I follow my Congressional
| Representative but they also added me on various donor
| lists now.
|
| Just because people do it doesn't mean it's not shitty.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I don't find the anecdotes very interesting--people with great
| power are or turn out to be assholes; sure, what else is new?--
| but this little gem stood out to me. Not that I'm surprised, just
| that it's the first I heard of it:
|
| > According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook actually built an
| extensive censorship and surveillance system for the Chinese
| state - spies, cops and military - to use against Chinese
| Facebook users, and FB users globally. They promise to set up
| caches of global FB content in China that the Chinese state can
| use to monitor all Facebook activity, everywhere, with the
| implication that they'll be able to spy on private
| communications, and censor content for non-Chinese users.
| acyou wrote:
| Zuckerberg and co. always seem so basic. Settlers of Catan and
| Ticket To Ride? I can't imagine more flavorless, generic games.
|
| Wait, those are the games that I play...
|
| I remember listening to Zuckerberg speak at length about the
| various epochs of Facebook including the fast pivot to global,
| it's overall a fascinating and compelling story that the book
| surely capitalizes on well.
| bena wrote:
| I'm not a big fan of Catan. Players can get locked out of the
| game with no way to meaningfully play.
|
| Ticket to Ride is decent though. Simple, straight-forward
| rules. Enough strategy and randomness to make playing
| interesting. No one can gum up the game by being intransigent.
| acyou wrote:
| My Ticket To Ride games are usually very passive, everyone
| has a sort of truce that lasts essentially throughout. But
| sometimes someone gives up on a big route and devotes
| themselves to messing up other people, and then things get
| spicy. Then again, I think we play wrong, because we don't
| ever use Stations (I think those are only in Ticket To Ride
| Europe though)?
| bena wrote:
| Probably. We have the original base game and the Ticket to
| Ride Junior edition. Neither of those have stations.
| ranger207 wrote:
| Doctorow touches on this, but I really think the biggest problem
| with society today is simply that too many people in power simply
| don't experience consequences
| obscurette wrote:
| I think that's true for our society in general at the moment.
| Everyone can behave like an asshole and it's completely OK for
| a society if they say "I had a tough childhood and haven't
| received a professional help".
| watwut wrote:
| Literally none of these people claims that. What they
| actually say is "acting like an asshole is a cool manly
| thing".
|
| Meanwhile, the help for people with tough childhoods is
| slashed and protection for kids is scaled back. People who
| had tough childhoods and did not received professional help
| are getting roughly no help or benefit of doubt.
| obscurette wrote:
| I didn't talk about these people, I was talking about
| society in general. And the problem with even slight
| erosion of responsibility is that sociopaths benefit most.
| gessha wrote:
| I think the problem is people feel so entitled they think they
| can avoid consequences. And much to everybody's surprise, they
| can do it if they pay the right people.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| this cracked me up
|
| "When he gets to the mic, he spontaneously promises that Facebook
| will provide internet access to refugees all over the world.
| Various teams at Facebook then race around, trying to figure out
| whether this is something the company is actually doing, and once
| they realize Zuck was just bullshitting, set about trying to
| figure out how to do it.
|
| They get some way down this path when Kaplan intervenes to insist
| that giving away free internet to refugees is a bad idea, and
| that instead, they should sell internet access to refugees.
| Facebookers dutifully throw themselves into this absurd project,
| which dies when Kaplan fires off an email stating that he's just
| realized that refugees don't have any money. The project dies."
| CrystalCuckoo wrote:
| The author of the post tries to use this as an example of
| Kaplan being an idiot but (having read the books) struck me as
| a rare case of him being the only sane man in the room -
| Facebook pivoting from "we have to give free internet to
| refugees" to "we have to sell it" smacks of broader leadership
| not considering the wider context.
| selkin wrote:
| This review is as naive as Wynn-Williams portrays herself in her
| memoir (which I enjoyed!)
|
| In the book, Wynn-Williams described herself as a wide-eyed,
| almost helpless person, which doesn't align with her pre-Facebook
| career as a lawyer in the a diplomatic corps. And when at FB, she
| was in the rooms where it happened, and had a job enabling some
| of it. She could've quit, but did not.
|
| She was one of the titular careless people at the time, and
| excuses it now by pointing at others who were even more careless.
| It's not atonement, it's whitewashing.
| gr__or wrote:
| How does her attempt to change things from the inside, by
| confronting their higher ups, who constantly put her down for
| it and collectivizing with other insiders, still lead you to
| such a harsh judgment of her character?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| a crucial weighting is -- how much was this person
| implementing the things being decried, versus "change from
| the inside". Without having read this book, I will personally
| take away the benefit of doubt on "change from inside" given
| that this person is an attorney by trade, and has been hired
| for real money by this company.
| selkin wrote:
| I'd contrast Wynn-Williams with Susan Fowler: Fowler was
| only a few years out of school when she took a software
| engineer position at Uber, didn't had managerial position,
| yet actually stood up when things happened and made a
| change.
| va1a wrote:
| It's interesting, this concept of "just following orders"
| recurs so much in almost all contexts. War behavior really
| seems to be the baseline of human interaction.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
| jimt1234 wrote:
| > ... but then Meta's lawyer tried to get the book suppressed and
| secured an injunction to prevent her from promoting it.
|
| Sounds like the work of Barbra Streisand's PR firm LOL
| boogieknite wrote:
| here's a callous question: will it ever get to a tipping point
| where major businesses bail on react? is it already happening?
|
| asking specifically because our backend is pretty much just esri
| and were heavily considering porting all of our web products to
| experience builder because of how robust it is these days.
| experience builder is on react, which sucks imo, but would be
| helpful to avoid getting the rug pulled on us
| gr__or wrote:
| I don't think that's a necessary consequence. React is free, a
| sort-of recruitment loss-leader for Meta. Imo you can get to a
| moral zero on this pretty easily despite still using React, by
| supporting out-of-Meta React OSS and using your platforms to
| denounces Meta's carelessness.
|
| On the other hand: Companies pay for Microsoft's offerings and
| they support the Israeli military in their genocidal campaign
| in Gaza, I think getting to a moral zero on that is
| significantly harder.
| akudha wrote:
| _Wynn-Williams gets Zuck a chance to address the UN General
| Assembly. As is his wont, Zuck refuses to be briefed before he
| takes the dais_
|
| Holy moly! No matter what your feelings are towards the
| effectiveness of U.N, addressing the general assembly is a huge
| opportunity to stand out, send a message, do something good etc.
| What a waste
| disqard wrote:
| "Zuck it! We'll do it live!!"
| ycombinatornews wrote:
| Almost finished with it after few days. I think it is must read
| and the fact author testified adds more reasons.
|
| Glad to see this on HN.
| lifefeed wrote:
| This is a small bit, and I don't know anything about Zuckerberg's
| personal life, but "he refuses to get out of bed before noon" is
| normally more a sign of depression than laziness.
| ycombinatrix wrote:
| True but we don't know if the dude is getting drunk every night
| like the CEO from Ex Machina
| banannaise wrote:
| Far more likely to be "keeps insane hours and refuses to change
| them"
| malwrar wrote:
| > Wynn-Williams's firsthand account of the next decade is not a
| story of these people becoming more reckless, rather, it's a
| story in which the possibility of consequences for that
| recklessness recedes, and with it, so does their care over those
| consequences.
|
| I often feel similar when I witness rich people operate, and I'm
| sure others on different wealth scales observe the same in me.
| It's wild to observe someone take risky/dangerous positions,
| fail, and then shrug it off when you would have been ruined. One
| of those observable moments of privilege. I feel like it would be
| something interesting to study.
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