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Psychopathic CEOs Are Rife In Silicon Valley, Experts Say (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: There is a high proportion of psychopathic CEOs in Silicon Valley, enabled by protective investors and weak human resources departments, according to a panel of experts at SXSW festival. Although the term "psychopath" typically has negative connotations, some of the attributes associated with the disorder can be advantageous in a business setting. "A true psychopath is someone that has a blend of emotional, interpersonal, lifestyle and behavioral deficits but an uncanny ability to mask them. They come across as very charming, very gregarious. But underneath there's a profound lack of remorse, callousness and a lack of empathy," said forensic and clinical psychologist Michael Woodworth, who has worked with psychopathic murderers in high security prisons, on Tuesday. According to recent studies there's a high prevalence of psychopathy among high-level executives in a corporate environment: 4-8% compared with 1% in the general population. This makes sense, according to Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bryan Stolle because "it's an irrational act to start a company." "You have to have a tremendous amount of ego [and] self-deception to embark on that journey," he said. "You have to make sacrifices and give up things, including sometimes a marriage, family and friends. And you have to convince other people. So they are mostly very charismatic, charming and make you suspend the disbelief that something can't be done." However, the positive attributes are accompanied by manipulation. "One of the main things that makes them extremely difficult to organizations is their willingness to manipulate through deception," said Jeff Hancock, a Stanford social scientist who studies psychopathy. "Psychopaths will handpick people they can use as lackeys or supporters, such as someone in HR they can have in their wheelhouse," said Woodworth.
Am I the only one who has had more issues with power tripping HR departments than CEOs?
First, no, we cannot. Psychos are psychos because they don't care about you. You can't "get" them to do anything iif they don't care about you.
godzilla-let-them-fight-quote.jpg. I didn't say get the psychopaths to care about us and help us. I said give them a different target: other psychopaths.
The Founders understood this. This is why we have 3 separate but co-equal branches of government. They knew psychos would go into government (monopoly on violence, WAY better than money), so make the psychos in the legislature fight the psychos in the executive branch fight the psychos in the judicial branch and hopefully mostly ignore the little people on the ground. The problem is now the psychos on Wall Street have bought all the psychos in Washington D.C..
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Well, there's always Warren Buffett, who is pretty much what the rest of them pretend to be. He started his first business in middle school, filed his first income tax return at 14 years old, made his first sale of a business at age 16, for the equivalent of $16,240 in modern dollars. Today he runs a 140 billion dollar company whose headquarters has twenty employees and no conference rooms.
Buffett is by all reports amazing to work for. Being a manager in a company acquired by him has been compared to hitting the lottery. Once he decides you know what you're doing he just lets you do your thing. When the CEO of Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad called Buffett to report that flooding was going to cost the company a half billion dollars, Buffett reportedly responded, "You're not a publicly traded company, so why are you calling me?"
Buffett may be a genius, but part of his success surely is that his genius is unhindered by personal drama. There is immense power to that combination of intellectual spark, ambition, and ... agreeableness.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I have had the misfortune of encountering two psychopaths in my life. One rented a room from me and I worked with an occupational psychopath which is exactly what we are talking about here. It took me a long time to work out what they were.
This is because the tactics of manipulation they use is beguiling and confusing. You are never certain if it is you or what is going on. If they meet your friends they will manipulate them and turn them against you with lies of 'MrKaos said this or that'. They will turn all of your peer group against you until you are dependent on them and completely at their mercy. And there will be no mercy. You will be manipulated until you either have a nervous breakdown, which I nearly did, or you kill yourself.
For me the first psychopath was eventually exposed and responded by threatened me with a meat knife, twice, and other physical threats of violence. Now I am no push over. I was in my late 20s at the time and had about a decade of martial arts training to draw on. I knew as soon as that knife moved, my life as I knew it would be over. Instead of acting threatened I acted un-threatened, thinking that I would take that knife and use it against him, because that is what would have to happen. Psychopaths admire power. If you are powerful you can beguile them enough to escape, even temporarily.
After several attempts at physical confrontations he eventually tried to ambush me. As I avoided his pathetic attempt to hurt me I sidestepped his assault, hit him under the neck and, with immense satisfaction, drove his head directly into the concrete upon which he was standing, ensuring there was no bounce and he would receive the full damage of my defense. I told him that if he ever came near me again - well you can guess what I said. He didn't stop and it took several years of being harassed and subsequent court cases to get this motherfucker out of my life.
Several years later my second encounter was an OP when I worked for a large corporation you have heard of. I was gradually exposed, like boiling a frog, to familiar patterns of manipulation and confusing scenarios. Instead of being able to concentrate on my work I had to devote energy to defusing his tedious machinations, power plays and other things. Eventually he destroyed the career of my boss, who I was friends with before he came along and almost stressed a pregnant woman into a miscarriage. Psychopaths don't have to kill to get their supply of making people suffer.
I concluded this person was an OP when he described to me, back in 2004, how he used to torture small animals like cats and rabbits for fun. This disgusted me and horrified me at the same time because as he told me I realized, from previous experiences, he was doing this to gauge my reaction. He was using this story to attempt to brutalize and intimidate me.
I responded casually, despite my insides screaming 'get the fuck away from this guy', with a description of how my father taught me to hunt and maintain firearms. That he never let me hunt animals until I was a good shot and that when I did hunt, to aim for the heart or head and try to take the animal down with a single shot. I looked at him right in the face and said 'sometimes I would see a sick animal and realize the most merciful thing I could do was to shoot them right in the head', looked at the time, said it was an interesting conversation but it was time for me to go home. I was shaking when I got to my car.
When the OP could not destroy my work, he instead tried to destroy me, unlike the previous psychopath I could not get away easily. Eventually I escaped when I snapped an achillies tendon and was no longer able to perform the role. Despite the pain, surgery and two years to learn how to walk again all I could think of was how grateful I was to have escaped the OP's final destructive plans for me. Whatever they were, they were bad. Ten years later, he was still trying. My other colleagues, who I am still in contact with, also look back with fear and horror of wh
My ism, it's full of beliefs.