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Comment by ex1fm3ta | Hacker News Reader

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Maybe CEO are the easiest job to replace. If the AI clone can do what the Zuck can do the board can fire him and save a lot of money.

The problem is - the board can’t fire him

You can thank Marc Andreessen whose world view is apparently limited solely to "Snowden is a traitor". Thank god someone like him has fuck you money and can shape the world to his desires

(And I've heard he stole Mosaic code, which I don't know if it's true but would be consistent)

Marc Andreessen would be a perfect case study in duality if he actually had some redeeming qualities besides just being rich.

> if he actually had some redeeming qualities besides just being rich.

“Besides”? Being rich isn’t a redeeming quality, I’d say. It’s not even a quality in general.

The shape of his head might be interesting to study, though. Not in a phrenology sense, just anthropological, I’d be curious to see his skull.

Reminds me of Notch from Minecraft fame. Struck lightning once and everything since has been pretty mediocre because he was lucky, not talented.

It is odd when people try to put Notch on the level of someone like Carmack. Like because the guy made a billion dollars that means his opinion should be highly valued in perpetuity. He just seems like a fairly average game dev that lucked his way into making Lego 2.

The games he made for programming competitions like ludum dare were decent. I especially enjoyed Prelude to the chambered.

https://web.archive.org/web/20191221082346/http://ludumdare....

https://web.archive.org/web/20210722173354/https://www.youtu...

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgAujBKarXXoMxJDyi1Am...

He build the company for years, and made the brand to everything it is now. "Luck once" is a weird POV

The game being successful wasn't luck but it being as successful as it was definately was. Block based games had existed for years before minecraft, I don't think there was any reason to believe that this one in particular was going to explode in 2010.

I don’t know much about Notch so I have no comment on them specifically, but “building the company and brand for years” can still count as “luck once”. Once you strike gold and make it big, you have a lot of leeway for mistakes, it becomes harder to fail. Case in point, Zuckerberg.

if we're being serious, they made bets on instagram, whatsapp and now manus and are great 2nd, 3rd and 4th acts even if external.

Instagram and WhatsApp were far from bets. Both were growing exponentially. Both were serious threats to Facebook's money machine.

Facebook used their lucky cash cow money to eliminate the threat, by offering way more than any reasonable market value. Absolutely crazy money. An offer they couldn't resist, especially the investors.

No bet, just an ice cold rational calculation. Anyone wealthy and crazy enough could have done the same. No skills needed, no risks involved. It's like betting tomorrow will be another day.

You're not wrong, but also, it's a bit of hindsight bias: how many sure thing acquisitions whither?

They don’t need to be “sure things”, only threats. Once you buy the threat, whether it continues to thrive or withers is largely immaterial, the threat is gone.

It does take tremendous talent and knowledge to build what he built, saying anything else is not just dishonest but weirdly cynical if not hateful. I think you grossly underestimate how difficult it is to build anything good. Not an easy thing to follow up all the expectations set after a massive global hit like that, a classic dilemma of a successful artist.

There's a level of talent necessary to be a one-hit-wonder, yes. But I think what makes someone a one-hit-wonder and not a career star is that their success was driven by luck more than by talent. In this case "luck" is being in the right place at the right time: that nexus where cultural and technological timing is perfect for a phenomenon to appear and take hold.

> a one-hit-wonder, yes

He’s had multiple hits as an savvy acquirer.

It really doesn't. We teach kids how to program basic games like minecraft. The real appeal was and always has been the fully destructible Lego-like world bundled with good-enough online multiplayer. I was there when it started and he posted his questions/progress on the forums I frequented back then. Those posts where the starting ramp and testing ground that got him his first few users which then snowballed.

There is neither knowledge nor talent here, he stumbled into it, and that's fine.

Success cost him everything. Why'd he ever want another?

as long as he holds voting stock majority, he is good for centuries. nobody can even fire him from a publicly trading corp.

What if he starts sending his AI clone to the board meetings and it votes to fire him and replace him with itself? :P

Wtf I love AI replacement dystopias now.

Someones gotta see what 40bn on VR looks like. turns out, it looks like shit. Thanks Zuck!

Considering he reportedly paid top FB people "billions", you would hope they would be doing more than building a Mini Me. Is this the modern Stalin statue?

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