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Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

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Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#171

Post by FD3SA »

Jun8 wrote: post #103

I hate fear-driven cultures where presentations/meetings/casual talk with the CEO are treated as a gladiator match. In addition to Bezos, of course Jobs and (from what I read) Gates created such cultures. Another interesting, lesser known example was Col. Robert R.MacCormick, the editor for the Chicago Tribune for long years. He was described as "remote, coldly aloof, ruthless aristocrat, living in lonely magnificenc…

Hero worship exists as a powerful evolutionary parasite, designed to extract submission from a competing male from within your tribe. If a member of your tribe is climbing the totem pole rapidly, you can either let him by or challenge him. If you challenge him, you need to believe that you are better. This is risky, since objectively measuring human ability has proven difficult even to this day. Thus, personality cults emerge whose purpose is to make one seem superhuman with wild stories, and discourage potential challengers. Whoever has the strongest personality cult wins the status challenge, and moves up. The one who submits to the personality cult without challenge preserves his status relative to others, and is not removed from the totem pole.

Competence is a necessary, but not sufficient, trait to reach the top. There are a great many people in the world more competent than Jeff Bezos. They do however, lack the cult of personality and thus are not at the top of their own totem poles.

The lack of personality cults in Microsoft and Facebook is the reason why they always receive bad press for not having "visionary leaders" or "creative energy". This is all code speak for the fact that employees do not fear the personalities of Zuckerberg and Gates (and Allen), so they have less respect for the company and thus believe it is not a place worth working for as they'd rather not "work under an equal". Simply put, Zuck and Gates did not cultivate their personality cults enough for the average employee to fear AND respect them as a superhuman CEO demigod. And they pay the price to this day by being on the receiving end of slightly veiled slander at their abilities and thus, their right to rule.

I wonder how many people realize this as they read about Steve Jobs, the tech CEO who should have been a politician.

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#172

Post by rehack »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #25

Although it was a great read, to me it lacked a kind of authenticity. The first Yegge post felt real, authentic, natural and fully charged. This second one although better formatted and edited, lacked something. It just seemed obigatory and bland. It is rather amazing that you can feel emotions through words. Or am I the only one thinking this way?

I, like many of you, like Steve Yegge's eloquence. But not always agree with his logic. I have issues with both his posts (the leaked one and this), on the logic front.

a) In the earlier accidentally leaked one, I felt he was being too harsh on Jeff Bezos, in the UI design story he stated. Even having only the data points of Yegge's essay, I could understand Bezos point as far as the UI changes were concerned: 'Why mend it if its not broken?'

   Also Jeff Bezos, had a vision of building Amazon into a huge company, right from the start. He comes across as a rare _true visionary_, for many reasons. Two simple ones: success with Amazon.com and then with EC2 . So I did not like at all when Steve sort of derided him in his post.
b) In this second post, it seems to me, that Steve is _making it up_ for the damage done in the first one. Making good use of his _eloquence_ to convert a single & perhaps boring meeting experience he had with Bezos, into an interesting one.

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#173

Post by snorkel »

Jun8 wrote: post #103

I hate fear-driven cultures where presentations/meetings/casual talk with the CEO are treated as a gladiator match. In addition to Bezos, of course Jobs and (from what I read) Gates created such cultures. Another interesting, lesser known example was Col. Robert R.MacCormick, the editor for the Chicago Tribune for long years. He was described as "remote, coldly aloof, ruthless aristocrat, living in lonely magnificenc…

I find the fear-our-mighty-CEO culture is encouraged by sycophant senior management more so than the CEOs themselves. I just consider the fact most CEOs have very small attention spans and present accordingly.

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#174

Post by stonemetal »

jarek wrote: post #165
loumf wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also B's can't tell the difference between A's, B's and C's.

Since classifying people appears to be so trivial it can be boiled down to one character, does being bothered by the use of apostrophes in pluralization make me an A, a B, or a C?

I think that puts you solidly in the B or C category for unwillingness to think outside the box.

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#176

Post by code_duck »

jonah wrote: post #37
code_duck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tell me Search is popular, also.

They make search good so you'll use it and be exposed to ads. If you're not the customer, you're the product.

I don't agree with that cliche. It's over applied.

Search is a product, too. It's just not a direct source of revenue on it's own.

Re: Steve Yegge: Follow Up to His Accidentally Public Rant

#177

Post by mark_up »

rehack wrote: post #172
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #25

Although it was a great read, to me it lacked a kind of authenticity. The first Yegge post felt real, authentic, natural and fully charged. This second one although better formatted and edited, lacked something. It just seemed obigatory and bland. It is rather amazing that you can feel emotions through words. Or am I the only one thinking this way?

I, like many of you, like Steve Yegge's eloquence. But not always agree with his logic. I have issues with both his posts (the leaked one and this), on the logic front. a) In the earlier accidentally leaked one, I felt he was being too harsh on Jeff Bezos, in the UI design story he stated. Even having only the data points of Yegge's essay, I could understand Bezos point as far as the UI changes were concerned: 'Why m…

> 'Why mend it if its not broken?'

But it was broken. Amazon did amazingly not because of their UI, but in spite of it.

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