I remember when I was growing up, tech industry has so many people that were admirable, and you wanted to aspire to be in life. Bill Gates, founders of Google Larry Page, Sergey brin, Steve Jobs (wasn’t perfect but on a surface level, he was still at least a pretty decent guy), basically everyone involved in gaming from Xbox to PlayStation and so on, Tom from MySpace… So many admirable people who were actually really great…
Now, people are just trash. Look at Mark Zuckerberg who leads Facebook. Dude is a lizard man, anytime you think he has shown some character growth he does something truly horrible and illegal that he should be thrown in prison for. For example, he’s been buying up properties in Hawaii and basically stealing them from the locals. He’s basically committing human rights violations by violating the culture of Hawaiian natives and their land deeds that are passed down from generation to generation. He has been systematically stealing them and building a wall on Hawaii, basically a f*cking colonizer. That’s what the guy is. I thought he was a good upstanding person until I learned all these things about him
Current CEO of Google is peak dirtbag. Dude has no interest in the company or it’s success at all, his only concern is patting his pockets while he is there as CEO, and appeasing the shareholders. He has zero interest in helping or making anyone’s life pleasant at the company. Truly a dirtbag in every way.
Current CEO of Home Depot, which I now consider a tech company because they have moved out of retail and into the online space and they are rapidly restructuring their entire business around online sales, that dude is a total piece of work conservative racist. I remember working for this company, This dude’s entire focus is eliminating as many people as feasibly possible from working in the store, making their life living heck, does not see people as human beings at all. Just wants to eliminate anyone and everyone they possibly can, think they are a slave labor force
Elon musk, we all know about him, don’t need to really say much. Every time you think he’s doing something good for society, he proves you wrong And does the worst thing he can possibly do in that situation. It’s like he’s specifically trying to make the world the worst place possible everyday
Like, damn. What the heck happened to the world? You know? I thought the tech industry was supposed to be filled with these brilliant genius people who are really good for the world…
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Steve Jobs (wasn’t perfect but on a surface level, he was still at least a pretty decent guy),
Very very incorrect. He was a complete garbage pail of a human being from the very beginning.
Behind the Bastards: Part One: The Terrible Secret of Steve Jobs https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-one-the-terrible-secret-of-steve-jobs
They have a series on Gates too.
The answer to OPs question is that these people they admired were just as bad, just better at PR. Unless you think that social media has had some kind of positive effect in outing these newer bastards. Being young and naive may also have been a factor (which I can personally attest to since I was a fan of MS back in the 90s before I learned about them).
Capitalism rewards psychopathy
I’m not sure about that. Nobody wants to work with psychos. Work is too much of your short life.
You don’t work with them, you work for them. The only capitalists in capitalism is the ownership class, the rest are just slaves to the system under which they are born.
But you don’t stay working for them. You move on. Then they find no one wants to work for them and they spend their whole time complaining they can’t get the staff. Psychos are bad news for a company long run.
There is a book about it, “Snakes in Suits”.
Then they find no one wants to work for them
At which point the board fires them, they add another golden parachute to their collection, and they get hired to be CEO at another company for a few years until the cycle repeats.
I’m sure that happens. But this why you look how long people have worked at places and get a reference.
Psychos aren’t the ‘scream in your face and belittle you’ type of people, it’s the silver-tongued devils that talk about family values and the environment and how their thing helps people, all while making backroom deals and lobbying governments to pass laws in their favour or any other number of shit. Psychos will appear on the surface as the nicest goddamn person you ever met, and you won’t think otherwise until you find the knife in your back.
I think they are more like Musk. It’s obvious if you look he’s a wrong’un. It’s not possible to stay lying about yourself, especially when the ego get boosted so much. The mask slips.
Right, but even taking Musk the mask has only slipped over the last five or so years. Before that he was often treated as a darling for pushing EVs to help fight climate change and SpaceX for reigniting people’s fascination with space. It’s only after he’s got huge amounts of wealth and exposure that its become clear to people what an awful person he is.
Psychopath is being used in a colloquial way here and not an exact diagnosis. Even if they are actual psychopaths they are known for being very charismatic and there are a lot of sadomasochistic people in the world who are motivated by punishment.
Further the people who work directly for these people want to be them, so they see it as just part of the process.
Another factor is money, it’s a motivator. Those who work lower down the org chart can often be desperate, struggling to get by and get used to the punishment, convincing themselves that it would be worse elsewhere.
The Idea that life is short and work just isn’t worth it comes from a place of privilege and the luxury of time for self reflection. Something not everyone can afford when one lives in survival mode.
This is tech workers. They won’t be in survival mode. They are highly employable and always have options. I think most people outside tech will have other employment options. Though if you don’t, your screwed in multiple other ways on top of has bosses.
Tech companies are operated like any other company and have a wide range of employees. Also not every tech position is highly employable. I know from personal experience in tech middle management that many employees are very easy to replace and have very common skill sets that are oversaturated in the market. Many many tech workers are absolutely operating in survival mode in 2024.
I’ve been in tech for over twenty years. About half of it in games (first half) and half Linux embedded stuff. What I’ve seen is it’s hard to recruit good people. The first job to get is the hardest as you have no experience or references. I know I’ve been lucky, falling in my feet multiple times, but so has everyone I entered industry with. A few now have their own companies. I’ve had to let a few people go myself and I hate it, but I knew they’d be fine, and they have been.
Capitalism
I remember when I was growing up, tech industry has so many people that were admirable
Perhaps you were too young to understand who these people were:
- Bill Gates dominated the PC world with aggressive business tactics and vendor lock in.
- Larry Ellison bought up his competitors and jack up prices on databsae products owning the industry for more than a decade.
- Steve Jobs lied and cheated his investors, his family, and his closest friends to benefit himself.
Tom was a good guy, but possibly because he took his fortune and left tech. There were very few admirable leaders.
Larry Ellison bought up his competitors and jack up prices on databsae products owning the industry for more than a decade.
It’s well known that ORACLE is an acronym for One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.
Larry Ellisons Oracle gobbled up many great companies and open source projects and sucked the life out of them, such as Sun Microsystems, OpenOffice, MySQL to name just a few
bill gates was like, one of the worst of the worst. Dude literally broke the law, and then settled to avoid paying for acquiring fees.
They have never been good.
Convicted monopolist. Slimy and dishonest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRelVFm7iJE
His direct influence is in numerous places in the Horrorween Documents.
Screw that guy.
yeah, it’s basically this kind of shit from every wealthy business man. Even the fabled Rockefeller was hated for the same reasons, dude controlled 80% of global/american oil refining and people still hated him, even though his product was the market leader.
These people have always been bad. Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Ford, all of them had their issues. The big difference between then and now is the information we have access to. These leaders are more or less forced to live a very public life. We can find all sorts of articles and investigative journalism reports about Elon actually having family money. And when you are rich enough to control the few newspapers, the stories are going to put you in a very good light.
You’re out of your mind if you thought bill gates was someone to look up to.
I remember when I was growing up
You can basically stop right there. You were young and naive, viewing the world through the rose colored glasses of youth.
For real, all those guys were always cutthroats. How do you think they dominated the markets? It was not because they shared and encouraged competition. No, they stole, lied, and cheated their way to the top.
To get to the top you have to throw people under the bus.
Bill Gates was a huge piece of shit in his heyday, rivalling the Zuckerberg and Musks of today, and Jobs was an abusive narcissist shitcunt on a surface level.
Tom and Zuckerberg both came from the same time. Zuck was shit since day 1, today has nothing to do with it.
I think you just have some very rose tinted glasses.
Going back even further is assholes like Edison and Ford.
when I was growing up
This is really the key. We’re all stupid and unaware of how things work and the particular goings-ons when we’re kids. There were plenty of shitty people running the tech giant companies back then, but we just didn’t realize the extent of what was happening.
Edit: The evolution of social media also adds a lot to this. We are both more connected to each other and society, and therefore more aware of BS think it’s pulled by corporations. Then, of course, you have folks like Elon Musk who seem to make a point of making sure everyone knows how big of a piece of shit they are, and how proud of it they are.
sociopaths have a pretty big advantage in capitalist leadership positions over non-sociopaths. they are more likely to get there in the first place, and they will perform better.
In all leadership positions, period. Capitalist or communist. Democratic or autocratic. Does not matter, those that are not held back by their morals have an advantage.
In communist societies, many people who rise to power are evil, because theyre seeking their own power primarily. In capitalism, anybody who is not actively evil enough gets thrown under the bus because theyre getting in the way of profits. Communism allows it, capitalism requires it.
It is the opposite. In capitalism, there is at least a chance a good person has some power because power is distributed, not only held by governments. There are multiple examples in the main post. Even better examples are European countries where the government and businesses hold each other in check instead of govt being bought off legally like in the US.
In communism, the way power is distributed ensures corrupt people raise to the top. See an amazing video “rule for rulers” by CGP gray for a simplified explanation how that corruption works and why a good person can’t hold power.
I don’t ever remember Bill Gates or Steve Jobs being good people. Or Jeff Bezos, trying to kill bookstores.
The guys behind Google seemed okay at first and I think they really wanted to do good. But the way the company culture was built was toxic.
But in the end it’s all about the greed. As soon as a company becomes public and whose stocks become available on the market, it turns to shit.
Look at how Steam is going well and actually helping personal computing progress. Gabe Newell is doing a great job because he loves that he does and ensures the people who work for him do too.
Newell also has overseen Valve as one of the pioneers of the most predatory monetization in the video game industry (lootboxes, etc.).
There are no saints at this level.
If you want to push material that completely contradicts morals (respect for privacy and free speech, for example), maybe you need this kind of people. They’ll just say they don’t give a f*** right to your face. Not that Bill Gates or Larry Page are any different, the times just changed. Do you really believe Bill Gates is that intelligent God among men? Because I don’t.
It’s where the money is. Simple.
