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> Zuckerberg, Thiel (OK, he was always mask-off), Pichai, Elon (Ok, he's been awful for years) > People who were attracted to tech were often idealistic. It's

> Zuckerberg, Thiel (OK, he was always mask-off), Pichai, Elon (Ok, he's been awful for years) > People who were attracted to tech were often idealistic. It's worth noting that the founders you felt most worthy of calling out are specifically ones whose "idealism" was always about commercial domination, deal-making, and personal financial largess. These weren't aesthetes like Jobs or impassioned programmers like Gates, who found themselves caught up in a ethically challenging world of finance and business. The ones you're calling out were all opportunists prowling for whatever opportunity might ratchet them to greater personal success. And they're doing exactly that again now. There are no surprises here. Or at least there shouldn't be.

swiftcoder 2y ago
I think the idealism here is attributed to their employees, not the leaders. A pretty good chunk of BigTech employees were not on board with the boss' politics when I worked there, and it caused a lot of morale/retention issues when leaders made overt rightward moves like this.
noirscape 2y ago
> aesthetes like Jobs Just want to point out that Steve Jobs merely happened to be really good at aesthetics (which is more downstream from how he was really good at manipulating people). Reading up on his life's story is pretty revealing in the sense that if he hadn't run into someone like Wozniak, he probably would've ended up like Zuckerberg or Thiel and had more in common with them than people would realize. (Not necessarily much in common with Musk though, who is his own particular brand of awful.) He had very little morals outside of "whatever gets me ahead in the world", and it's just that Wozniak's actual skill with computers meant that translated to Apple instead of skeezier things. Apple was itself founded on money that Jobs stole from Wozniak after all (money that Wozniak later pointed out he would just have given to Jobs anyway if he told him what the plan was.) The fact he made Apple isn't anything to scoff at, but one wrong turn in life and he probably would've ended up in the same position as most other awful tech billionaires (and unlike most of them, he wouldn't have been a charisma void.)

swiftcoder 2y ago

I think the idealism here is attributed to their employees, not the leaders. A pretty good chunk of BigTech employees were not on board with the boss' politics when I worked there, and it caused a lot of morale/retention issues when leaders made overt rightward moves like this.

noirscape 2y ago

> aesthetes like Jobs Just want to point out that Steve Jobs merely happened to be really good at aesthetics (which is more downstream from how he was really good at manipulating people). Reading up on his life's story is pretty revealing in the sense that if he hadn't run into someone like Wozniak, he probably would've ended up like Zuckerberg or Thiel and had more in common with them than people would realize. (Not necessarily much in common with Musk though, who is his own particular brand of awful.) He had very little morals outside of "whatever gets me ahead in the world", and it's just that Wozniak's actual skill with computers meant that translated to Apple instead of skeezier things. Apple was itself founded on money that Jobs stole from Wozniak after all (money that Wozniak later pointed out he would just have given to Jobs anyway if he told him what the plan was.) The fact he made Apple isn't anything to scoff at, but one wrong turn in life and he probably would've ended up in the same position as most other awful tech billionaires (and unlike most of them, he wouldn't have been a charisma void.)