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>” Zhu believes his preference to seek consensus instead of shutting down dissenting views or engaging in noisy debates is a cultural trait his investors mistook for weakness—a stereotype about East Asians...”

I could be wrong but on the surface it looks like he’s looking for an excuse to blame something else.

That stereotype was for Japanese who stereotypically seek consensus (but it’s more an expectation that you will agree with the boss rather than achieving managerial nirvana). In any case I have not seen that as a stereotype for Chinese or Taiwanese or any of the Chinese diaspora enclaves in Southeast Asia so it almost seems like someone wanting to take advantage of other people’s uncertainty of a stereotype where it’s kinda plausible.

> We want some kind of decisive, basically tech bro, alpha to come in and boss people around without any context

Who exactly wants this? Neither Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai nor Zuckerberg fit this description. The vast majority of tech leaders seem like consensus builders, as opposed to this "alpha leader" trope.

Theranos investors? Given how taken they were by Holmes's affected deep voice and piled money in without so much as asking some biology professors about the limits of small blood samples.

The fact that even the most assertive tech leaders are more "chair throwing tantrum incident" at most may be part of their aggro. "Normal people" get irrationally pissed off at things not meeting their prejudices and preconceptions. In this case the lack of "alpha bro" at the top. They cannot imagine a lack of this as seen in the shibboleth of the clueless "techbro" perojative.

You don't see vandalism for decades saying "Wall street go home!" in the Bronx in the face of gentrification even though the rough consensus is that Wall Street is a bunch of priveledged douchebags.

Hard to get a grip on exactly what proportion of tech leaders are consensus builders versus alpha tech bros, but there is a trope of the highly opinionated leaders who rules tyrant-like, for example Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer.

Gates definitely doesn't come across as tyrant-like, and quick googling suggests he's participative as a leader.

Some accounts of Bill Gates:

Allen writes in Idea Man that Gates “thrived on conflict” and “would demean people and force them to defend their positions.”

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_850292

Gates was famously the office bully. He dressed down employees in public, hurled sarcasm at rivals, and would reportedly troll around Microsoft's parking lots on weekends to see which employees were working overtime.

https://www.gq.com/story/young-bill-gates-was-an-angry-offic...

Bill Gates is undefeated when the DOJ isn't summoned up.

Except for Google.

Big companies that have reached sustainability require consensus. Startups are basically moon-shots based on hopefully achieving product/market fit. For that (as a VC managing a portfolio) you need a CEO who's willing to stay the course. More: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/11/09/ceos-dont-steer/

> I’m not saying one leadership style is better than the other, I just hope we recognize good consensus based leadership should be valued as well, and it’s rather undervalued in tech culture in favor of people that sometime make a lot of noise, but end up being completely full of it.

It seems likely that some leadership styles are better than others and plausible that techbrocracy is better than a more circumspect style for companies like this.

Variety of styles at various similar firms might have benefits, but I don't think it's fair to assume that variety is worth while without an actual argument or evidence.

> techbrocracy is better than a more circumspect style for companies like this.

I haven't seen solid evidence that that is the case.

Here's an alternate hypothesis: high-capital investors & wall street types aren't actually that good at determining quality management at all, they grew up in affluent social circles where "professional bro"-esque (be it finance or tech) people were common and respected, and they project those views onto the companies they invest in. Getting investment capital from these people is as much about cultural homogeneity with the "old money" types as it is about having a brilliant idea or a good execution plan.

It's worth remembering that most of this capital is being invested by people who just inherited the wealth from their parents, they're not necessarily genius market participants.

e: And I'm downvoted, why?

You would also need a source for most of the capital being sourced from inheritance. It sounds like unsupported assertion especially when you look at the landscape of the richest tech people. Gates, Jobs, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk all have built the capital themselves even if they had a nice start in life.

Seeing how much more wealth there is now than there was 40-60 years ago it just doesn't seem plausible that most of the investors just inherited it. Extraordinary claims - extraordinary evidence please.

> It sounds like unsupported assertion

Sure, the estimates range from 50% to 65% of all private wealth in the US being inherited by the 5% most affluent households [0]. This logically implies most of the wealth held by affluent households is inherited.

Certainly, those at the very, very top (ie. the literal top 10, like Gates, Bezos, Musk) of households are likely to have built their own capital, but I'd also point out that there are plenty on the top list that have inherited it, if you look at the top 15 wealthiest Americans, 5 of those arguably did not earn their wealth (the Waltons, MacKenzie Scott, and Charles Koch). [1]

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/06/people-l...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth...

I don't think it's fair to say that MacKenzie Scott or the Waltons didn't earn their wealth. I mean I am on conservative side economically but the case of MacKenzie Scott seems like a classic "we form a team, split tasks and try to do as well for ourselves as we can" kind of deal. Exactly the way marriages should be. If a family runs a business and a lot of family members are involved one way or another it's not fair to say the wealth is inherited. Nor is it fair to say a wife who supported her husband in both everyday and business matters didn't earn her wealth.

As to sources: what politically motivated newspaper claims in an opinion piece isn't meaningful. I look at the list of richest Americans and I see the vast majority (90%+) or even all of them were involved in building the fortune.

When googling around for numbers it seems most sources claim that vast majority of world population millionaires are self made and even bigger percentage of billionaires are.

Personally all the people I know who did well for themselves didn't inherit anything. I am sure my perspective is shaped by being born in a very poor communist country but it seems the actual numbers worldwide don't contradict my intuition that fortunes bigger and smaller are mainly built and rarely inherited.

> I don't think it's fair to say ... the Waltons didn't earn their wealth.

Look, I'll grant you that Scott is "arguable" as I said, Koch is also very arguable.

I don't think you can seriously claim the Walton heirs earned their wealth, but I don't think it is particularly relevant to the debate.

> what politically motivated newspaper claims in an opinion piece isn't meaningful

I only cited the WaPo because it collated the econometrics papers that showed the claim. Look, you choose whether you want to believe, whether it is peer-reviewed economics research and meta-analysis or "googling around for numbers." We all know how reliable Google is :)

> it seems most sources claim that vast majority of world population millionaires are self made

I also googled this "claim", and huh, guess what showed up? A bunch of "politically motivated newspaper claims" but this time they were relying on this obviously biased source (https://www.wealthx.com/report/world-ultra-wealth-report-201...), not peer-reviewed economics research.

Ultimately, you choose what to believe but almost all the evidence points to the majority or close to the majority of private wealth being inherited by the wealthy.

> Personally all the people I know who did well for themselves didn't inherit anything

1. This is 100% contextual to America 2. Many people are very shy about admitting an inheritance.

I also don't really trust you to be a good judge of if someone is "self-made" if you honestly think the Walton's didn't inherit their wealth - pretty much every one of them is described as an heir/heiress and they were not actively that involved in the business.

You choose what to believe, but ultimately "facts don't care about your feelings." You seem to be reasoning backwards from your political beliefs to the conclusions you want to hear.

> I haven't seen solid evidence that that is the case.

(Note, I called this plausible, not correct or even likely.)

> plausible that techbrocracy is better than a more circumspect style for companies like this.

Given that the company was founded and formed under Zhu's leadership, it was probably exactly suited to his leadership style[0].

The new factor appears to be the VC's. It's not so common now, but VC's used to have a reputation for replacing founders with "experienced" CEOs - y'know: their mates from the golf club who could be counted on to play ball nicely. This was especially common if the founder was unconventional in any way.

[0] TFA doesn't mention any internal management problems, so I'm assuming all was well and there wasn't any dissatisfaction with the leadership style. That assumption could be wrong.

> y'know: their mates from the golf club who could be counted on to play ball nicely. This was especially common if the founder was unconventional in any way.

And it's a pretty obvious conclusion from:

1. the fact that GPs have to put up $10s of millions into the fund to get the job

2. most (>50%) wealth held by affluent people (like the people who become GPs) is inherited from their parents.

These are people who grew up in affluent social circles and want people like them managing the companies they invest in.

Yeah the golden combo is hard charging leader who takes their first 90 days to ID what to be hard charging about. High EQ and being more often than not the last (or at least the third) person to offer an opinion is the mark of a mature leader.

Otherwise it’s just a bull in a china shop stepping on and sh*ting on a lot of pre-existing work and stakeholders who did the work. Easy way to lose an org trust and never get it back unless a ton of headcount churn occurs such that no one really recalls how much of a moron the lead was.