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Comment by azangru | Hacker News Reader

I am baffled by this take that I've been seeing all over the internet recently. A CEO is a person. He is human. Can't a human be on the wrong side of history on various matters, and what does it matter if he is? Can't he still do a decent job (whatever it is that CEOs do)? Why do we expect random entrepreneurs, celebrities, engineers, and so on to also be moral authorities or role models?

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This is always the same age-old discussion: Can you separate the art from the arists? And unsurprisingly, different people have different views on it. Even if you disagree, you should be able to understand why people don't want to use a product if their usage of that product makes the owner and CEO more powerful (and they think them being more powerful is a bad thing for humanity).

Edit to add a simple example:

Musk's wealth is mostly tied up in Tesla -> You think Musk uses his wealth to wield political power, political power that makes the world a worse place -> You still think Teslas are good cars -> Even though you think that, you don't want to spend your money on buying a Tesla, because this will make Musk more wealthly -> Start at the beginning

It is irrelevant whether we can separate the art from the artist, especially in this matter, when both the art and the artist are bad.

If you're baffled and you're seeing it all over the internet, could it be that you're the one with the wrong take? Food for thought.

Sure :-) Being baffled doesn't make one right. Nor, for that matter, does sharing a common viewpoint.

Downright silly thing to say given how astroturfed the internet is in 2025

> A CEO is a person. He is human. Can't a human be on the wrong side of history on various matters, and what does it matter if he is? Can't he still do a decent job (whatever it is that CEOs do)? Why do we expect random entrepreneurs, celebrities, engineers, and so on to also be moral authorities or role models?

Exactly, it is a human behind the company that does every decision. Company is just legal shield. Every decision is affected by what they really are or think.

> Every decision is affected by what they really are or think.

This is called micromanagement :-)

I am sure there are organizations where the actual work that people do day to day is unaffected by who the people at the top are or what they think on matters other than the business (people at the top are often rather unpleasant anyway). I can't say whether such organizations are common or whether Vercel is one; but I believe I worked at such.

Most people in the company do what they are told to, because they are there to get money for the living. That is just about shifting responsibility to the upper level in hierarchy. So they are definitely affected by the decisions of the upper management.

Whenever there is a decisions to be made about increasing profits, for example, someone needs to judge based on moral weight. Outsource to India? Do something gray and think legal matters later? Maybe there is no moral, and the company should operate based on the risk assessment of fines breaking the law and negative PR. In all cases, "what person is", highly influences the outcome of these decisions.

In a well-functioning organization, the upper management set the vision and the goals for the company and for the product(s); and then let the people who do the actual work use their best judgement to move towards those goals. The upper management, of course, may decide that it would be more profitable to lay off the employees and to outsource to India; and that, of course, would have a direct impact on the work of those at the lower rungs; but I don't think that is the kind of concern that people have when they complain about Vercel's CEO.

I don't think it's out of line to refuse to support companies where the CEO buddy up to fascists.

It's just that if I were using Vercel or Next.js (which I don't), I would be viewing my relationship with Vercel on a solely transactional basis. If they were giving away for free something that I needed (React or Next), I would take it. If they were selling something that I needed (Vercel hosting, if I were reckless enough to tie myself to it), I would pay for the service. If they charged too much for the service, I would investigate alternatives. It wouldn't enter my mind that I were "supporting" them. I would rather imagine that they were "supporting" me. And I wouldn't give a monkey's who they have for a CEO.

That is known as "ignorant bliss".

Do you think a person of Palestinian origin should also continue seeing their relationship with Vercel on a solely transactional basis? Given that their families are likely affected and Vercel's CEO publicly supports it? I'm just trying to point out why people might have a different view on this.

I can't, of course, pretend to know what goes on in the mind of such a person; and of course I accept that people have different views; this is very plain to see. What I lament is that people with those views insist that everyone should cut ties with people with other views, rather than accepting that different people may have different views.

Let me give you a couple of different examples for comparison. Github blocked all users from Iran. Pnpm cut all traffic from Russian ips, whereas Linus Torvalds affirmed the removal of Russian maintainers of the Linux kernel. These are real adversarial actions, the like of which could impact my decisions about a company or a technology, if I were on the receiving end of those. Cowtowing to people in power and taking photos with hateful people is just an undignified behavior that is ultimately just noise.

> What I lament is that people with those views insist that everyone should cut ties with people with other views, rather than accepting that different people may have different views.

It's only natural to think that way because these particular decisions are based on ones moral framework. It isn't like choosing a favourite tea. People will be pissed at each other when moral frameworks don't match.

> Cowtowing to people in power and taking photos with hateful people is just repulsive noise.

It comes down to what you said before. People have different views. It's noise to you. It isn't noise to others.

You're all over this thread smearing people with the term "fascist". You do more to hurt your cause with histrionics like that than you understand.

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