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"Brin & Page are widely regarded as nice guys, and so is Satya Nadella" Actually, when I was there Brin and Page had a reputation for being somewhat brutal, es

"Brin & Page are widely regarded as nice guys, and so is Satya Nadella" Actually, when I was there Brin and Page had a reputation for being somewhat brutal, especially Larry. Not in a loud and brash way but in the sense that if they were doing a product review or whatever, and one of them thought your product sucked, they'd just say something like "This sucks, why have you been wasting your time on it?" and feelings be damned. They just didn't really care about cushioning criticism apparently. I actually recall them sort of sarcastically insulting random employees, VPs or even entire projects at TGIF if they were being dumb, overly entitled or underperforming, in the way you'd not really expect ... as if those people worked somewhere totally different. I don't know anything about Nadella but it's worth noting that he didn't build the company, he's more like a steady pair of hands. Bill Gates on the other hand had a similar reputation to Page and Brin, especially when doing product reviews. If he didn't like something he'd let you know in the bluntest way possible. So it's not really clear to me to what extent Musk's recent behavior is genuinely abnormal. It may be simply that at the moment relatively few big tech firms are run by founder types. Actually, maybe only Facebook is right now? Others are across the board being run by 'calm' types chosen, one might suspect, for their ability to effectively execute on the foundations laid down by their predecessors.

lcrss 4y ago
Wow I had read about Billg product reviews but didn’t know about Brin and Page. Do you know of any write ups about this? Looks interesting.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  I don't. The culture of secrecy came from the top and they're both quite private men (very private, in the case of Page). Very little about their management style is documented and to be clear, what I'm saying is second hand knowledge. I was a cog - attended many TGIFs and got emailed by Sergey once, but never had a product review or other kind of important meeting with them. It's worth stressing that I don't think either of them were bad people or even mean. Being very direct with feedback seems to be a common trait of successful founders and CEOs. I guess when you review as many products as they do, and have built at great expense a place a lot of people want to work, and decisions matter a whole lot, being indirect and super-polite seems like a poor use of time. Also people don't like getting negative feedback, so unless it's ultra-clear it probably just doesn't sink in.
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  I've read stories about Page? and his hate of product managers. That might be a starting point for a Google (pun intended).
summerlight 4y ago
I think there's significant distinctions between them though. Those founders usually prioritize success of their business so they will accept corrections if it turns out to be a significant risk to the business. IMO, Elon's narcissism blocks him from taking any kind of such "corrections" because his priority is on building his own narrative of being a genius entrepreneur and engineer. (This explains that "code review" farce pretty well...) If he corrects his path, then it will be publicly portrayed as his defeat so he just can't. This worked pretty well for him until now since he was able to equate Tesla/SpaceX as himself in public perception. If he can build the genius narrative, then it will be a significant advantage for those businesses as well unless there are undeniable public failures. He is a competent businessmen so he managed most of the smaller gradual risks pretty well. But something big like Twitter is probably out of his ability, or not. We'll see.

lcrss 4y ago

Wow I had read about Billg product reviews but didn’t know about Brin and Page. Do you know of any write ups about this? Looks interesting.

mike_hearn 4y ago
I don't. The culture of secrecy came from the top and they're both quite private men (very private, in the case of Page). Very little about their management style is documented and to be clear, what I'm saying is second hand knowledge. I was a cog - attended many TGIFs and got emailed by Sergey once, but never had a product review or other kind of important meeting with them. It's worth stressing that I don't think either of them were bad people or even mean. Being very direct with feedback seems to be a common trait of successful founders and CEOs. I guess when you review as many products as they do, and have built at great expense a place a lot of people want to work, and decisions matter a whole lot, being indirect and super-polite seems like a poor use of time. Also people don't like getting negative feedback, so unless it's ultra-clear it probably just doesn't sink in.
xen2xen1 4y ago
I've read stories about Page? and his hate of product managers. That might be a starting point for a Google (pun intended).

summerlight 4y ago

I think there's significant distinctions between them though. Those founders usually prioritize success of their business so they will accept corrections if it turns out to be a significant risk to the business. IMO, Elon's narcissism blocks him from taking any kind of such "corrections" because his priority is on building his own narrative of being a genius entrepreneur and engineer. (This explains that "code review" farce pretty well...) If he corrects his path, then it will be publicly portrayed as his defeat so he just can't. This worked pretty well for him until now since he was able to equate Tesla/SpaceX as himself in public perception. If he can build the genius narrative, then it will be a significant advantage for those businesses as well unless there are undeniable public failures. He is a competent businessmen so he managed most of the smaller gradual risks pretty well. But something big like Twitter is probably out of his ability, or not. We'll see.