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…
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.
I think it’s easier to name the people who have been decent in tech. Woz seems like a decent guy.
Ted Waite all in all was decent. Not perfect but decent.
Stallman is a notable figure in the industry but he was never the leader of a large tech company. That’s probably why he’s a decent guy
Bill Gates was a huge piece of shit in his heyday, rivalling the Zuckerberg and Musks of today,
Bill Gates was a ruthless businessman destroying competition but as far as I know he didn’t support fascists or facilitate pogroms.
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter has done far more harm to our societies than whatever shady tactics Bill Gates used.
Not to take away from Zuckerberg, Musk, and the less-known people in tech like Thiel, but Bill Gates was and is a huge piece of shit who harmed more than just his competitors. Among other things he convinced the world that we need IP and patents for covid vaccines instead of sharing them freely, which alone cost countless lives around the world. I don’t even want to know what other ills his “philanthropy” has and will cause. https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines
Gates and Jobs both are responsible for consumer based computing. Proprietary software lynched what should have been a global birth of inventive software engineers.
The crap that Zuck shills had its groundwork laid by those two.
Before Microsoft, programmers were treated like factory workers by HP and IBM and setup in large open floor rooms like a secretary pool from the 1960’s. Gates thought programmers were important and gave every programmer a private office.
Gates did dirty tricks to competitors even to tiny ones they could have bought out (stacker). But he was never Musk’s level of evil.
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.
Steve Jobs decided to kill himself by being an idiot.
So…there was a redemption arc there.
I’m not a fan of Hitler Steve Jobs, but I am a big fan of the guy who killed Hitler Steve Jobs.
Yes but Steve Jobs also bought himself a pointless liver transplant that someone else didn’t get. One he would have never needed if he had listened to doctors instead of trying to treat a very treatable kind of cancer with a diet. So while he did the world a favor, he also took someone with him on the way out.
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
That was a single blow, Sun owned OpenOffice and MySQL when bought.
See the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation.
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.
I mean their unwillingness to do anything about the market abuse and rampant child-gambling aside, the lootboxes for purely cosmetic items are one of the least predatory ways to do microtransactions. It’s not like EA where the only way to unlock entire characters in some games is to grind for hundreds of hours or pay, or like COD where they took the lootbox idea and made it actually affect (multiplayer) gameplay
the least predatory ways to do microtransactions
Damning with faint praise.
You’re not going to out-compete the sociopaths if you’re a saint. That’s a reality.
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”.
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.
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.
