9 ms·
> It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men I feel like the opposite. Zuck is the only one to believe in the metaverse and as a result
by polote 5y ago
> It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men
I feel like the opposite. Zuck is the only one to believe in the metaverse and as a result people who worked on the communication did it badly without a lot of conviction. He is in a pretty comfortable position, one of the richest people on earth doing 20% of growth every year. And still he wants to make a big risky bet like this one. I'm not really in favor of the metaverse but history has shown us that Zuck is pretty successful at things he wants to do
- wpietri 5y agoWhat things would those be? As far as I know his successes are a) 1 idea he had as a 19-year-old plus b) some other things that he bought with the money from that.
- ethanyu94 5y agoHow about building one of the largest companies in the world? Would others be able to do that if they had that idea as a 19-year-old? Let's not reduce all his accomplishments to a single idea. Ideas don't matter, execution matters.
- wpietri 5y agoThat would still be one success. And I'm pretty sure other people had something to do with that. So I'd like a little more evidence, thanks.
- zenmaster10665 5y agoLol...you want him to have built more than one of the most successful businesses in history? It isn't one idea that got him here.. Everyone's a critic.
- TigeriusKirk 5y agoThis is just coming across as completely ridiculous.
- roberto 5y agoYou really think building one of the biggest companies in the world, with billions of users, is just one success? Building a company with 1000 users is a success. A million is another success. A billion is hundreds of successes.
- dredmorbius 5y agoAfter a point, that success tends to build on itself. Positive returns to scale, network effects, monopoly influence, corruption, strong-arm tactics. I'd argue the 1st million users is much harder than the 3rd billion.
- wpietri 5y agoIn the sense of the point I'm addressing, yes. "Zuck is pretty successful at things he wants to do." Facebook is a thing he wanted to do. It was a success. (And a big one, but just because an elephant is very large for an animal means that it counts as 3 animals.) I just want to know what the other things are.
- roberto 5y ago- Einstein was a pretty successful physicist. - Well, I wouldn't say that... what else did he do other than relativity?
- wpietri 5y agoScroll up. I didn't say Zuckerberg wasn't successful. Indeed, I've been quite clear that Facebook was one very big success. And for what it's worth, Einstein did a lot more than one thing. Off the top of my head, Einstein's annus mirabilis had 4 papers that were all major accomplishments, including the E=mc² equation popularly associated with him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers His work on relativity came later. As did a fair bit of other work, that I'm less familiar with but that I could easily look up and provide sources for. And that's the kind of list I'm looking for here. People have claimed that he has other successes. I'm asking what they are. I've now given you the kind of list I wanted for Einstein, and I've given it elsewhere in this discussion for Steve Jobs. So will you give me that list for Zuckerberg? Because as far as I know it has one thing on it: Facebook.
- ethanyu94 5y agoIf building Facebook isn't enough evidence of success for you, I don't know what is. Pretty sure most people with the same idea could not have turned it into what Facebook is today. Also, Facebook isn't just one idea - it's many ideas.
- wpietri 5y agoIt's enough evidence of one success. But "Zuck is pretty successful at things he wants to do" sounds like he has more than one success. I'm just asking what those other things are.
- zenmaster10665 5y agoYou are exposing your lack of knowledge on what it means to run a multinational corporation. It isn't one lucky choice, it is strategy and execution over the long term. This is the same for any successful company.
- wpietri 5y agoOh? In which case, given your mastery of the topic, you should be easily able to produce the list I'm asking for. Given that nobody has so far, and given all the handwaving like yours, I think you all have answered my question.
- int_19h 5y agoFacebook hasn't been around long enough to talk about its "long term".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- carlosdp 5y agoSay what you will about Mark, no informed person could claim with a straight face that he's not one of the savviest business-people in history.
- wpietri 5y agoOh? Maybe give me a brief rundown of his business savvy? I'm especially interested in evidence that can't be attributed to the people he hired or the vast, vast wealth at his command. Not to mention a large PR department working hard to make him look like one of the savviest businesspeople in history.
- yupper32 5y ago> that can't be attributed to the people he hired Isn't hiring the right people an extremely large part of being "business savvy"?
- margalabargala 5y agoBusiness savvy people hire the right people, but just because someone turned out to be the right person, doesn't mean the person who hired them was necessarily business savvy.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- motoxpro 5y agoI mean, if it were that easy to build a trillion dollar company, everyone would, but it's not, so they don't. People complain that he has too much control but then also, like you, complain that he isn't behind and "real" decisions. He made that "vast vast wealth" by building Facebook. One had to come before the other.
- wpietri 5y agoI'm not complaining, and I'm not claiming he is or isn't behind a given decision. I'm just trying to understand what people see as evidence of his savviness, as I don't see much besides a pile of money and an adequately-maintained natural monopoly that now looks to be in a fair bit of trouble both in the market (thus his recent announcement of a dramatic retooling) and in the public eye (e.g., the latest whistleblowers and the Congressional hearings). And it's perfectly possible that he is more responsible for the bad choices than he is for the good ones. I've dealt with execs like that. I'd bet many others have as well.
- mritchie712 5y ago* 1 idea he stole as a 19-year-old I'm not big on people complaining about "idea stealing", but zuck is in a league of his own with this shit, so worth pointing out that he didn't have the idea for FB.
- wpietri 5y agoExcellent point, and I totally agree. Thanks for the correction.
- smoldesu 5y agogrumble grumble Good artists copy... grumble grumble
- patentatt 5y agoStole or just copied, the 'idea' of a social network wasn't novel by the time fb came around. Credit where it's due, it was executed well in the early stages and had the unique twist of being college-only at the beginning. People don't remember that when fb started gaining traction, friendster was already very much a thing but was stumbling hard on execution. I remember the friendster site being just dog slow. Myspace and Hi5 were also in the mix before or right at the same time as fb. Really just the PR/marketing angle and the not screwing up on execution are fb's claim to fame.
- aflag 5y agoOrkut was also out there and it was wildly more popular than Facebook in some parts of the world.
- JetSpiegel 5y agoBought and killed by Google, all the Brazillians migrated to WhatsApp.
- aflag 5y agoI think it was originally made by google, not bought by them.
- wodenokoto 5y agoWell, he sure knows what to buy. Remember when he bought Instagram for a billion dollars? That amount seemed unreasonable high back then. Looking back though ... I'd wish I could spend money as well as Zuckerberg.
- hbn 5y agoWas that really a risky bet paying off? It seems like the growth you'd expect from a big tech company like Facebook buying an existing, successful platform and monetizing the hell out of it. If anything, it seems like young people ended up moving to Snapchat as their main social media platform of choice since the purchase. I had a ton of friends who used Instagram frequently but now almost no one posts there, other than occasional stories. The main feed is almost entirely ads now, and I can't remember the last time I had a conversation with someone who said they like Instagram still. That's not to say it hasn't grown and isn't making them money, but I also don't think Instagram would have had the same trajectory if Facebook didn't buy them. They just integrated it with their existing platform that already had a lot of traffic.
- philistine 5y agoPay young kids to install a VPN on their phone and look at what they're installing and you too can buy as well as Mr. Zuckerberg!
- tw04 5y agoa) 1 idea that he stole b) having absolutely 0 moral compass
- bitwize 5y agoMost of us would be glad to have one really big idea per lifetime. Zuck's was pretty shitty on all dimensions except moneymaking, but I'd probably still take it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- moosey 5y agoZuckerberg no longer experiences risk except for in the most abstract of ways. Not in the way that the vast majority of people think about risk. I would also suggest lack of conviction and lack of ability to complete the job look very similar, and you are likely to end up with the latter of you are surrounded by yes-men.
- sounds 5y agoThe internal leadership at Facebook are all yes-men, from personal experience.