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Wow...I mean 1. I never claimed Marissa Meyer ran yahoo into the ground. It was a mess when she started, and from what I know of her shes no a sociopath, a com
by usmeteora 10y ago
Wow...I mean
1. I never claimed Marissa Meyer ran yahoo into the ground. It was a mess when she started, and from what I know of her shes no a sociopath, a computer scientist from Stanford who was one of the originals at google so...I don't know even know how to respond to that, except that I would ask you calibrate the cost of her so called lavish parties to that of any other multi billion dollar or hell, a first round wannabe startup who is way into their ego.
The assumption that you assumed the fact I mentioned she was criticized means Im accusing her of running it into the ground is far from the truth. Women like her, Sheryl Sandberg and Fiorna, Ellen Pao are WOMEN, who are brought into lead companies AFTER they are falling apart, and noone else knows what to do, THEN they call in a woman to fix it. In literally every case of every woman above, those were the circumstances in which companies bring in female CEOs, when their company is falling apart, so yeh the criticism they receive is even more unfounded because they take so much personal criticism about their bodies and emotions instead of the root causes of why they were even asked to come and help save the company in the first place.
Hmmm would be interesting to see more women starting their own tech firms instead of running the the rescue of drowning ones.
And give me a break about male CEOs. Men do not go out on the internet and make degrading sexual comments about male CEOs en masse by the millions the day they step into their role. All of these women above however, had entire websites dedicated to things like that. For you to not acknowledge that is just bigotry.
As far as Sociopaths as CEOs, while that personality does seem to overlap as a fit, I know people who are CEOs and founders of multiple forbes top 30 under 30, and in fact had brunch at ones house on Sunday where we talked about the book good to great and quiet (about introverts as good leaders and some of the best CEOs, just the least self advertising) soooo I really find your comment assuming anyone who is a CEO a sociopath offensive.
My best friend founded a multimillion dollar biotech company as a senior in biomedical engineering in college to solve a problem her dying grandmother experienced in the hospital, and now her technology is used in countries all around the world including ambulances fighting wars right now. She's one of the best people I know, advocates for her employees to produce life saving products and happens to be a very great friend and good person all around.
And please, the stories I hear from her about the truly sociopathic men that fit the stereotypic you are sweeping across all CEos, including good people trying to do great things, she has stories about them too. Dear god, you are out of your mind if you think the world could not benefit from some more younger ambitious female techs with good intentions and good work ethics in the field.
There are tons of stories like these, and some of the best tech firms out there were started by "rank and file" engineers just like her so...
I just don't even know what else to say about your presumptuous attitude about all CEOs being sociopaths. I can imagine they must become disenchanted with people like you who never turn down an opportunity to judge them as a person despite not knowing them as a person at all but farther than yet, you are making absolutely baseless claims in that regard. You are just plain wrong dude.
In regards to your last point, that is the million dollar question, why the precipitous dropoff of women in computer science in the 80s? Lots of people are still trying to understand that.
- Arizhel 10y agoI never said Meyer ran Yahoo into the ground; I pointed out Yahoo was already on a downward trajectory, and I said she didn't do anything to help that. I said Carly Fiorina ran HP into the ground. And she did. No, HP was not "falling apart* before she got there. She's the one who had the dumb idea of merging with Compaq, a huge and costly merger that didn't benefit HP at all, and turned it from a company making extremely high-value equipment (medical and test equipment) into a company making crappy commodity PC hardware. She also helped run Lucent into the ground before she went to HP. >For you to not acknowledge that is just bigotry. I never said anything about it either way. To call me a "bigot" because I don't address something to your satisfaction speaks volumes about your agenda. I only pointed out that there's plenty of horrible male CEOs, meaning that CEOs of both sexes are frequently bad. I never addressed random anonymous internet posters, nor do I care to. The internet is full of horrible, vitriolic people as we see right here from time to time, and I see little point in even paying attention to them. >soooo I really find your comment assuming anyone who is a CEO a sociopath offensive. I find your defense of CEOs to be highly offensive. In my observation, most CEOs clearly are sociopaths, and the profession as a whole has deservedly earned that reputation. And anyone who's an apologist for the profession is likely a sociopath themselves, or maybe a useful sycophant. Whoopee, you found one that you think might not be a sociopath. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data". >I just don't even know what else to say about your presumptuous attitude about all CEOs being sociopaths. I can imagine they must become disenchanted with people like you who never turn down an opportunity to judge them as a person despite not knowing them as a person at all but farther than yet, you are making absolutely baseless claims in that regard. Oh gee, those poor, poor, multi-millionaire/billionaire CEOs!! Won't someone think of the billionaires!
- usmeteora 10y agoyeh well my friend is the CEO of a company and its evaluated at millions of dollars but shes salaried less than an entry level engineer and has a tight budget. She had student loans and $300 in her bank account when she started her company. Her dad was a carpenter in Brooklyn and her mom a school teacher. She gave up her personal paycheck for 2 months to keep from laying off her best employees when she was in between funding rounds. An evaluation is way different than an individuals salary. Maybe a primer on how funding works will help, not all multilmillion dollar companies mean the ceos are millionaries, most of them gave up everything and risked everything and some dropped out of college to pursue something they wanted to do. yes there are a bunch of pompous CEOs out there and I deal with them too as a women working in a tech male dominated environment. Believe, I'm not any more stoked about this than you are and it is certainly damaging to the idea that other personalities could contribute positively in the same realm of influence and level of decision making. I understand you have observations but the top 5 CEOs advertised on tech crunch everyday are not neessarily reflective of the literally hundreds of thousands of CEOs in this country. I know 3 CEOs, two of them their companies are evaluated at 10million, and one at over 100million, and they both are salaried and the higher paid one rents an apartment, and hise wife took his house, sued him for all his money, takes her boyfriends on vacations with his salaries while he works 20+ hour days and rearranges all of his work travel so he can spend 3 days with his daughters no matter who it is that wants to meet him, he doesnt sacrifice time with his daughters. He hasnt had a vacation in 5 years because he works so much and buying a house isn't an option for him right now. He still has to go before boards of investors to ask for a raise and the market in tech is super competitive, even with the evaluation it could all go under and the pressure is high. From what I see being good friends with these people they are not spending their friday nights at lavish parties, they are sleeping or working late or every now and then binge drinking the stress away, which is not a life i envy to be honest, but I don't consider them sociopaths. I think your idea that all CEOs are sociopaths who run companies into the ground with lavish parties and that there is no relationship between the standards and engineering ideas they founded and the companies and the culture they set for all the rank and file engineers are all unfounded. I absolutely believe CEOs who are non sociopathic females who dont bring bikini models to launch parties might actually result in a more culturally inviting environment for female engineers, though I can't really tell form the data is that is the root cause of why women are lacking so I don't know if that would solve it. I do know that Sheryl Sandberg wrote a pretty great book about women in business called Lean In, and it is positive and focuses on what women can do to improve themselves working in business and tech instead of waiting for men to fix all the problems, and overall it is is a very positive attitude about taking ownership of your own destiny instead of waiting for a man to give it to you and I think if you read the book the word "sociopath" would not exactly be the term that comes to your mind in regards to her, os Marissa Meyer for that matter if youve ever heard her speak or interact with people or teach on her operable business standards and principles... I'm not really offended I guess. Youre definitely not even close to the top of the list of people who have said remarkably offensive things to me, I just think youre wrong. I think CEOs are the easy bad guys. Everyone needs someone to point to and say hey its all your fault. Thats what modern media has done to us. We just bully humiliate make assumptions and criticise everyone in leadership positions. I don't think what the trending instagram hashtag is or CNN headline is necessarily an accurate representation of these hardworking brilliant people, but thats just my opinion. You are obviously welcome to your own. I'm not saying we should pity CEOs, I'm just saying as a whole in society we quickly jump to blame people, and female CEOs DO objectively (google analytics man) get it worse than men and gets far more personal jabs about their bodies and sexual comments I've never seen male CEOs publicly endure.