6 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg Talks With Atlantic Editor James Bennet

55 points by pg 13y ago

rattray 13y ago
I always find it oddly comforting to see how nervous, and frankly awkward, Mark Zuckerberg can be on stage. I have a fine stage presence but it's somehow very encouraging that someone so successful can still sport such discomfort with important skills like public speaking.
- larrys 13y ago
  Being able to be comfortable in front of people is a completely different skill set. There are 8 year olds that can be comfortable in front of crowds. There are people that are surgeons that can't get up the nerve to ask for an upgrade to first class at the airline counter. Or who wouldn't be able to negotiate down the price of a car. Has nothing to do with their ability to use a scalpel though.
  - rattray 13y ago
    Right, I've just always found it hard to believe the same of an executive. But your point -- and mine, really -- still stands. Not everything needs to be perfect. Just the important stuff.
- obilgic 13y ago
  I feel same as you but don't make this mistake: He is nervous but he still chooses his words very carefully, and connects his points. He is just physically nervous, but his brains works just fine.
clicks 13y ago
I suppose he's gotten slightly better at talking. He seems nervous, but isn't a complete wreck (see interviews from 2 years ago, he has improved a lot since then). As I understand it the markets responded well to Zuck's talk with Arrington and now with Bennet -- fb stock shot up after each of the interviews. But that doesn't excuse the fact he is a cartoonishly twisted guy and entrepreneurs and consumers alike should be leery of his every move. Does he seriously expect people to buy his latest spiel about immigration? This is the guy who created a political movement that went so far as to fund ads for oil drilling in arctic national wildlife refuge and putting down Keystone XL pipelines, so, sorry, I'm not buying that he's in this cause because he met someone who couldn't attend college because they were illegal immigrants. Having talked at length with people who knew him in his Harvard days, he's ruthless, relentless, and rapacious -- he has determined he's going to approach the immigration issue in the public arena with stories about illegal immigrants not getting accepted into colleges, and this seems to be the way he's going at it. Pity. He's the face of a serious issue that warrants genuine people looking at it with sincerity and good faith, instead we're stuck with Zuck. This is the guy who literally called the users of his site "dumb fucks", and was literally willing -- no, eager to hand over private details of his site's users to his friends. I ran forums that garnered about 12k users per month when I was 16, I took the responsibility of safeguarding my users' private information very seriously. The only thing that's changed about Zuck is he's learned to not say these things out loud, play a nice PR game, and meet people and convince them that he's a nice fella who wants best for everybody and "connect the world!" through Facebook (no matter if you want to be connected to it or not).
- nostromo 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure I said worse things to my friends in private when I was that age. I shudder to think what it would feel like to have it disclosed publicly.
- jmduke 13y ago
  I strongly disagree with your characterization of him as 'cartoonishly twisted' and think that if you're going to write someone off for being overly glib in a private conversation while they're in college, then you're casting an incredibly wide net.
- enko 13y ago
  > The only thing that's changed about Zuck is he's learned to not say these things out loud I am not a fan of Zuckerberg, but I don't think you have any right to claim such a thing. People can change. It's good to hear you were so responsible at age 16, but not everyone matures so quickly. My own personality has basically done a complete 180 since my high school and uni days, from the biggest prick you ever met to someone who genuinely tries to show compassion and consider others' points of view. Is it all a façade to conceal the inner asshole? I'm sure you could make that case, but in the end it's outcomes that matter. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but the flip-side of that is that sometimes people who might still be assholes internally can do a lot of good. Track record is important, yes. But giving sincere people second chances is also important, and that goes for Zuck, too.
  - Jormundir 13y ago
    The road to heaven is paved with assholes.
  - samstave 13y ago
    People can, he hasn't.
  - runawaybottle 13y ago
    He's also very normal on a human level if you just step back for a moment. He's a programmer, so being awkward in interviews makes sense when he's starting out. He's young and arrogant, and therefore there's probably records of dumb comments he's made. He's also getting older and more mature, so I'm sure he's changed his mind on a few things. All of this strikes me as a normal, reasonably honest person, and really that's about as much as you can ask for.
psbp 13y ago
I think it's unfortunate that this guy has so much power over technology and, maybe to a greater extent, society as a whole. I don't know his true intentions and ethics, but he just seems so disingenuous.
- skrebbel 13y ago
  That's a pretty hard judgment based on, well, nothing.
  - sashagim 13y ago
    It's based on how many years the person heard or read about zuckerberg, and how many years he's spent on earth learning about life. The statement is an opinion (and is phrased accordingly), and it's based on his or hers unique perspective of life, in other words - the personality. Don't dismiss that, it's your biggest asset.
Helianthus 13y ago
Easy karma, pg. I mean, you've posted a topic that is guaranteed to provoke the kind of flamewar you seem to think is counterproductive.
- enko 13y ago
  > Easy karma, pg. Considering pg can likely award himself arbitrary karma points with a single SQL statement, I think your assumption of his motives is probably mistaken.
  - adamnemecek 13y ago
    HN uses text files for persistence :-).
    - enko 13y ago
      You have got to be kidding me. The machine this server runs on must have a lot of RAM!
      - krapp 13y ago
        I think he has to open it up and shake it out every week or so or it gets clogged.
      - adamnemecek 13y ago
        I'm guessing that you could get by with some pretty simple caching. Judging by the timestamps of the new comments, there don't seem to be more than say 2 comments per minute. I'm guessing that there are even fewer new posts and probably more upvotes. But I still feel like you could get by with very little in terms of HW.
        enko 13y ago
        Fair enough. I suppose the entire HN corpus would probably not be that large compared to modern HW capabilities. Still seems to be a bit fragile, though. I am assuming persistence is a periodic thing, making the system vulnerable to eg. power failure between persist events, ie writing the text files. To be balanced against the simplicity gains of only having to deal with in-program data structures, though, I guess. Then again it's worked flawlessly for 5+ years so what do I know!
msoad 13y ago
"There are a lot of problems to debug" Is that normal English or just programmer English? I am not native speaker so I really don't know. Is "debug" a known word for public?
- staunch 13y ago
  No, it's not commonly used by non-hackers. I'd guess most people can figure out what it means given the context, but it's probably not entirely clear.
RustyTrombone 13y ago
The only reason Zuckerberg gained a sudden interested in politics and PR is because he thinks it will help his bottom line. He is a CEO of a multi-national, publicly held corporation. Every decision he makes is going to effect his company. The only thing that matters to a corporation like Facebook is profits. The thing I don't like about this interview, and pretty much anything public he has said in the last 5 years, is that he tries to hide his reasoning behind some desire to change society and 'connecting the world'. He needs stop pretending he is running some charity. He is either being foolish to his shareholders or dishonest with the public. Either way, I take everything he says a grain of salt.
akamaka 13y ago
pg, I'd love to hear what you found interesting about this interview, because I never seem to gain much insight by listening to Mark Zuckerberg. He's kind of like Bill Gates, that way. They're both brilliant guys, but they don't ever seem to publicly say anything that leaves me with any new knowledge, any spark of inspiration, or a new perspective on the world. I have a lot of respect for both of them, and I'm usually very dismissive of the idea that they don't deserve their success, but this interview really gives me the impression of a man who got lucky to be where he is, and doesn't care for much beyond being keeping Facebook secure in its position (and dipping his toe into humanitarian issues). Good counterexamples are Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Steve Jobs, or yourself, who have often surprised and delighted me with whole new ways of looking at things, and who frequently leave me excited and motivated to go out and strive to make my work count for more. Did I miss something important in this video?
- runawaybottle 13y ago
  Mark is younger than everyone on that list, so I'll suggest that it has more to do with age. Everyone has insight in their respective fields, but I think a certain level of adversity and time is necessary for one to turn a lot of that insight into wisdom. Tesla and Spacex almost didn't make it out alive during the 2008 financial crisis, and I recall Musk mentioning that when it looked like his two companies would be a failure, he'd wake up with tears on his pillow. I think at the moment, Mark is definitely trying to not upset his share price by saying something that doesn't need to be said. We don't know how he is internalizing things right now. Hopefully we will get more wisdom from him in the future, that stuff doesn't just grow on trees. Gates is pretty interesting from whatever talks/interviews I can remember.
goggles99 13y ago
"11 million people are a lot of people who are being treated unfairly" (Speaking of illegal aliens) Unfairly? Most of these people or their parents snuck into this country, breaking the law. They knew full well the down side. How is this unfair? Isn't it more unfair that taxpayers have to pay their medical and education bills? and no they don't save the average person enough money on produce and services to make up the difference - this is a lie propagated by the handful of wealthy persons who actually benefit from their presence. How can people be so blind? "If you poll the majority of Americans, they want to get something done" (speaking on the illegal immigration situation) Yeah Mark, you know darn well that most Americans want the borders secure, illegals deported. In other words - The public largely wants the laws of the country actually enforced (wow what a notion).
zeckalpha 13y ago
I was pleasantly surprised by this, with the exception of the question about the Social Mobile Cloud's ability to Disrupt. Blech.

55 points by pg 13y ago

I always find it oddly comforting to see how nervous, and frankly awkward, Mark Zuckerberg can be on stage. I have a fine stage presence but it's somehow very encouraging that someone so successful can still sport such discomfort with important skills like public speaking.

larrys 13y ago
Being able to be comfortable in front of people is a completely different skill set. There are 8 year olds that can be comfortable in front of crowds. There are people that are surgeons that can't get up the nerve to ask for an upgrade to first class at the airline counter. Or who wouldn't be able to negotiate down the price of a car. Has nothing to do with their ability to use a scalpel though.
- rattray 13y ago
  Right, I've just always found it hard to believe the same of an executive. But your point -- and mine, really -- still stands. Not everything needs to be perfect. Just the important stuff.
obilgic 13y ago
I feel same as you but don't make this mistake: He is nervous but he still chooses his words very carefully, and connects his points. He is just physically nervous, but his brains works just fine.

clicks 13y ago

I suppose he's gotten slightly better at talking. He seems nervous, but isn't a complete wreck (see interviews from 2 years ago, he has improved a lot since then). As I understand it the markets responded well to Zuck's talk with Arrington and now with Bennet -- fb stock shot up after each of the interviews. But that doesn't excuse the fact he is a cartoonishly twisted guy and entrepreneurs and consumers alike should be leery of his every move. Does he seriously expect people to buy his latest spiel about immigration? This is the guy who created a political movement that went so far as to fund ads for oil drilling in arctic national wildlife refuge and putting down Keystone XL pipelines, so, sorry, I'm not buying that he's in this cause because he met someone who couldn't attend college because they were illegal immigrants. Having talked at length with people who knew him in his Harvard days, he's ruthless, relentless, and rapacious -- he has determined he's going to approach the immigration issue in the public arena with stories about illegal immigrants not getting accepted into colleges, and this seems to be the way he's going at it. Pity. He's the face of a serious issue that warrants genuine people looking at it with sincerity and good faith, instead we're stuck with Zuck. This is the guy who literally called the users of his site "dumb fucks", and was literally willing -- no, eager to hand over private details of his site's users to his friends. I ran forums that garnered about 12k users per month when I was 16, I took the responsibility of safeguarding my users' private information very seriously. The only thing that's changed about Zuck is he's learned to not say these things out loud, play a nice PR game, and meet people and convince them that he's a nice fella who wants best for everybody and "connect the world!" through Facebook (no matter if you want to be connected to it or not).

nostromo 13y ago
I'm pretty sure I said worse things to my friends in private when I was that age. I shudder to think what it would feel like to have it disclosed publicly.
jmduke 13y ago
I strongly disagree with your characterization of him as 'cartoonishly twisted' and think that if you're going to write someone off for being overly glib in a private conversation while they're in college, then you're casting an incredibly wide net.
enko 13y ago
> The only thing that's changed about Zuck is he's learned to not say these things out loud I am not a fan of Zuckerberg, but I don't think you have any right to claim such a thing. People can change. It's good to hear you were so responsible at age 16, but not everyone matures so quickly. My own personality has basically done a complete 180 since my high school and uni days, from the biggest prick you ever met to someone who genuinely tries to show compassion and consider others' points of view. Is it all a façade to conceal the inner asshole? I'm sure you could make that case, but in the end it's outcomes that matter. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but the flip-side of that is that sometimes people who might still be assholes internally can do a lot of good. Track record is important, yes. But giving sincere people second chances is also important, and that goes for Zuck, too.
- Jormundir 13y ago
  The road to heaven is paved with assholes.
- samstave 13y ago
  People can, he hasn't.
- runawaybottle 13y ago
  He's also very normal on a human level if you just step back for a moment. He's a programmer, so being awkward in interviews makes sense when he's starting out. He's young and arrogant, and therefore there's probably records of dumb comments he's made. He's also getting older and more mature, so I'm sure he's changed his mind on a few things. All of this strikes me as a normal, reasonably honest person, and really that's about as much as you can ask for.

psbp 13y ago

I think it's unfortunate that this guy has so much power over technology and, maybe to a greater extent, society as a whole. I don't know his true intentions and ethics, but he just seems so disingenuous.

skrebbel 13y ago
That's a pretty hard judgment based on, well, nothing.
- sashagim 13y ago
  It's based on how many years the person heard or read about zuckerberg, and how many years he's spent on earth learning about life. The statement is an opinion (and is phrased accordingly), and it's based on his or hers unique perspective of life, in other words - the personality. Don't dismiss that, it's your biggest asset.

Helianthus 13y ago

Easy karma, pg. I mean, you've posted a topic that is guaranteed to provoke the kind of flamewar you seem to think is counterproductive.

enko 13y ago
> Easy karma, pg. Considering pg can likely award himself arbitrary karma points with a single SQL statement, I think your assumption of his motives is probably mistaken.
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  HN uses text files for persistence :-).
  - enko 13y ago
    You have got to be kidding me. The machine this server runs on must have a lot of RAM!
    - krapp 13y ago
      I think he has to open it up and shake it out every week or so or it gets clogged.
    - adamnemecek 13y ago
      I'm guessing that you could get by with some pretty simple caching. Judging by the timestamps of the new comments, there don't seem to be more than say 2 comments per minute. I'm guessing that there are even fewer new posts and probably more upvotes. But I still feel like you could get by with very little in terms of HW.
      - enko 13y ago
        Fair enough. I suppose the entire HN corpus would probably not be that large compared to modern HW capabilities. Still seems to be a bit fragile, though. I am assuming persistence is a periodic thing, making the system vulnerable to eg. power failure between persist events, ie writing the text files. To be balanced against the simplicity gains of only having to deal with in-program data structures, though, I guess. Then again it's worked flawlessly for 5+ years so what do I know!

msoad 13y ago

"There are a lot of problems to debug" Is that normal English or just programmer English? I am not native speaker so I really don't know. Is "debug" a known word for public?

staunch 13y ago
No, it's not commonly used by non-hackers. I'd guess most people can figure out what it means given the context, but it's probably not entirely clear.

RustyTrombone 13y ago

The only reason Zuckerberg gained a sudden interested in politics and PR is because he thinks it will help his bottom line. He is a CEO of a multi-national, publicly held corporation. Every decision he makes is going to effect his company. The only thing that matters to a corporation like Facebook is profits. The thing I don't like about this interview, and pretty much anything public he has said in the last 5 years, is that he tries to hide his reasoning behind some desire to change society and 'connecting the world'. He needs stop pretending he is running some charity. He is either being foolish to his shareholders or dishonest with the public. Either way, I take everything he says a grain of salt.

akamaka 13y ago

pg, I'd love to hear what you found interesting about this interview, because I never seem to gain much insight by listening to Mark Zuckerberg. He's kind of like Bill Gates, that way. They're both brilliant guys, but they don't ever seem to publicly say anything that leaves me with any new knowledge, any spark of inspiration, or a new perspective on the world. I have a lot of respect for both of them, and I'm usually very dismissive of the idea that they don't deserve their success, but this interview really gives me the impression of a man who got lucky to be where he is, and doesn't care for much beyond being keeping Facebook secure in its position (and dipping his toe into humanitarian issues). Good counterexamples are Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Steve Jobs, or yourself, who have often surprised and delighted me with whole new ways of looking at things, and who frequently leave me excited and motivated to go out and strive to make my work count for more. Did I miss something important in this video?

runawaybottle 13y ago
Mark is younger than everyone on that list, so I'll suggest that it has more to do with age. Everyone has insight in their respective fields, but I think a certain level of adversity and time is necessary for one to turn a lot of that insight into wisdom. Tesla and Spacex almost didn't make it out alive during the 2008 financial crisis, and I recall Musk mentioning that when it looked like his two companies would be a failure, he'd wake up with tears on his pillow. I think at the moment, Mark is definitely trying to not upset his share price by saying something that doesn't need to be said. We don't know how he is internalizing things right now. Hopefully we will get more wisdom from him in the future, that stuff doesn't just grow on trees. Gates is pretty interesting from whatever talks/interviews I can remember.

goggles99 13y ago

"11 million people are a lot of people who are being treated unfairly" (Speaking of illegal aliens) Unfairly? Most of these people or their parents snuck into this country, breaking the law. They knew full well the down side. How is this unfair? Isn't it more unfair that taxpayers have to pay their medical and education bills? and no they don't save the average person enough money on produce and services to make up the difference - this is a lie propagated by the handful of wealthy persons who actually benefit from their presence. How can people be so blind? "If you poll the majority of Americans, they want to get something done" (speaking on the illegal immigration situation) Yeah Mark, you know darn well that most Americans want the borders secure, illegals deported. In other words - The public largely wants the laws of the country actually enforced (wow what a notion).

zeckalpha 13y ago

I was pleasantly surprised by this, with the exception of the question about the Social Mobile Cloud's ability to Disrupt. Blech.