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Comment by samspenc | Hacker News Reader

> "The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager. I'm more interested in analysing organizational and market principles, and leveraging these theories to further reduce management work, rather than actually managing people," Mr Zhang wrote in a message on the company's website. "Similarly, I'm not very social, preferring solitary activities like being online, reading, listening to music, and contemplating what may be possible," he added.

After reading and re-reading his comments, I'm still not 100% sure whether these were his honest feelings or just a different form of "corporate speak." Also interesting he is stepping down during a wave of crackdown on Internet giants in China by the CCP. It could be genuine, but I find it hard to judge.

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Whether or not it’s all true is separate from the fact that this is very much not “corporate speak.” The tone, language, self reflection, and self criticality is so foreign to what you normally see in press releases. There are a few passages in there that feel less sincere, but some of them feel totally new to tech PR at a company of that scale.

Sure, you can pose the hypothetical: but what if he’s lying? That’s a less interesting observation IMO.

I used to work at Tiktok. His speech feels consistent to me. Unlike some ceo's like Mark (fb)/Evan (snap) he rarely spoke to general employees. There was no weekly/biweekly q&a to hear from the ceo. You could easily go months with him not doing any company wide talks/emails which did make top level transparency feel bad. Maybe china had more ceo communication, but lacking on US side. The rare times he did speak/email his wording tended to be much more direct and honest than I'd expect from an executive.

> leveraging these theories to further reduce management work, rather than actually managing people

somehow I think this is what a CEO should be doing, and then letting managers do the people management.

CEO should be strategy, not keeping Karen in accounting dept. happy.

Too many companies just continue doing whatever they have been doing for a long time, without any ability at reconsidering if this still fits the market.

Every job in management is managing people, IMHO. That CEO is watching after VPs who are themselves people with typical people issues. It's people all the way up. :)

Strategy involves keeping the team happy. Modern CEOs may have technical backgrounds, but once they become CEO, they are generalists, whether they like it or not. The problems that they personally have to solve are people-related, be it employees, customers, shareholders or regulators.

I guess if he does not want to be honest, he does not need to write it this way, it is easier just to have someone draft some words for you.

Of course, one of the factor could be what has happened: forced to sell TikTok by US; couldn't sell TikTok because rejected by China; although the massive traffic amounted by apps from his company, they are seen the same way as Facebook as not healthy for society (once you are on tiktok, time really flies by :)); Maybe all of these, we don't know. This is not his first startup, and I hope this is not his last. He definitely don't have a single vision as Zerkerburg does. Let's just take his words for it since he has put efforts into it.

The court rejected Trump’s executive orders so they didn’t have to sell TikTok. I don’t think any of Trump’s executive orders concerning commerce in China were not rejected by the court.

It is impossible to tell if someone is being sincere, or just very good at appearing to be sincere.

I doubt the CCP was involved either way. A CEO stepping down with a humble excuse wouldn’t do them much good.

> A CEO stepping down with a humble excuse wouldn’t do them much good.

Of course it would, it makes it look like everything is calm, orderly, and that their economic system isn't under siege by the state. The CCP - as with all authoritarian systems and to the degree of the authoritarianism - is at all times obsessed with faking appearances. (insert inevitable diversionary replies: "but America")

Colin Huang desperately fled control of Pinduoduo, terrified of Xi's targeting of the next Jack Ma types. He started giving away his shares specifically to avoid getting that bullseye painted on him, to avoid potentially becoming the richest person in China.

It makes perfect sense that Zhang Yiming would be in the same boat as every other prominent figure that is scared they're next. ByteDance is even more influential and important than Pinduoduo though, which makes it clear there was no other scenario to be had with ByteDance other than to 'step down.' This process will not just continue, it's going to have to accelerate; authoritarian systems - a dictatorship in this case - either must liberalize, collapse or persistently tighten the screws on any perceived risks and opposition to maintain control. It's obvious which scenario is occurring.

> Also interesting he is stepping down during a wave of crackdown on Internet giants in China by the CCP.

Yes, "the best lies are the ones shrouded in truth". The reasons he listed might indeed be reasons why someone else would be a better fit for his positions, but I wouldn't be surprised if the actual trigger for stepping down now is the CCP.

I think it might be Chinese corporate talk. the politicians also talk like this sometimes. might be related to communism -- attempting to not be condescending to regular people. or maybe it's just Chinese culture that doesn't value empty talk and so he is forced to write something concrete but it doesn't mean this is the truth.

Chinese politician talk is as empty as you may see elsewhere, just in a different way (wording being more "communism" and harder to decipher)

And perhaps just harder to decipher for us because it's a different flavor of bull then we are used to, and has been passed through a translation layer

Corporate talk means to use pretentious and socially acceptable excuses to conceal the uncomfortable truth. There is no such thing as concrete corporate talk.

I'm guessing in America the word "Chinese" will become a swear word soon.

what I said is not exactly critical. so I think you already associated Chinese with bad, that's your problem

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