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Comment by SamvitJ | Hacker News Reader

"I don't think there is a single founder/CEO in the 21st century that is performing better than Zuckerberg. I understand he's not a likable guy, and neither are are his products."

Spot on.

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Right? "How Zuckerberg will be looked back on" involves far more than just business/fiscal metrics, especially when "he's not a likable guy, and neither are his products". He may be hailed as a significant success as a CEO, but there's also the impact to individual privacy, the emphasis to get users addicted in an effort to maximize "engagement", the impact that social media (of which it's being argued here that he is king) on youth/society and political discourse writ large, the brutal impact to our attention spans, so on and so forth.

If I'm a magic eight ball, I'm going to go with "Outlook not good" on how history's going to view him. Being a CEO that is "performing better" than all the others is but a single piece of the puzzle.

The best performing founder / ceo in the 21st century is someone who is unlikable and promotes / develops unlikable products.

That seems impossible. What does that say about us?

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that most of the products being promoted are actually highly treasured by a large number of people.

Were highly treasured. Were.

Zuck is the poster boy for enshittification [0]. The dark pattern business model involves companies making money long after their users stop loving their offerings.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Key word "performing". If you want feel warm feelings about your heroes, don't make your heros CEOs who are ultimately judged on how large of a return they can give their shareholders.

>... CEOs who are ultimately judged on how large of a return they can give their shareholders.

At first, sure. The more time passes, however, the less CEOs are judged solely on monetary returns.

Hell, IMO, to judge a CEO solely on monetary returns in the present is selective reasoning at best.

Well... In the early 1940s you could say that Hitler was the European leader that was performing better than all the others. But still, things took a turn.

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