5 ms·

Crazy at the wheel: psychopathic CEOs are rife in Silicon Valley

35 points by spking 10y ago

gremlinsinc 10y ago
Read a theory or something once.. that Sociopath's are likely to do one of two things -- go on a murdering spree, or become a CEO.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  Maybe becoming a CEO is the most productive/net positive role for someone with such a disorder.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    ...or the place they can hide and do the most lifetime damage to society. E.g. instead of going on a killing spree and being detected/arrested at a young age, they can produce pollution for profit and injure millions over decades.
    - amyjess 10y ago
      > ...or the place they can hide and do the most lifetime damage to society. Most sociopaths aren't that calculating. They don't sit there and think "How will I inflict structural damage to society tonight?". Sociopaths just want to get their rocks off (not necessarily in a sexual way), and they don't care who they have to hurt to do so. Your average sociopath is more impulsive than anything else.
      - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        'Profit/bonus at any cost' is a reasonable sociopath goal. It can result in decades of environmental trashing, coverups of carcinogenic product, abuse of employees and customers for wholly profit-motivated reasons. We've seen all this.
    - sjg007 10y ago
      Well they could be President..
- edoceo 10y ago
  Sociopath != Psychopath
  - brookside 10y ago
    Both are bad non-medical constructs so they have that in common.
zitterbewegung 10y ago
Clickbait article that attempts to use psychological terminology and generalized this / performs mass diagnosis to make you feel better about your job by demonizing your CEO.
- mcntsh 10y ago
  Found the CEO!
  - woah 10y ago
    This is not the YouTube comments section.
    - mcntsh 10y ago
      Lighten up
- arcanus 10y ago
  Agreed. Came here to say this. Furthermore if psychology had any predictive power at all, a charge such as this might under certain circumstances bear some meaning. Instead, it is rife with 'stories' and tautologies. Numerous mass murderers have been under psychiatric evaluation and were not flagged as a danger. This is a catastrophic, first order failure. The entire field makes economics look rigorous.
  - zitterbewegung 10y ago
    I don't have an issue with psychology. I have an issue with people without qualifications diagnosing people and demonization. It really hurts people with psychological disorders by generating stigma and negative connotations .
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      I think its fair to demonize sociopaths. The stigma is deserved.
psadauskas 10y ago
You don't have to be a psychopath to be a CEO, but it does provide a competitive advantage.
kyleblarson 10y ago
I was returning videotapes.
- antidaily 10y ago
  Sure you were, Marcus.
9981298819 10y ago
It is interesting that companies and their leaders are analyzed in this manner while the government and civil servants aren't.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  I believe if you read the article again you'll see it mentions presidents as well as CEOs. As for civil servants - what evidence can offer to support the suggestion that civil servants (and I presume you mean public employees of all kinds, including those in agencies like NASA and NOAA) are more likely to be sociopaths than ordinary people?
losteverything 10y ago
This sounds like an "article" meant to shoe-horn into uber. The ceos I knew were highly smart and extremely driven
ohitsdom 10y ago
"Hancock has developed software to analyse the social media posts of public figures to see how they rate on the psychopathy scale thanks to identifiers in written language. 'There tends to be an emotion deficit, they tend to use few words related to anxiety but a lot of hostile language,' he said, adding that they write in a way that’s disfluent and difficult to understand." I find it impossible to believe that this has any degree of accuracy.
- gmarx 10y ago
  Agreed but if they started posting results people would then believe in its accuracy in proportion to the hatred they have of the public figures identified.
brookside 10y ago
This is what a pseudoscientist looks like (self-described forensic and clinical psychologist quoted in article): http://www.kelownapsychologists.com/our-professionals/dr-michael-woodworth/ http://www.kelownapsychologists.com/our-professionals/dr-mic...
mrkurt 10y ago
It's tough to read this article because it's trying to support a particular point, and not really exploring an idea. Like all psychological diagnoses, psychopathy is a set of traits/behaviors that are on a scale between "all people some of the time" and "some people all of the time". So if you skip the article's agenda, and explore the idea, it's kind of interesting. Psycopathic traits are "persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits." (thanks wikipedia) It isn't surprising at all that successful CEOs exhibit some of those traits more than most people. I'm not sure you could fire people without "impaired empathy and remorse", even if those feelings are temporary. Firing people is terrible, and if _I_ felt the full weight of that horribleness while it was happening I'd never be able to do it. And yeah, "bold, disinhibited, egotistical" traits are almost required to run a company at all. What's more interesting than recognizing these, though, is the difference in how they're applied. Execs who are decent people and execs who aren't apply them differently (and decent people who aren't capable of being CEOs might not apply them at all). I've spent a lot of time worried about my own traits. Am I decent person if I can fire people? Am I a decent person if I can't work for someone else? Am I a decent person if I'm so worried about my own work-happiness that I risk my family's well being by quitting objectively good jobs? Hopefully!
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  > I'm not sure you could fire people without "impaired empathy and remorse" I have and I'm no sociopath. I think its easy to justify firings if you have a mature and adult attitude towards work. People perform a fireable offense and they're out the door. If you're experienced and honest with what it takes to run a business, this stuff isn't that horrible to deal with. I make tough decisions everyday. Heck, disciplining my kid is a lot tougher emotionally and no one expects you to be some super tough person to do it, every parent has to be able to pull it off. >And yeah, "bold, disinhibited, egotistical" traits are almost required to run a company at all. Those are meaningless psych buzzwords. I want to run my own company and I'm driven by certain ideas, goals, and ideals. I'm fairly low ego and not horribly bold, like most introverted techies. The idea of holding up guys like Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison as perfect CEOs because they act like sociopaths is fairly ridiculous. You don't need to be a huge asshole to get ahead or to be successful. I think the idea that we should praise sociopathy as leadership skills is a fairly toxic attitude that reflects an internalized anti-worker bias.
infodroid 10y ago
I'm not sure why the story is picking on Silicon Valley in particular. Putting aside the anecdotes from an SXSW discussion panel, the only study cited in the article was more broadly covering "high-level executives in a corporate environment". There was no explanation for why SV would have "weak HR departments and investors" compared to other industries. Is this what passes for journalism these days?

35 points by spking 10y ago

Read a theory or something once.. that Sociopath's are likely to do one of two things -- go on a murdering spree, or become a CEO.

wyldfire 10y ago
Maybe becoming a CEO is the most productive/net positive role for someone with such a disorder.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  ...or the place they can hide and do the most lifetime damage to society. E.g. instead of going on a killing spree and being detected/arrested at a young age, they can produce pollution for profit and injure millions over decades.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    > ...or the place they can hide and do the most lifetime damage to society. Most sociopaths aren't that calculating. They don't sit there and think "How will I inflict structural damage to society tonight?". Sociopaths just want to get their rocks off (not necessarily in a sexual way), and they don't care who they have to hurt to do so. Your average sociopath is more impulsive than anything else.
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      'Profit/bonus at any cost' is a reasonable sociopath goal. It can result in decades of environmental trashing, coverups of carcinogenic product, abuse of employees and customers for wholly profit-motivated reasons. We've seen all this.
  - sjg007 10y ago
    Well they could be President..
edoceo 10y ago
Sociopath != Psychopath
- brookside 10y ago
  Both are bad non-medical constructs so they have that in common.

zitterbewegung 10y ago

Clickbait article that attempts to use psychological terminology and generalized this / performs mass diagnosis to make you feel better about your job by demonizing your CEO.

mcntsh 10y ago
Found the CEO!
- woah 10y ago
  This is not the YouTube comments section.
  - mcntsh 10y ago
    Lighten up
arcanus 10y ago
Agreed. Came here to say this. Furthermore if psychology had any predictive power at all, a charge such as this might under certain circumstances bear some meaning. Instead, it is rife with 'stories' and tautologies. Numerous mass murderers have been under psychiatric evaluation and were not flagged as a danger. This is a catastrophic, first order failure. The entire field makes economics look rigorous.
- zitterbewegung 10y ago
  I don't have an issue with psychology. I have an issue with people without qualifications diagnosing people and demonization. It really hurts people with psychological disorders by generating stigma and negative connotations .
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    I think its fair to demonize sociopaths. The stigma is deserved.

psadauskas 10y ago

You don't have to be a psychopath to be a CEO, but it does provide a competitive advantage.

kyleblarson 10y ago

I was returning videotapes.

antidaily 10y ago
Sure you were, Marcus.

9981298819 10y ago

It is interesting that companies and their leaders are analyzed in this manner while the government and civil servants aren't.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
I believe if you read the article again you'll see it mentions presidents as well as CEOs. As for civil servants - what evidence can offer to support the suggestion that civil servants (and I presume you mean public employees of all kinds, including those in agencies like NASA and NOAA) are more likely to be sociopaths than ordinary people?

losteverything 10y ago

This sounds like an "article" meant to shoe-horn into uber. The ceos I knew were highly smart and extremely driven

ohitsdom 10y ago

"Hancock has developed software to analyse the social media posts of public figures to see how they rate on the psychopathy scale thanks to identifiers in written language. 'There tends to be an emotion deficit, they tend to use few words related to anxiety but a lot of hostile language,' he said, adding that they write in a way that’s disfluent and difficult to understand." I find it impossible to believe that this has any degree of accuracy.

gmarx 10y ago
Agreed but if they started posting results people would then believe in its accuracy in proportion to the hatred they have of the public figures identified.

brookside 10y ago

This is what a pseudoscientist looks like (self-described forensic and clinical psychologist quoted in article): http://www.kelownapsychologists.com/our-professionals/dr-michael-woodworth/ http://www.kelownapsychologists.com/our-professionals/dr-mic...

mrkurt 10y ago

It's tough to read this article because it's trying to support a particular point, and not really exploring an idea. Like all psychological diagnoses, psychopathy is a set of traits/behaviors that are on a scale between "all people some of the time" and "some people all of the time". So if you skip the article's agenda, and explore the idea, it's kind of interesting. Psycopathic traits are "persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits." (thanks wikipedia) It isn't surprising at all that successful CEOs exhibit some of those traits more than most people. I'm not sure you could fire people without "impaired empathy and remorse", even if those feelings are temporary. Firing people is terrible, and if _I_ felt the full weight of that horribleness while it was happening I'd never be able to do it. And yeah, "bold, disinhibited, egotistical" traits are almost required to run a company at all. What's more interesting than recognizing these, though, is the difference in how they're applied. Execs who are decent people and execs who aren't apply them differently (and decent people who aren't capable of being CEOs might not apply them at all). I've spent a lot of time worried about my own traits. Am I decent person if I can fire people? Am I a decent person if I can't work for someone else? Am I a decent person if I'm so worried about my own work-happiness that I risk my family's well being by quitting objectively good jobs? Hopefully!

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
> I'm not sure you could fire people without "impaired empathy and remorse" I have and I'm no sociopath. I think its easy to justify firings if you have a mature and adult attitude towards work. People perform a fireable offense and they're out the door. If you're experienced and honest with what it takes to run a business, this stuff isn't that horrible to deal with. I make tough decisions everyday. Heck, disciplining my kid is a lot tougher emotionally and no one expects you to be some super tough person to do it, every parent has to be able to pull it off. >And yeah, "bold, disinhibited, egotistical" traits are almost required to run a company at all. Those are meaningless psych buzzwords. I want to run my own company and I'm driven by certain ideas, goals, and ideals. I'm fairly low ego and not horribly bold, like most introverted techies. The idea of holding up guys like Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison as perfect CEOs because they act like sociopaths is fairly ridiculous. You don't need to be a huge asshole to get ahead or to be successful. I think the idea that we should praise sociopathy as leadership skills is a fairly toxic attitude that reflects an internalized anti-worker bias.

infodroid 10y ago

I'm not sure why the story is picking on Silicon Valley in particular. Putting aside the anecdotes from an SXSW discussion panel, the only study cited in the article was more broadly covering "high-level executives in a corporate environment". There was no explanation for why SV would have "weak HR departments and investors" compared to other industries. Is this what passes for journalism these days?