4 ms·

1) yes, the big spotlight was a ridicule fest 2) but, essentially that which was ridiculed was the person's actual inability to read / estimate / understand th

1) yes, the big spotlight was a ridicule fest 2) but, essentially that which was ridiculed was the person's actual inability to read / estimate / understand the market demand: the facts are that he did repeatedly try to convince the Sweet Peach founder to have the product express a peach scent. It seems like this person was highly skilled in the technology, but incorrectly believed the rest of the world was more superficial than it was, and he seemed to genuinely believe people would want this feature (i.e. a nerd trying to serve an imaginary set of users, who are not representative of the intended users, a kind of bias or prejudice of nerds towards the rest of society) 3) As an investor, it probably is discomforting to realize that the person who runs a company can be so substantially out of touch with the intended consumer. I genuinely believe he could have easily regained their trust by taking on a different role, or by having a more capable person lead the determination of the product goals and requirements.

whatshisface 8y ago
The point is that hovering over every nerd in a position of power is the potential to accidentally turn yourself into a universally despised social pariah overnight; and when that happens the flames will be stoked professionally by the media. Nobody thinks for a second that nerds don't say stuff that's "kind of weird" regularly, that's what makes them nerds. The real discussion here is, do we want to hound people to death for that? Recent memory is littered with similar examples, although they are usually heavily politicized so I won't link them for fear of degrading the discussion. The recipe for death is, 1. be on the spectrum or have a bad day, 2. speak in public, and 3. get unlucky. To put it as viscerally as possible, the only flaw that guarantees you'll never be assigned any power isn't incompetence, it's autism. This all leads to a very clear implication for leaders in tech: if you don't want to be surrounded by empty smooth talkers, you need to dial your sensitivity to "kind of weird" versus "seems like a great guy" way down, because the factory default hands the keys to the kingdom to whoever asks for them most nicely.
Mirioron 8y ago
Considering the insanity that is the perfume market, I guarantee you that if a product that could make a body part smell differently worked properly, there would be a market for it. But a "journalist" wanted to be outraged so that's what they did. They kicked up a nice outrage mob to score some more clicks and the result was that he became radioactive. Nobody wants to be associated with him in the tech world because they don't want to be accused of the same things. This is the way outrage culture works. You convince a mob that somebody is wrong and that the moral thing to do is to stone (attack) them. It worked for religion and it works today on social media.

whatshisface 8y ago

The point is that hovering over every nerd in a position of power is the potential to accidentally turn yourself into a universally despised social pariah overnight; and when that happens the flames will be stoked professionally by the media. Nobody thinks for a second that nerds don't say stuff that's "kind of weird" regularly, that's what makes them nerds. The real discussion here is, do we want to hound people to death for that? Recent memory is littered with similar examples, although they are usually heavily politicized so I won't link them for fear of degrading the discussion. The recipe for death is, 1. be on the spectrum or have a bad day, 2. speak in public, and 3. get unlucky. To put it as viscerally as possible, the only flaw that guarantees you'll never be assigned any power isn't incompetence, it's autism. This all leads to a very clear implication for leaders in tech: if you don't want to be surrounded by empty smooth talkers, you need to dial your sensitivity to "kind of weird" versus "seems like a great guy" way down, because the factory default hands the keys to the kingdom to whoever asks for them most nicely.

Mirioron 8y ago

Considering the insanity that is the perfume market, I guarantee you that if a product that could make a body part smell differently worked properly, there would be a market for it. But a "journalist" wanted to be outraged so that's what they did. They kicked up a nice outrage mob to score some more clicks and the result was that he became radioactive. Nobody wants to be associated with him in the tech world because they don't want to be accused of the same things. This is the way outrage culture works. You convince a mob that somebody is wrong and that the moral thing to do is to stone (attack) them. It worked for religion and it works today on social media.