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The title is a weird. Ineffective? At doing what? This is an interesting quote from Zuckerberg: > trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last
by mrweasel 3mo ago
The title is a weird. Ineffective? At doing what?
This is an interesting quote from Zuckerberg:
> trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected
Combine that with the other theories about Meta management in the article, I think we have the answer to is Zuckerberg a "dimwitted or just evil". It's probably the former. He can't plan four month in advance apparently, nor does he want to wait and work of actual data. Meta can affort to implement some AI, wait to see if it pans out and then layoff people. On the other hand, he had way to much patience with the Metaverse, even as all signed pointed to it being a failure. His personal hobbies shows that he is capable of patience, training, hunting isn't going to yield results in four months. I think he lacks the skills to manage, and to recognize and hire competent managers. Had Meta stock not been structured the way it is, I would like to think that the board had replaced Zuckerberg as CEO.
I wouldn't however agree that Meta was necessarily to late to AI. They showed a lot of potential early on, but then sort of dropped off. They weren't to late, it is just another mismanaged project.
- rapidaneurism 3mo agoIf you view AI as a way to downsize and cut payroll expenses without admitting that you must cut payroll expenses because the business is not booming, it makes sense.
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- mrweasel 3mo agoYeah, you're right, I edited it just now. I rewrote parts of the comment and moved things around and didn't re-read the whole thing.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- stephc_int13 3mo agoZuckerberg was barely adult when he started Facebook. And he probably bumped into a few older guys who thought they knew better than him, and history proved them wrong. He likely developed some irrational belief that clever and young beats anything else, and saw an echo of his own bravado in Alexandr Wang. Turns out his heuristics were not calibrated properly.
- fridder 3mo agoDidn’t he famously trash folks over 30 years back? He has really done nothing innovative outside of ads.
- croes 3mo agoWhat’s innovative about ads?
- ModernMech 3mo agoI dunno if it’s exclusively his innovation, but Zuckerberg’s insight was that you could actually lie to your users by presenting yourself as trustworthy, while having malicious intent to violate their privacy by selling their data to advertisers, and there are no business repercussions for doing so.
- vitally3643 3mo agoThat's literally just a con. People have been doing this since the dawn of history. The only unique bit is the sheer scale it's happening at now
- 4fffsa 3mo agoZuckerberg influenced people to hand over their personal data. His team then enabled lots of people to become influencers. Those influencers influence their followers to buy products (aka generate ad-revenue). And that is the pure essence of the business model.
- jjulius 3mo ago>I think we have the answer to is Zuckerberg a "dimwitted or just evil". It's probably the former. Why is this an either/or? Those aren't mutually exclusive.
- ses1984 3mo agoThe way the sentence is structured implies he is evil either way. He is either (dim witted and evil) or (just evil).
- Terretta 3mo agoIt's like that old saying: “Don't attribute to malice – or incompetence – that which can be explained by path dependency.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence OK, not the saying. Perhaps should be. Assuming a sufficient base level of competence, more of how things go for company A vs. company B can be explained by random walks through events (their dependent paths) than by management. A competent and persistent leader can increase the odds, but under close study, fortuitousness and serendipity – or luck of the draw and timing – have more explanatory power. Meanwhile, just try to make your own luck. Make sure you happen to things, instead of things happening to you.
- mcculley 3mo agoIt does not have to be either one. Zuckerberg is simply not a great leader, apparently. This is not surprising. Few people can run big companies. There is a huge spectrum between "dimwitted" and "great CEO".
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- mrweasel 3mo agoPersonally I believe very few people to be actually evil, but it's a question of definition. To me, you need to be deliberate to be evil. E.g. Elon Musk isn't evil (I think), he's just insane. Peter Thiel might actually be evil, because his actions are deliberate and planned. Zuckerberg also doesn't strike me as evil, just incredibly socially inept (and maybe dimwitted). But no, you're right, it doesn't have to be one or the other.
- laweijfmvo 3mo agohis biggest fear is not being the one to nail the next big thing. it happened with mobile, although that was basically irrelevant in hindsight. he thought it was metaverse, which failed, while in the meantime it was actually the new AI cycle, which he was late on / lost by the time llama 4 flopped. i think he’d rather just blow up the whole company than continue to be solely associated with one (or even a few) of the most successful websites/apps in history, for some reason. maybe he thinks people will like him if he does something else?
- ra0x3 3mo agoI think Elon owns a lot of real estate in these guys’ heads. When you have $200B+ in the bank, little else matters others than being seen as a titan of industry IMO. I think the fact that Musk has Tesla and Spacex (even with all his extra curricular activities) makes a guy like Zuckerberg seethe that he’s just “the internet websites guy”.
- HDThoreaun 3mo agoThe thing is that metas massive consumer user base means that they haven’t lost the ai race I think. They don’t need to run the whole customer acquisition rat race. They’ve already got billions of customers who they can have using models within a month, they just need to keep pushing to create a model people are happy to use. Metas product compliments uniquely well with ai I think so they’re never really out of it until their users leave.
- groundzeros2015 3mo ago[flagged]
- kraken_cult 3mo agoYour boot sir
- ofjcihen 3mo agoWith the polish creme? Ah, my favorite.
- groundzeros2015 3mo ago[flagged]
- fullshark 3mo agoAnd therefore unable to be criticized by OP?
- groundzeros2015 3mo agoNo? > I think we have the answer to is Zuckerberg a "dimwitted or just evil". It's probably the former
- fullshark 3mo agoSo you think he's not dimwitted? And instead of making an argument you just insulted the OP needlessly? Let me guess is your argument: "He built a trillion dollar company and you didn't"
- groundzeros2015 3mo ago> So you think he's not dimwitted? Correct. > He built a trillion dollar company and you didn't Did the startup thing then became a world class CEO for 20 years. Yep.
- 3mo ago
- Hendrikto 3mo ago> Had Meta stock not been structured the way it is, I would like to think that the board had replaced Zuckerberg as CEO. He saw that coming and slyly prevented it. He cannot be as dimwitted as you suggest.
- ceejayoz 3mo agoIt's possible for someone to be good at one thing and bad at another.
- Danox 3mo agoZuckerberg isn’t dimwitted but Meta is probably at its peak as a company, lightning probably isn’t going to strike again, Metaverse and Meta AI are going nowhere no matter how much money he throws at it. But he’s not alone. Microsoft can spend and spend and it won’t help Copilot fly.
- fragmede 3mo agoPeople gonna start using Bing, any day now. OTOH, Google's got this reputation for killing off products.
- croes 3mo agoGiven his war on the whistleblower and what we learned about Meta and Zuckerberg from her he is evil too
- soraminazuki 3mo agoFacebook was evil from its very inception. Its origin is a site for non-consensually rating women's faces. Zuckerberg personally called his initial users "dumb f*cks" for trusting him with their personal information and offered to to give that data to his friend. There was never any doubt about what kind of person Zuckerberg is.
- this_user 3mo agoZuckerberg was never a great strategist. The only good strategic decisions that he was ever made were the acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp. Almost everything else was either completely misguided, way too late, or executed so poorly that it could never work. Meta is basically the Temu version of Google. Google also goes wrong a lot, and they are mostly resting on their big successes from years ago, but they still at least have the people and ability to produce top tier results every once in a while, while Meta was always second rate.
- seizethecheese 3mo agoZuckerberg may not be a great strategist, but your two exceptions (WhatsApp and instagram) easily cover all the failures. This is sort of like saying “he’s a bad hitter, except for the grand slam”. Or more appropriately for HN, like saying “he’s a bad venture investor, other than the two fund returning investments.”
- HDThoreaun 3mo agoInstagram and what’s app were two of the best purchases in American history though. It’s hard to overlook how well they worked out
- 8note 3mo agothey really should have been blocked by anti-trust though
- karmakurtisaani 3mo agoI think one reason Google has been so successful is that the original founders did what they knew best and built a great startup, then stepped down and left the company for people who know how to run a corporation. I imagine these are very different skill sets.