Why Mark Zuckerberg Is a Bad Role Model For Aspiring Tech Execs

Confirmed by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-03 04:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's not a myth if it happened on multiple occasions...

Re:Confirmed by seven+of+five · 2012-07-03 04:54 · Score: 2

Jobs and Wozniak, to name two more...
Re:Confirmed by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-03 04:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

Apart from some small element of skill it is no different from the lottery really.
Re:Confirmed by Sporkinum · 2012-07-03 05:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

Education is a microscopic part of it. Being in the right place at the right time, or having the right family is the real multiplier.
Obviously this academic douche bag doesn't understand his own analogy.
"I've met as many successful tech CEOs who have dropped out college as I've met folks who have won the lottery," says Professor Jerry Luftman, managing director of the Global Institute for IT Management, who holds doctorate in Information Systems from Stevens Institute of Technology. "There are always going to be exceptions to any rule. But if you are a betting person, you would increase your odds of becoming a tech executive if you have a college education and a senior executive if you have a management degree."

--
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Re:Confirmed by StripedCow · 2012-07-03 06:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

I wouldn't call it a lottery, but it is close. The chaotic nature of capitalism is what rules.
Che Guevara:

The laws of capitalism, which are blind and are invisible to ordinary people, act upon the individual without he or she being aware of it. One sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon ahead. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller — whether or not it is true — about the possibilities of individual success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly.... It is a contest among wolves. One can win only at the cost of the failure of others.

--
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Re:Confirmed by jfdavis668 · 2012-07-03 06:43 · Score: 2

Wozniak returned to college and received his degree after he became rich. He realized he needed it.
Re:Confirmed by iamhassi · 2012-07-03 07:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

Jobs and Wozniak, to name two more...
and did anyone noticed the title is wrong?

"Why Mark Zuckerberg Is a Bad Role Model For Aspiring Tech Execs"

because... he's not? He became his own tech exec, he wasn't elected, he wasn't hired, he didn't go to college to study business to be a CEO someday. Went to college, made a local "hot or not" clone, stole some guy's idea for a social networking, got noticed by the right people early on and the rest is history.

So yeah, if you want to be a CEO running a successful US high-tech firm, don't follow Zuckerberg.

But if you have a startup that you're trying to launch, Zuckerberg might not be a bad role model.

--
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Re:Confirmed by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-03 07:21 · Score: 2

One can win only at the cost of the failure of others.
How much failure did Guevera heap on others until he got what he deserved? How much does Castro's royal line continue to steal? Face it. A communist is just a robber barron with a different marketing plan.
Re:Confirmed by jedidiah · 2012-07-03 08:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

The main problem with this article is it is conflating two rather distinct things. It is trying to confuse founding your own successful company with running someone else's behemoth.
Gates and Jobs and Zuckerberg weren't just handed the keys to IBM or AT&T. They built their own empires.
It's an entirely different thing. Minding someone else's store once it has become a monstrosity is a different skills set.
When you are your own boss and you write your own tunes, it might not matter if you can't play anyone else's.

--
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Re:Confirmed by geekmux · 2012-07-03 08:34 · Score: 2

Wozniak returned to college and received his degree after he became rich. He realized he needed it.
Uh, after he became rich? Then clearly he wanted a degree, he certainly didn't need it.
BIG difference attending college out of luxury vs. necessity.

many decades? by damn_registrars · 2012-07-03 04:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

As in the summary:

run a successful high-tech start-up for many decades

How can you possibly say that Zuckerberg will run a company for many decades, when he isn't even many decades old? He hasn't even been old enough to drive a car for a decade, let alone old enough to run a company for "many decades". Being as facebook is doing less-than-brilliantly in the stock market, it seems at the very least overly optimistic to say that it will be around for "many decades".

--
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.

Re:many decades? by ShieldW0lf · 2012-07-03 05:08 · Score: 2, Interesting

Question is, do you want to START a company, or RUN a company. If you want to START a company, you need to have a drive that doesn't mesh well with sitting at the knee of an authority figure and have him dump his views into your brain. RUNNING someone elses company, on the other hand... any retard can do that. When you get right down to it, the best would be to just go play golf and not screw up what was working before you arrived in an effort to leave your mark.

--
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Re:many decades? by gtall · 2012-07-03 05:15 · Score: 5, Informative

You really have no idea what it takes to run a company, even a small one. Your day is constantly filled with making decisions. With no game plan other than "don't screw up", you will run into the problem that one decision you made last year screwed up a decision you made this year. There are competitors to think about, cash-flow, investor relations, employee compensation, accounting rules, government regulation, community relations, employee relations, the direction of your industry, understanding what makes your company unique such that it deserves a niche, etc.
Re:many decades? by DogDude · 2012-07-03 05:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

"RUNNING someone elses company, on the other hand... any retard can do that."

You're an idiot.

--
I don't respond to AC's.
Re:many decades? by muon-catalyzed · 2012-07-03 05:39 · Score: 2

To run your own company like Zuckerberg or Gates, you do not need any credentials, who really cares? You are the boss. But to run company that belongs to somebody else or a public company to answer hordes of greedy shareholders, that is a different story altogether. Then my friend, you need every blessing, connections, academic achievements etc.
Re:many decades? by Dinghy · 2012-07-03 06:12 · Score: 2

You really have no idea what it takes to run a company, even a small one.
Which takes us back to why Zuckerberg is a bad role model. Neither does he.
Re:many decades? by Mashiki · 2012-07-03 07:12 · Score: 2

When you get right down to it, the best would be to just go play golf and not screw up what was working before you arrived in an effort to leave your mark.
Obama tried that, I don't think it worked.

--
Om, nomnomnom...
Re:many decades? by Kreigaffe · 2012-07-03 08:09 · Score: 2

And frankly at the end of the day, I'd be glad as hell to be known as "that terrible CEO", as a single year's salary and separation compensation are significantly more than most people will make in decades

--
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about. :|
Re:many decades? by shiftless · 2012-07-03 11:15 · Score: 2

Good people run their own companies.
Wrong. Your "friend" is obviously a poor leader.

cause and effect vs commonality by v1 · 2012-07-03 04:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

Be careful not to automatically interpret correlation as causation.

In other words, the degree may not be what's making the CEO, but rather that the odds of CEO material also having a degree is high.

CEOs also tend to own more than one car. Doesn't mean you should go buy a second car to improve your odds of becoming a CEO.

--
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.

Re:cause and effect vs commonality by ShadyG · 2012-07-03 05:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

There probably isn't much cause and effect between degrees and one-in-a-billion success as an entrepreneur. I imagine Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and others would do about the same either way. The degree is for finding your footing when life informs you you're one of the other 999,999,999.

--
Nerd Rock In Progress
Re:cause and effect vs commonality by Sir_Sri · 2012-07-03 05:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

It takes tremendous insight and a bit of luck to know that right now is absolutely the right time to be in this business and that even waiting a couple more years to finish your degree is waiting too long.
Now the thing is, if you guess wrong, you can always go back and finish assuming you haven't completely wiped out any hope you ever had of having any access to money (parents, loans, etc). So I'm sure there are a lot more people who drop out of school to start a business and then end up back at school trying to finish their degrees a few years later than there are people who have a meteoric rise to success.
Re:cause and effect vs commonality by binary+paladin · 2012-07-03 09:03 · Score: 2

I'm sorry, exactly which one of 1 - 5 require "high education"?
1. So, you can't learn to research properly without going through "higher education"? Seriously?
2. Try managing your own business. You'll learn this one really quick or you won't be managing your own business for very long.
3. See above.
4. Or you could take the money you were going to drop on college and live in a foreign country for a year. Or, I don't know, find a new social circle.
5. Really?
Higher education isn't the be all, end all. It's a path and it's a useful path for a lot of people. The idea, however, the it's the best path or the only path for many goals is ridiculous. (Not the mention, the continuously inflating price of said institutions shows that academia is just as corrupt as all business out there.)

Myth? by afidel · 2012-07-03 04:58 · Score: 4, Informative

Ellison
Gates
Jobs
Zuckerberg

That's most of the tech money that isn't IBM or HP.

--
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.

Re:Myth? by NeutronCowboy · 2012-07-03 05:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

#1 While Zuckerberg has money now, I want to see if that is still true 3 years from now. The stock market is a cruel mistress.
#2 Ellison, Gates and Jobs are probably three of the most brilliant and ruthless people on the planet, who also lucked into a set of extraordinary circumstances (what would Jobs have been without Woz, and what would Gates have been without rich parents?)
#3 Dropping out of school because your business is far more interesting and time consuming than school is entirely different from dropping out of school because "degrees don't correlate with success).
#4 That's three people. Three people who made it without a degree. There are far more variables that impact success than can be properly identified and isolated through the anecdotal stories of three people.
#5 That's not to say that degrees are necessary - they clearly aren't necessary, by the mathematical definition of the word. But they give you a hell of a leg up on the competition.
Anybody who says that degrees are useless is trying to sell you something else, or is trying to make sure that you won't become competition.
So in that sense, yes, it is a myth that successful entrepreneurs don't need degrees.

--
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Re:Myth? by artor3 · 2012-07-03 06:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

Those are four people. Yes, they have a lot of money, but think of it this way:
Would you prefer a 1 in 10,000,000 chance to be a billionaire (and end up flipping burgers if you fail), or a 1 in 1000 chance to be a millionaire (and end up with a decent paying job if you fail)?
A college degree is both safer and has a higher probability of success. The rewards might be lower, but that cannot be concluded from such a small sample size, and at any rate they're still enough for any reasonable person to live comfortably.
Re:Myth? by kubernet3s · 2012-07-03 07:17 · Score: 2

Apples and oranges, really. Not having a college degree, even fifty years ago, let alone 150, did not mean as much as it does now. Mostly because the "tech" sector and scientific enterprise as a whole was composed of low hanging fruit anyone with a few bucks and some know-how could bang together in their garage. Seriously, the phonograph, light bulb, and electric motor are all things that a person could learn the principles of construction from reading a few books: even before their invention. Try getting a home workshop set up as a clean room suitable for solar power or semiconductor research, and try doing those things effectively just by consulting a manual. The original apple computers were BUILT by Jobs and Wozniak: try hacking together a mobile device yourself with meager capital, and see where that gets you; it's still going to cost you more per unit than Apple spends, and you won't get anywhere near the volume.

This is one of the most offensive lies that tech sector monopolists try to cram down our throats: that "anyone" can make it because they did. If you work in a rapidly growing industry, like personal computing (Apple and Microsoft), social media and advertising (Facebook) or genocide and global war (IBM) you stand to make a lot of money without a lot of book-larnin', but this is a matter of luck and not of "skill." People like Jobs and Zuck just did something that made them money, and when the opportunity to make more money arose, they took it. Despite media portrayals, they did not map out their success out from day one. Steve Jobs did not say "let's make middle-market hardware and software focused on usability for thirty years, and then something called "smartphones" will be possible and we'll move into that market." And for every Microsoft or Apple or Facebook, there's scores of Commodore's, Friendster's, and AOL's. These were not visionaries who were too smart to be taught, they are lucky beneficiaries of a system which allows few to thrive, and selects those few in a way that is almost entirely arbitrary

Re:first by Hoffy97 · 2012-07-03 04:59 · Score: 2, Funny

If you're gonna troll to be the first post, at least make sure you ARE the first post...

And if you don't have a CS degree... by bi$hop · 2012-07-03 05:00 · Score: 5, Funny

...just pretend. I'm pretty sure eBay and Yahoo won't even notice.

If you have a great idea... by deisama · 2012-07-03 05:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you have a great idea, you should see it through. You can always go back to college later, and the experience of pursuing it will be far more beneficial to you than any class you could possibly take.

If you don't have a great idea, than dropping out of college is stupid and will gain you very little.

Re:If you have a great idea... by Electricity+Likes+Me · 2012-07-03 06:01 · Score: 2

I agree with the AC, and would point out that the OP doesn't explicitly say it though.
There's a big difference between dropping out to pursue a new idea you haven't yet developed, and dropping out to expand an already successful idea to something more large scale.
Re:If you have a great idea... by ZombieBraintrust · 2012-07-03 06:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

Ideas have a shelf life. If Zuckerburg, Gates, or Jobs had waited then they would of missed the boat. You simply can't wait two years on any piece of tech. There are 9 billion people on the earth. If you wait, one of those other people will have the same idea and attempt it first.

Re:Degree = CEO ? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-03 05:02 · Score: 3, Funny

Hey Philosophy Major, is my latte ready yet?

Opportunity by tnk1 · 2012-07-03 05:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

Being as big as a Gates or a Zuckerberg is more a function of opportunity than pure education or even talent. Not to underestimate their abilities, of course, but I'd say there are plenty of people with the academic capabilities (or better) of both of those two, but they will never be more than well-paid employees.

The important thing is finding and knowing what to do with opportunities, and then learning what you need to in order to take advantage of it. People with more education will have more specialized knowledge, but interestingly, I'd say that they gain more from the currency of simply having the piece of paper and any networking they can do in the graduate programs. In this way, I'd say that it is 100% true that the higher education *system* helps find more opportunities for advancement, starting with the requirement for a graduate degree for a better job, but going even further than that.

Still, the right opportunity and the means to take advantage of it is what is actually required. The rest of it is just positioning. In the end, you don't get rich being a great practitioner of a particular science or engineering field, you get rich either managing your business, or getting it to the point where others can manage it for you. Of course, dropping out is like buying only one lottery ticket instead of multiple tickets. You can still win it all on the one ticket, but chances are much better you win if you invest more.

Re:Opportunity by Maximum+Prophet · 2012-07-03 05:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

Being as big as a Gates or a Zuckerberg is more a function of opportunity than pure education or even talent. Not to underestimate their abilities, of course, but I'd say there are plenty of people with the academic capabilities (or better) of both of those two, but they will never be more than well-paid employees.
Yes, having parents that can easily pay for Harvard or Yale is more important to your future wealth than actually *graduating* from Harvard or Yale.

--
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Re:Opportunity by toastar · 2012-07-03 06:17 · Score: 2

My dad always said, " It's not what you learn in college it's who you meet."

The Lottery by firewrought · 2012-07-03 05:04 · Score: 2

It seems like there are a lot of jobs--and career paths--that offer a very low chance of fabulous wealth: dropping out of college for a tech startup, writing a novel, becoming a fashion designer, going to Hollywood, starting a trendy restaurant, dealing crack, doing anything artistic (ballet/sculptur/rock band), day trading, pro sports, being an "inventor", etc. For most people, it's a recipe for going broke or just subsisting. For a few, it leads to greatness.

And while humanity needs risk-takers, and it needs people to strive for greatness, I feel we over-glamorize the few (ALL of whom benefited from generous portions of luck in addition to the hard work and personnel genius they may have contributed) instead of emphasizing the steady, dependable careers that offer a good chance of honest work for honest pay (maybe not in this economy though :-().

--
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction

Re:seriously? by vlm · 2012-07-03 05:05 · Score: 3, Funny

Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning...

I read it as the only thing better than being surrounded in class by nymphomaniac college girls is being a multimillionaire tech startup CEO surrounded in class by nymphomaniac college girls.

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger

Disagree by pak9rabid · 2012-07-03 05:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

FTA:

There are always going to be exceptions to any rule. But if you are a betting person, you would increase your odds of becoming a tech executive if you have a college education and a senior executive if you have a management degree.

I respectfully disagree. What do Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniac, Michael Dell, and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? They were smart enough to realize that you have to strike while the iron is hot. All staying in school would have done for these guys is ensure that they missed the boat on their respective opportunities and found themselves in arguably more menial jobs as a result.

This article sounds like it was sponsored by a bunch of universities or something.

Great, an article from network world. by gl4ss · 2012-07-03 05:07 · Score: 2

complete with annoying survey tacked on the article.

the site and article are aimed at essentially people holding masters in "business" - that's phb's, nobody fucking else would bother to read a site with hover-spam and popups.

(here's the print link, all in one page http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/news/2012/070212-tech-ceo-college-260546.html&pagename=/news/2012/070212-tech-ceo-college-260546.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/070212-tech-ceo-college-260546.html&site=printpage&nsdr=n )

basically, if you want a job running a big company _for someone else_ then you need a degree most of the time. but hell, they chose to include even a guy who's running a company because he inherited the position. sure zuck might not get an interview for ceo position at another company - but most companies would set him up for an interview to buy the fucking company - but if he didn't own facebook he would be just a regular schmo.

interesting list would be one of tech companies ran to the ground by ceo's with perfectly good credentials on paper, even McBride had degrees you know - on the very thing he fucked up!

besides, what the fuck defines "an aspiring tech executive"? I can understand what defines an aspiring engineer, but not technology executive - is it like aspiring to be a venture capitalist, only playing with someone elses money already given to him to play with, with projects already given to him?

--
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.

Re:And... by dc29A · 2012-07-03 05:07 · Score: 5, Informative

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.

Definitely a bad role model by OzPeter · 2012-07-03 05:10 · Score: 2

But not because he dropped out of college, but for doing things like buying Instagram for $1B without consulting his board.

--
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?

What about the myth of the non-drop out? by Kergan · 2012-07-03 05:14 · Score: 2

Summary mentions the myth of the ivy league drop out...

Dare I ask? What about the myth of the grad student who has a stellar career in the midst of the biggest college/university fee hike --and possibly the shittiest economy-- in history?

Anyone care to tell them that their lifetime salary bump for having their degree will not necessarily pay for the debt they took on early in life, since the career prospects for many of them will be flipping burgers or waiting at restaurants anyway? (Don't laugh, most of you have been served at least once by a lawyer or PhD. It occasionally pays better.

Re:And... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-03 05:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks.

How to be rich and successful in corporate America: be a selfish, backstabbing cunt with no conscience!

That's what we want! That's what we select for! The compassionate, mature guy well he can just go on welfare, fuck him. We love our sociopaths. Sociopath?! Where?!?!?! Here, Mr. Sociopath, let me give you some money and power, yeahhhh that's the stuff.

Re:And... by GameboyRMH · 2012-07-03 05:31 · Score: 3, Insightful

THIS

Forget any minor shit about his education, Zuckerberg is a real-life supervillain, destroying humanity's concept of privacy and commercializing human relationships for his own personal gain.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel

Also Richard Branson, Amadeo Peter Giannini, ... by tlambert · 2012-07-03 05:33 · Score: 3, Informative

OK, BofA is stretching "high tech" a little...

Richard Branson - Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Galactic, plus all of http://www.virgin.com/company
David Geffen - Dreamworks
Ted Murphy - izea.com
Tom Anderson - myspace.com
David Karp - Tumblr.com
Y.C. Wang - fpusa.com
Rob Kalin - etsy.com
Theodore Waitt - gateway.com
Shawn Fanning - napster.com
Steve Wozniak - apple.com
Kevin Rose - digg.com
Dustin Moskovitz - Cofounder, Facebook
Jerry Yang - yahoo.com
Amadeo Peter Giannini - Bank of America, perhaps you've heard of it
Craig McCaw - McCaw Cellular
Ashley Qualls - whateverlife.com
Pete Cashmore - mashable.com
Jeffrey Kalmikoff - Threadless.com
Ben Kaufman - kluster.com
Red McComb - Clear Channel
Bram Cohen - BitTorrent
Gurbaksh Chahal - Blue Lithium, Click Again

Shorter version. by king+neckbeard · 2012-07-03 05:43 · Score: 2

He's a lottery winner. There was nothing special about facebook. He happened to be at the right place at the right time to have his otherwise unremarkable network become popular, and he didn't turn it to complete shit as fast as myspace did.

--
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Like other jobs... by Shoten · 2012-07-03 05:45 · Score: 4, Interesting

Remember the woman who played the young John Connor's step/foster mother in T2? Yeah, I don't know her name either, and that's my point. She's one of those actors/actresses whose face you remember, but whose name you don't. But as a result of having small parts in so many movies, she's pulling in somewhere at the low seven figures from royalties. She's not Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham-Carter or any other famous professional from the acting world, but she embodies a more likely form of success to anyone who would choose acting as a career. But alas, the center of the bell curve is never all that interesting...and nobody wants to be at the lower side of what falls off the slope. So everyone focuses on the exceptional and strange (in a good way) examples.

--

For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.

Re:Like other jobs... by dkleinsc · 2012-07-03 06:31 · Score: 2

I once ended up on a plane next to a Hollywood actress. I started asking about work she's done, and of course I hadn't heard of it, and definitely didn't know who she was. She explained that almost all actresses and actors in Hollywood made a decent but not great living doing bit parts in various movies and TV shows, and that it was a fairly good job all told but not one that would ever make her millions.

--
I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/

Completely Disagree by RumorControl · 2012-07-03 05:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

What is not mentioned here is that the methods by which those great tech startups got big.

" behind every great fortune is a great crime"

Apple
Microsoft
Facebook
Oracle
are all great heists

And thus it's good to study those crimes if you wish to become rich. The MBA is really good training for finding your mark to exploit and understanding risks..but anyone can steal.

Does the industry exist? by trout007 · 2012-07-03 06:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

The real thing these guys have in common is they didn't just create companies they helped created industries.

So if you want to start a company that does something other companies do it would make sense to go to school and learn about those industries. But if you want to create an industry that doesn't exist you are not going to learn it in school.

--
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.

Re:And... by Quiet_Desperation · 2012-07-03 06:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

If that passes for a supervillain in your universe, where's the portal to get there?

In my universe the run of the mill villains slaughter people without remorse or conscience; win public office based on lies and then force their demented wills on the people with the full force of government agencies (staffed by personality types that love to get all up in your shit with force) at their backs; wage wars with vague purpose and no end game, or just because someone's great great grandparent did some uncertain bad thing to someone else's great great grandparent; head up thuggish dictatorships that commit genocide and slavery; run hideous anti-science, misogynist religions; leave dozens of decapitated bodies hanging from bridges merely as a warning to others; hire physicists to build economic models that eventually crash the economy; write laws that lead to the hiring of physicists to build models that eventually crash the economy; refuse to see the society destroying fallacies of their own ideologies despite endless empirical evidence, and, oh, so many other things.

Geez, your universe considered some jackass offering a free and voluntary service with dubious fine print a supervillain? Let me pack my bags!

Busted by slew · 2012-07-03 06:17 · Score: 2

Woz: never the CEO of apple
Jobs: not the first (Michael Scott), nor second (Mike Markkula), nor third (John Sculley), nor fourth (Michael Spindler), nor fifth (Gil Amelio) CEO of apple. Not 'till he was fired from Apple did he become the CEO of NeXT...

Perhaps you could conclude from this that getting fired and starting your own company is the model for aspiring Tech Execs?

Re:And... by water-and-sewer · 2012-07-03 06:45 · Score: 4, Funny

On behalf of every would-be tyrant, autocrat, dictator, and fiend, I'd like to THANK Zuck. I mean Christ, who needs to invest in expensive and complicated counter-terrorism and surveillance services when you can just put a person in front of a computer and they'll happily blab away their every secret in exchange for links to silly cats and pictures with text over them?

Facebook is the best thing to happen to dictators in a while. It's a tremendous source of information, it's not hard to hack (and has BEEN hacked on numerous occasions), and gives the tyrant an almost complete picture of who you hang out with, when, where, and what you discuss. DickTater know what you like, what you do, where you work, where you studied, and who your co-subversives are.

So thanks, Zuck. Being a tyrant was never so easy. In fact "using Facebook" makes up a large part of chapter 9 (Communications & Media) of the Dictators Handbook (http://www.dictatorshandbook.net/). True!

--
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.

Re:And... by CodeHxr · 2012-07-03 07:13 · Score: 2

He's not the only one - just one of the most visible. I estimate that a very large portion of "corporate america" has only gotten where they are today because of the large amount of dumb fucks in the world.

Re:In Zuck's defense... by dna_(c)(tm)(r) · 2012-07-03 08:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

[...] but it's no different than what dozens of other corps want to do or are doing with your data[...]

That does not make it right.

Re:And... by Just+Another+Perl+Ha · 2012-07-03 08:19 · Score: 2

You sir, are a net drain on society.

Re:And... by tnk1 · 2012-07-03 08:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

So, you discriminate against people upon how they dress?

It's great to be comfortable or a rebel and all, but the way humans (and computers) interact seamlessly is through standards. Clothing may seem trivial to you, but dressing for business is a statement that you are there *for* business. You can still be there for business if you wear a hoodie, but it becomes open to interpretation, just as Zuck's choice of apparel was.

That lack of clarity can ruffle feathers and be enough to make a difficult negotiation impossible. Sometimes, that sort of clash is a statement, and as such, may be a good idea, but it comes with a risk.

One way or the other, anyone who expects their bits to arrive in an expected manner, but rails against people who arrive dressed in an expected manner isn't considering the value of convention to efficient and clear communication.

Re:And... by Cute+Fuzzy+Bunny · 2012-07-03 09:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

Nah, we're not posting this from a cave because the cave didn't impress women, so we built houses with electricity in them and running water.

Absolutely everything on earth came about because of pussy. If there were no pussy, we would be sitting in caves gnawing on raw meat.

Re:And... by Cute+Fuzzy+Bunny · 2012-07-03 10:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

To be fair, we'd have probably invented beer without pussy. But we may have invented it sooner so as to engage the really fat cave girls.

Re:And... by shiftless · 2012-07-03 10:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's great to be comfortable or a rebel and all, but the way humans (and computers) interact seamlessly is through standards. Clothing may seem trivial to you, but dressing for business is a statement that you are there *for* business.

Fuck your standards.

Clothing IS trivial. Only meatheads obsess over what people wear.

You can still be there for business if you wear a hoodie, but it becomes open to interpretation, just as Zuck's choice of apparel was.

Only a dumbass would have such an interpretation. All the smart people in the room were focused on what was actually important: the gigantic Facebook IPO.

That lack of clarity can ruffle feathers and be enough to make a difficult negotiation impossible.

Why would you want to negotiate with a moron? There are lots of billionaires in the world. Why would you want a moron as your investor?

Sometimes, that sort of clash is a statement, and as such, may be a good idea, but it comes with a risk.

Only for cowards. Leaders aren't "risking" a goddamn thing, because they are the ones who set the example.

One way or the other, anyone who expects their bits to arrive in an expected manner, but rails against people who arrive dressed in an expected manner isn't considering the value of convention to efficient and clear communication.

And what the fuck are you trying to "communicate" exactly, through your fancy suit? That you paid a lot of money for it? That you have a tailor? That you are willing to cow down and blend in the crowd and be just like all the other lemmings, when you aren't and don't want to be?

Re:And... by datavirtue · 2012-07-03 15:26 · Score: 2

Only meatheads obsess over what people wear.

People don't obsess, they just see you and a perception automatically floods their mind. Where I work there are people who show up in shorts and gym shoes. That's cool and all but they are also on the verge of getting fired and although this dress-code is not disallowed it matters to the people who want them fired. Obviously there are other matters affecting the discontent, but the attire, as the above post mentioned, is not helping matters at all.

--
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock

Slashdot Mirror

Why Mark Zuckerberg Is a Bad Role Model For Aspiring Tech Execs

62 of 326 comments (clear)