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Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#71
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't become a global ceo without being an absolute killer This is nonsense. Plenty of good people are wildly successful. The difference is they aren’t addicted to the role, and so see a future for themselves beyond it. Connecting with that future self, in turn, effects their decisions today—at work, at home, in society. We have a cadre of sociopaths leading our commercial giants. That is a fixable problem. Say…

Boards have a lot to answer for, and in theory at least, this is their responsibility. It did not work out that well for the OpenAi board however.

> Boards have a lot to answer for, and in theory at least, this is their responsibility

Boards have plenty of things they're properly responsible for. CEO sociopathy isn't one of them, especially not if it's the profitable type of assholery. The regulation has to come from outside.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#72
post #35
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My thinking is... can you put this 100% on Sandberg? I mean, I get that the culture is bad, but there's two in this game. Maybe... turn off your phone for a day when you're giving birth?! Sure, but you can look at this in one of two ways. One is the way you seem to be angling for, where we have an employee who is so disturbingly eager to please that she continues to do work at absurd times when no one should ever e…

I am inclined to agree with you but I do have a bit of nuance to add. Pretty sure this is not going to be a popular opinion but I think the second POV you present is apt but dependant on hierarchy level as well as each individual's drive to succeed. From my understanding that incident happened while she was in a directorial position, not some IC level. At that level one has to constantly actively balance private life…

On the other hand, if you are that far in, that you are "flirting with the C suite", it is almost impossible not to have knowledge about you having joined a data gobbling sect/mafia, that will eat you up alive, if you upset them. So while she should have been aware that she makes her own decisions, she might also have been aware of what happens, if she does.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#73

The fact that Meta is aggressively trying to suppress the book just reinforces the point. If it were all "misleading and unfounded," they wouldn't need to fight this hard to bury it.

That’s not true. Just look at the current climate. If I repeat lies often enough, people will repeat the same lies and start to believe.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#74

Good to have more people expose the greedy, dictatorial, detrimental shitshow that is single individuals having an outsized control over important technology. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Noone should be as big as Zuck, Musk, Altman, Bezos... I had one moment of eyebrow-raising while reading the article. On the risk of blaming someone who was mind controlled into caring too much about ultimately unimportant, s…

It's not just about one individual pushing for more... it's the entire system that values work over personal well-being and creates an environment where people feel they can't step away, even during life-changing events.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#75
post #24
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly the "maximum big level" is something that reasonable people could disagree about, but I don't think a society is healthy when people can get as big as Zuckerberg, Musk, Altman, and Bezos have gotten. Individuals should not have that much power. It's not healthy.

It is definitely not healthy. But I don't think you can limit people's wealth and not call it communism. I think the real problem is abuse of power, not accumulation of it. Power cannot be eliminated. It will either end up in the hand of politicians (who are genuinely more evil than tech bros) or remain in hands of wealth creators. What we should do is focus of punishingpeople who abuse thier power.

Somewhat similar to Paul Graham's essay _Inequality and Risk_[1]:

> I realize startups are not the main target of those who want to eliminate economic inequality. What they really dislike is the sort of wealth that becomes self-perpetuating through an alliance with power. ... But if you try to attack this type of wealth through economic policy, it's hard to hit without destroying startups as collateral damage.

> The problem here is not wealth, but corruption. So why not go after corruption?

[1] https://paulgraham.com/inequality.html

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other way is of an employee who has seen how her boss treats employees, and believes that her position, career, and livelihood would be in jeopardy if she wasn't working even in situations where no one should be expected to be working. Honestly, they need to grow a pair This kind of pressure (might) have worked for me if I was just out of university and such. But with experience you get to learn your boundaries…

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. These cowards are ruining workplaces everywhere by having no backbone and subjecting their subordinates to the whims of psychopathic leaders. Edit: it’s OK Meta employees. The best time to quit was years ago, the second best time is today.

At least they were not sleeping under their desks to stroke Musks's egomania.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#77
post #45

> A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism Has anyone ever seen Facebbok as idealistic? As far as I can tell, they've always been basically Amazon (the borg that will win at all costs) but a little more trivial, cool and Web2.0, they were never the "don't be evil" Google, the idealistic Twitter, I can't think of many less ideal driven companies. Facebook beat MySpace IMO because it tricked people into usi…

There was plenty of koolaid around.

https://www.map.cv/blog/redbook

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your opinion is wrong. Problems with social media notwithstanding, just because you don't like the person who's running/ruining/most associated with the brand, doesn't make the product itself bad. Most people don't give two fraks about who Bezos or Musk or Zuckerberg are, and they definitely don't think of them when using products and services from the companies you mentioned.

> Because your opinion is wrong. I was having a strong argument/discussion yesterday with a friend who is a communist. A real "I want hammer and sickle" kinda guy. He owns two homes, works for big-pharma, his wife works for big-logistic, scuba-diving vacations across the planet, very 'communist' way of life. His opinions (just as the parent-commenter) are not 'wrong'. His/her/our/their (not pronouns, just groups of p…

This post is such a cocktail of confusion with a dash of McCarthyism that I have to say thank you for existing, and keeping the torch of this muddled thinking all the way from the post-war period.

Thank you for never learning what communism means, for staying embattled and internalising the narrative, for your anecdotes about your rich friend who doesn't realize that communists are lurking out there, waiting to kill him and everyone with wealth, once they get in power.

I'd ask you to never change, but I know that you won't, you'll paint your future thoughts through the same stencil that I've heard and seen so many times. When you express this it feels like I get a taste of the real America, a trailer park with the metheads, the uncle that just got back from jail, educating his young nephew about how the world works.

"You see son, there are rich people and they are good. And there are bad folks called communists that are jealous and want to kill the good rich folks. Be sure to carry your gun with you and if you see any of them communists, shoot them up. Because we will be rich one day. God bless America."

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#79
post #45

> A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism Has anyone ever seen Facebbok as idealistic? As far as I can tell, they've always been basically Amazon (the borg that will win at all costs) but a little more trivial, cool and Web2.0, they were never the "don't be evil" Google, the idealistic Twitter, I can't think of many less ideal driven companies. Facebook beat MySpace IMO because it tricked people into usi…

It was also born by the guy - Zuck and arguably in a similar spirit - who initially created a hot or not webpage to rank female college classmates by "fuckability". No clue how any of this would come as a surprise if you know his history.

Brian Cantrill talks about how social media was born crocked [1] while referring to the eerily similar friendster backstory.

[1] https://youtu.be/0wtvQZijPzg?t=482

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#80
post #24
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly the "maximum big level" is something that reasonable people could disagree about, but I don't think a society is healthy when people can get as big as Zuckerberg, Musk, Altman, and Bezos have gotten. Individuals should not have that much power. It's not healthy.

It is definitely not healthy. But I don't think you can limit people's wealth and not call it communism. I think the real problem is abuse of power, not accumulation of it. Power cannot be eliminated. It will either end up in the hand of politicians (who are genuinely more evil than tech bros) or remain in hands of wealth creators. What we should do is focus of punishingpeople who abuse thier power.

There are several faults with this reasoning. Capital attracts capital, and with too low of marginal taxes, it pools at the top, increasing wealth inequality, hurting the non-elite's ability to compete, and squeezes the middle class. To say marginal taxes is communism is just wrong.

Capital attracting capital is as natural as power corrupting people. Instead of hoping people play nice and punishing the few who get caught and hoping against nature, the better alternative is to set up systems that encourage healthy, competitive markets through sensible rules, regulations, and redistribution.

Edit: re the socialism/communism scarecrow, back when woman started wearing pants in the US, they called it socialist. That same logic is oft applied today.

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