Which Tech CEO Would Make the Best President? | Hacker News Reader

Which Tech CEO Would Make the Best President?

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12 pointsthe_watcher19 comments

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Elon, no question.

Just for fun:

Larry is too quiet, not enough publicity. I barely see his face.

Tim is just Tim .. too calm.

Jeff Bezos - He should just stick to Amazon. I feel like he wants to be everywhere, just because he can.

Mark - who would even suggest that.

Satya ... Don't have anything on him so no.

Marissa ... Same thing.

Heh, kind of interesting the winner of the survey is "I don't know" by a definitive margin.

Idealistically speaking, Evan Spiegel of Snapchat would be the most preferable due to understanding the fiat currency system is unsustainably dangerous, and especially in the tech sector (as noted in recent interviews / past letters).

Rationally speaking, Travis Kalanick of Uber seems like the best fit because he appears an unscrupulous, vindictive and egotistical person based on his company's actions and penchant for trying to cover up any bad PR.

Still laughing that "I don't know" got such a wide margin of victory.

It will take nothing less than a few years of technocratic rule so its supporters can see that politics makes politicians the way they are, not vice versa.

A tech CEO as president is a lovely fantasy about somebody smart, from outside traditional political structures, with a pragmatic bi- or non-partisan approach. It is just Messiah-seeking, or the idea that "I could do better" projected onto a personal hero.

Politics assimilates everyone and everything. Within that framework, it hardly matters which tech CEO is president.

Brin/Page, Ellison, Bezos, Cook, Weiner, Mollenkopf. Realistically: Ellison, Cook and Mollenkopf would be top contenders.

Thanks for the feedback! Ellison would certainly have been included were he still CEO of Oracle (He stepped down a year ago and is now Executive Chairman and CTO). We considered Weiner and Mollenkopf (as well as some others such as Marc Benioff and current Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd), but decided to limit the number of options presented to respondents, as too many choices can sometimes hurt response rate.

Yeah, I figured out that since it was a survey, limiting the options to the most famous names was more of a necessity. IMHO I suggest you run a future survey asking about the most important qualities that a candidate should possess, just to cross validate the answers.

That's a great suggestion, we'll keep it in mind for followups!

Of course it would be Elon Musk. Who doesn't want to colonize mars?

He wasn't born in the US. He is ineligible.

That's true. Neither was Satya Nadella. We did this intentionally, as we were interested in who Americans felt would do the best job as president, regardless of eligibility, and when listing technology CEO's who might make a good president, it's impossible to ignore Musk.

Don't get me wrong, Musk would be my first choice as well. He might legitimately be the best man for the job, not just among tech CEOs

I wonder how the results would change if the CEO names were removed from the questions?

Side note: Id probably pick bezos(logistics) or musk(sustainable energy+space).

Glad you mentioned this, we should have clarified a bit more clearly. We didn't show respondents an image of the CEO, just the {Company_Name} CEO {CEO_Name}.

Sure, but demographics can be gleaned from name pretty easily too. Which is why I specifically asked about the case without the name :)

It just jumped out at me because the "non-stereotypical" CEOs are the lowest rated.

My gut says it would probably increase the "I don't know" count.

Thanks for clarifying. Just to be clear, you'd be interested to see the change in responses if the options were simply CEO of {Company Name}? And your theory is that the "I don't know" rate would rise? If so, I agree. Another potentially interesting change would be to list Elon Musk as SpaceX CEO as opposed to Tesla CEO.

Exactly.

And further, I don't think that Satya and Marissa would lag as much with the CEO of {Company Name} scheme.

Author here. Happy to answer any questions.

Who has the best sweet potato fries?

My favorite of San Francisco (so far) are actually from Pacific Catch, but Roam Burger has pretty good ones. The Counter has great sweet potato fries as well, but there isn't one in the city.

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