It’s really interesting thinking about what changed in tech and why all the leaders are like this. It used to be people developing and fitting technology to goals - mapping the world, enabling democratic power or niche hobby relationships - and that generally ended up being exciting and helpful.
But at some point tech became captured by a few specific ideas and technology - SaaS, AI, data mining - and every CEO now tries to fit the goals to the technology. It no longer matters to these people what the benefit to the user is, they just work backwards from what the technology can do and rationalize whatever it is as the goal.
When they stopped being run by engineers and all became ran by MBA’s.
That’s not to say there aren’t MBA’s with engineering degrees etc but they didn’t actually build anything themselves. They sycophanted their way to these positions of power and they’ll never be able to bring the wonder and passion into tech because they have none. They have passion for business but if you get turned on by privacy policies scam story telling, who boy the world is your oyster right now.
Now you could argue zuck was a founder engineer and he’s terrible as well. I’d say he’s a bad example at being anything.
So there are exceptions. Sergey Brin is an example of an engineer that drifted but Larry was the brains. Just like woz to Steve, just like Bill to Balmer.
Always two. One genius. One cheerleader. The cheerleader is always trapped by what is making them wealthy to parrot.
Who is Sundar Puchai’s cheerleader? Prabhakar Raghavan? We are so far away from a Larry Page keeping an idiot like Sergey in line.
Or Satya? A sub contracted Sam Altman maybe?
There is no culture except the culture of business to these guys. Quiet strategic relationships, reduction of ego which means no risk, no research, no bravado, and no muscle for creating.
It’s really interesting thinking about what changed in tech and why all the leaders are like this. It used to be people developing and fitting technology to goals - mapping the world, enabling democratic power or niche hobby relationships - and that generally ended up being exciting and helpful.
But at some point tech became captured by a few specific ideas and technology - SaaS, AI, data mining - and every CEO now tries to fit the goals to the technology. It no longer matters to these people what the benefit to the user is, they just work backwards from what the technology can do and rationalize whatever it is as the goal.
When they stopped being run by engineers and all became ran by MBA’s.
That’s not to say there aren’t MBA’s with engineering degrees etc but they didn’t actually build anything themselves. They sycophanted their way to these positions of power and they’ll never be able to bring the wonder and passion into tech because they have none. They have passion for business but if you get turned on by privacy policies scam story telling, who boy the world is your oyster right now.
Now you could argue zuck was a founder engineer and he’s terrible as well. I’d say he’s a bad example at being anything.
So there are exceptions. Sergey Brin is an example of an engineer that drifted but Larry was the brains. Just like woz to Steve, just like Bill to Balmer.
Always two. One genius. One cheerleader. The cheerleader is always trapped by what is making them wealthy to parrot.
Who is Sundar Puchai’s cheerleader? Prabhakar Raghavan? We are so far away from a Larry Page keeping an idiot like Sergey in line.
Or Satya? A sub contracted Sam Altman maybe?
There is no culture except the culture of business to these guys. Quiet strategic relationships, reduction of ego which means no risk, no research, no bravado, and no muscle for creating.