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Has anyone read Mark Zuckerberg’s emails / his style? He is a very frustrating email writer. You know that person who types out an 8 sentence email, but really
by Bucephalus355 8y ago
Has anyone read Mark Zuckerberg’s emails / his style? He is a very frustrating email writer.
You know that person who types out an 8 sentence email, but really the first 6-7 sentences are about how they are “just thinking about everything out loud” and “this could totally be wrong but I think that”. It’s just that, email after email.
- fipple 8y agoNo, that’s what you have to do in his position. If Zuckerberg sends out a mail like “can you get me information on how flowers are sold in China,” a SVP will delegate to a VP, a product marketing manager will fly to China, they’ll prepare a 200 page slide deck because this is “for Mark.” It’s very hard as a CEO with absolute power to participate in a conversation without dominating it and this is his best effort to do so.
- asveikau 8y ago> a CEO with absolute power Did you mean that to be such a concise description of the problem here?
- fipple 8y agoNo, because all Fortune 500 CEOs have the power that makes the organization respond to their slightest whim, whether they wanted that or not.
- asveikau 8y agoTypical of this place and our industry, not appreciating that a phrase like "absolute power" has loads upon loads of baggage.
- fipple 8y agoYes, and all Fortune 500 CEOs have it. They have more power in their organizations than the President of the United States has.
- asveikau 8y agoThey don't all have it. They are supposed to be accountable to boards etc. Look at how Ballmer was made to leave in the current decade, to cite a tech example. Zuckerberg has broken and circumvented this by concentrating power. Now, your original point that small indirect suggestions can be amplified greatly by the network of reports eager to execute on the boss's mandate... This is true and I have seen it in large and small scale. I am merely poking fun of "absolute power".
- gammateam 8y agothis is totally true and how you can tell you are leading a team and not "in it all together" no matter how horizontal you want your organization to be there are people that won't leave the office until you leave and will take every random idea you have as a canonical decision thats how you know you are the boss, to them, whether you wanted it that way or not
- Bucephalus355 8y agoI can 100% imagine that happening. Excellent point and responses like this are why come to Hacker News.
- iaml 8y agoThere was an amazing joke about this in Silicon Valley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i92Ws7qPTRg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i92Ws7qPTRg
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoNonsense. If you cant ask about flowers without receiving a 200 page deck you have a huge communication issue. Read emails from other CEOs.