Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

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Just interested, what's impressive about Zuck as a leader?

Money will make people do crazy things. I think he's shown time and time again in his handling of situations that he's been pretty ineffective and his primary strategy is to say "we're sorry we have to do better". It's lots of excuses, that's not good leadership material in my book.

There's also crazy stories like the time he gave a speech proclaiming "Carthago delenda est", casting Facebook as Rome and Google as Carthage. Then everyone went into lockdown over the weekend so they could dig through Google+ and copy whatever they could. According to the same book (Chaos Monkeys), Zuck's inner circle is basically a bunch of sycophants (aka Friend of Zuck). It also repeatedly refers to Facebook as a cult. Why do you think they had major failures like the most recent one? Sycophancy is not a working strategy.

Surely he's made some great choices (Instagram acquisition), but how can you begin to separate his actual ability with the power/wealth he can bestow on anyone, biasing their view of him? The guy could fail 1,000 times over at this point and still be a billionaire.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/facebo...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/16/facebook-...

The stuff that happens there is kind of comical. Would effective leaders really run an org like that?

> his primary strategy is to say "we're sorry we have to do better". It's lots of excuses, that's not good leadership material in my book.

Actually, to me, that is incredibly powerful. I can't really evaluate Zuckerberg's effectiveness, but you can't fix problems if you can't admit fault, and many in leadership positions never admit fault.

It is true that many people do not readily apologize or admit to their mistakes, but California tech culture has managed to flip this around on its head by publishing deep, heartfelt apologies on corporate blogs for everything and anything, making it lose most of its weight. The ultimate goodwill hack.

It's only powerful if you actually change. Otherwise you're just using one of the classic tricks of manipulators.

"I'm sorry, it won't happen this time" is what abusive relationships are made of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4zd7X98eOs

Do people find this sincere? It seems fake/manipulative and too convenient. Facebook has been doing this for a decade+.

It's still powerful if it impacts people. Manipulation, is still powerful if it works.

Which is where you might be confused, you can be incredibly insincere and abusive (seems common in business) but still a great leader (great in this context not meaning just), as they've shown they can a) get out of sticky situations b) continue making money and c) have a relatively happy team. So in this scenario what would actually back up your argument would be demonstrations of the apologies having zero impact, the team hating the apologies and thus being less productive, and/or a general loss of revenue.

Very well said.

Admitting fault and a need for change is also the only way to actually start a change that does happen. I agree though that you should also hold people to account for the follow through to real changes.

The change is the most important part. Talk is cheap.

But if your default reaction is to just say, "Sorry" but not seem to mean it, that's not really powerful at all.

> that's not really powerful at all.

I'd be more inclined to agree if it wasn't working so well for him.

> he's been pretty ineffective and his primary strategy is to say "we're sorry we have to do better". It's lots of excuses, that's not good leadership material in my book.

That is incredible leadership from a capitalistic perspective. Look at other business leaders like Tony Hayward of BP or John Stumpf of Wells Fargo. Getting away with atrocities under the banner of "We're sorry" is not easy. It takes years of practice and a highly orchestrated performance on Capitol Hill and other places.

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