{"id":75977,"date":"2020-09-26T16:28:17","date_gmt":"2020-09-26T13:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-silicon-valley-ceos-are-such-raging-psychopaths\/"},"modified":"2020-09-26T16:28:17","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T13:28:17","slug":"why-silicon-valley-ceos-are-such-raging-psychopaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-silicon-valley-ceos-are-such-raging-psychopaths\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why Silicon Valley CEOs are such raging psychopaths"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Why Silicon Valley CEOs are such raging psychopaths<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Ma\u00eblle Gavet, a 15-year veteran of the tech industry, recalls an unsettling conversation she had at a Silicon Valley cocktail party in 2017.<\/p>\n

Gavet was chatting with an early investor at Uber and mentioned some of the disturbing news<\/a> surrounding the company\u2019s co-founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick. There were revelations about spying on passengers, sexual harassment, a toxic macho work culture, and according to Kalanick\u2019s own friends, his \u201caspirational baller syndrome.\u201d<\/p>\n

The investor, Gavet told The Post, just laughed and said, \u201cOh, no, he\u2019s so much worse than anybody knows.\u201d Gavet was nonplussed, asking the investor why he chose to do business with somebody so unrepentantly awful.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe may be an asshole,\u201d the investor told her. \u201cBut he\u2019s my asshole.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was just one of the many interactions that inspired Gavet to write her new book, \u201cTrampled by Unicorns: Big Tech\u2019s Empathy Problem and How to Fix It<\/a>\u201d (Wiley), out Tuesday. Though Kalanick was ousted as Uber\u2019s CEO in 2017 and stepped down from the company\u2019s board of directors earlier this year, his psychopathic behavior is all too common among Big Tech execs, Gavet writes.<\/p>\n

\"Rumors
Uber\u2019s ex-CEO Travis Kalanick has been accused of spying on passengers and building a toxic macho work culture.<\/span>NY Post composite\/Mike Guillen<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist \u2014 the universally accepted diagnostic tool used to assess this disorder \u2014 a psychopathic personality includes traits such as a grandiose sense of self-worth, a lack of remorse or guilt, poor behavioral controls, pathological lying and a lack of empathy.<\/p>\n

These attributes aren\u2019t just present \u201cbut celebrated in Silicon Valley,\u201d says Gavet, who once held the position of executive vice-president of global operations for Priceline Group, among other roles.<\/p>\n

News of bad behavior by Silicon Valley CEOs \u2014 from Elon Musk\u2019s tweeting out misinformation about the pandemic to WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann now being probed by the New York state attorney general<\/a> over allegations of self-dealing \u2014 has recently become so frequent, it\u2019s considered normal.<\/p>\n

Take Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, known for her eerie lack of blinking and an allegedly faked baritone voice. Once a Silicon Valley darling, she became a self-made billionaire by promising her blood-testing company would revolutionize health care with innovative finger-prick tests that delivered quick, painless, cheap results. But her claims were a lie. She now stands accused of fraud and is reportedly planning to make an insanity plea when she goes to trial this March.<\/p>\n

Through the power of her psychopathy, Holmes convinced many \u2014 including veteran investors and politicians \u2014 \u201cof her \u2018messianic vision\u2019 to defy reality with her \u2018miracle\u2019 blood-testing kit,\u201d Gavet writes.<\/p>\n

Research by the FBI found that companies managed by psychopaths tend to have decreased productivity and low employee morale. In fact, Silicon Valley\u2019s psychopathic traits \u201ctrickle down through entire organizations,\u201d says Gavet. \u201cIn effect creating psychopathic companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tweets
WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann is being probed by the New York state attorney general over allegations of self-dealing.<\/span>NY Post composite\/Mike Guillen<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is enabled by an \u201cinfantilized culture\u201d at many start-up companies, where employees become accustomed to working in \u201chyper-privileged bubbles where their every whim is catered to and every need anticipated,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

At Google, for instance, employees are treated to nap pods, free massages and a luxury hotel-style concierge service to run errands. The biotech firm Genentech reportedly offers perks like on-site car washes, haircuts, spa treatments and even a dentist.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy sheltering these guys in this little cocoon or womb, it kind of emphasizes that young male problem, where Mom takes care of everything,\u201d says Richard Walker, professor emeritus of geography at the University of California, Berkeley, and a veteran Valley-watcher. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of magical, where food just app<\/a>ears, and \u2018If my treat isn\u2019t there it\u2019s because Mom forgot to provide it!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s resulted in a serious lack of empathy, writes Gavet.<\/p>\n

In February 2018, a 61-year-old livery driver shot himself in front of City Hall in lower Manhattan, claiming he\u2019d lost his livelihood because of competition from Uber cars. \u201cI will forever remember the reaction of two of my friends working at Uber at the time,\u201d says Gavet.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring a dinner party, I asked how they felt about the suicide, and they were both like, \u2018It\u2019s sad, but it\u2019s the cost of disruption.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an excuse she\u2019s heard repeatedly. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you the number of times I\u2019ve heard people in Silicon Valley dismiss something horrible they may have caused with, \u2018That\u2019s the cost of disruption,\u2019\u2009\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018Yeah, it\u2019s awful, but we\u2019re trying to make the world a better place, so it\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

His legacy has cultivated an indelible association between being a jerk and a genius.<\/p>\n

\u00a0–\u00a0Ma\u00eblle Gavet on Steve Jobs<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While that behavior can be found in any industry, from Wall Street to mass media<\/a>, Gavet says it\u2019s particularly embedded and hard to fix in tech, \u201cbecause it tends to take root at the early stages of a start-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe types of things I witnessed over the years include the work hard\/play hard attitude, epitomized by a culture of booze-fueled partying; recklessness; the prioritizing of hyper-growth over sustainable profits; and demeaning comments about women and minorities,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

The examples of it are abundant, from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s non-apology after the Federal Trade Commission fined his company $5 billion for allowing Cambridge Analytica to mine user data for political purposes, to Jeff Bezos complaining during an engineer\u2019s presentation, \u201cWhy are you wasting my life?\u201d<\/p>\n

But some of the more glaring examples happen behind the scenes. Gavet spoke with a content moderator for Facebook, who worked for the company between 2017-2018 and looked for hate speech and graphic violence on the platform. He recalled flagging an image posted of a massacre in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

\"Amazon
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once said to an engineer during a presentation, \u201cWhy are you wasting my life?\u201d<\/span>NY Post composite\/Mike Guillen<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThere was an image of a baby with somebody\u2019s foot on its chest,\u201d he said. \u201cI had decided that was a dead baby because it wasn\u2019t fighting back.\u201d But his auditor felt otherwise, insisting there was no proof that the baby was dead, and the photo remained.<\/p>\n

Content moderators get a quality score and every image they mistakenly flag is a ding against their score. The result can be dehumanizing, according to Gavet.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine arguing about whether a baby is dead because you don\u2019t want to get your quality score down,\u201d she says. \u201cAll you care about is getting the point back, not whether the baby is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

The moderator who spoke to Gavet was later diagnosed with PTSD and is now suing Facebook.<\/p>\n

The patron saint of Big Tech douches, the one who inspired an entire generation of start-up entrepreneurs to put their worst face forward, was late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. He disliked wearing shoes (or showering), preferred parking in handicapped parking spots and once motivated employees by calling them \u201cf\u2013king d\u2013kless assholes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHis legacy has cultivated an indelible association between being a jerk and a genius,\u201d writes Gavet. \u201cWhich has ballooned to the point where many people believe that a founder-CEO, in particular, actually has to be a jerk to be a genius.\u201d<\/p>\n

She calls it the Steve Jobs Syndrome, and she\u2019s witnessed both powerful and up-and-coming tech exes believing in the myth like it\u2019s doctrine. Theranos CEO Holmes ruthlessly copied Jobs \u2014 not just by wearing black turtlenecks \u2014 but also by following his example of persuading people \u201cto believe he was a prophet even when he was wrong,\u201d Gavet writes.<\/p>\n

\"Apple
Late Apple CEO Steve Jobs preferred parking in handicapped parking spots and once motivated employees by calling them \u201cf\u2013king d\u2013kless assholes.\u201d<\/span>NY Post composite\/Mike Guillen<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gavet recalls working with a high-profile tech founder \u2014 she was overseeing the company\u2019s acquisitions \u2014 and \u201cevery time I called him out on his lack of empathy and humility, which clearly led to many disastrous decisions, he would say to me, \u2018Steve Jobs didn\u2019t build Apple by being humble and caring about people.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

These myths wouldn\u2019t survive if the CEOs alone believed them. Former WeWork CEO Neumann was celebrated in the media for his audacious leadership style \u2014 from barefoot strolls through Manhattan to offering his employees tequila shots and Run DMC concerts in the office.<\/p>\n

But Neumann\u2019s success was a mirage. \u201cHe made millions leasing buildings he partly owned back to WeWork,\u201d Gavet writes. He also bought the trademark to the word \u201cwe\u201d and then sold the trademark use to WeWork, his own company, for $5.9 million.<\/p>\n

After initially being valued at $47\u2009billion in January 2019, WeWork\u2019s worth reportedly dropped to $10 billion in September that same year. But when Neumann stepped down as CEO, he was paid $185 million as a \u201cconsulting fee.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neumann isn\u2019t the only CEO who\u2019s been rewarded for actively making things worse for investors. In early May, Tesla CEO Musk tweeted, \u201cTesla stock price is too high, IMO.\u201d Within an hour of his tweet, the Tesla share price plummeted 10 percent, wiping $14 billion off the company\u2019s stock market value. One investor tweeted back at Musk, \u201cDude \u2026 I just lost $10k because of this tweet. Wtf is wrong with U?\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only is Musk still Tesla\u2019s CEO, but his net worth also jumped this summer to $103 billion, up from $22.4 billion last year, making him the third-richest person in the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For anything to change, Gavet argues that companies need to take a more empathetic approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need to hire differently, promote differently, reward differently,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m an optimist, but I\u2019m also a capitalist. I believe there are ways to make a company more empathetic, more reasonable, a force of good in the world. And I believe in the long run, that would actually be beneficial for the businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

She sees evidence of it happening already. Tim Bray, a celebrated engineer at Amazon and their onetime vice president of Web Services, quit his job in May because of the \u201ctoxicity running through the company culture,\u201d as he wrote in a blog post.<\/p>\n

\u201cI choose neither to serve nor drink that poison,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Bray isn\u2019t alone in recognizing the toxic culture, but many are unsure how to take a stand.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the CEOs I\u2019m close to \u2014 and I still think they are, to a large extent, psychopaths \u2014 they\u2019re struggling,\u201d says Gavet. \u201cThey tell me, \u2018It feels like I\u2019m damned if I do, damned if I don\u2019t.\u2019 They get criticized for being too aggressive, but when they try to be empathetic, they\u2019re criticized for being too soft.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trend of psychopathy at the top of Big Tech won\u2019t be \u201cdisrupted,\u201d Gavet says, until we stop expecting the next Steve Jobs to be as abrasive and psychotic as, well \u2026 Steve Jobs.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

\n

For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Why Silicon Valley CEOs are such raging psychopaths” Ma\u00eblle Gavet, a 15-year veteran of the tech industry, recalls an unsettling conversation she had at a Silicon Valley cocktail party in 2017. Gavet was chatting with an early investor at Uber and mentioned some of the disturbing news surrounding the company\u2019s co-founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/09\/zuckerberg-musk-holmes.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[72948,11154,73007,73008,33355,70759],"class_list":["post-75977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-9-26-20","tag-ceos","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-psychology","tag-silicon-valley","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}