[jjtheblunt]

Maybe he realizes that, and is just a jackass.

[whatwherewhy]

Where are the nice bosses of top tech companies? Maybe that's how you build a big tech company.

[Goronmon]

I think there is a middle area between being a "nice boss" and being a boss who calls out internal engineering implementation concerns (rightly or not) on Twitter. And then fire people who disagree in a response.

[whatwherewhy]

Well, Gates is an asshole, Jobs was an asshole - where's the middleground? Maybe niceness leads to [business] mediocrity.

[eesmith]

Hewlett and Packard were relatively low on the asshole scale, at least for their employees. [1]

Early support for company health insurance, flextime, work-from-home, free coffee breaks, decentralized decision making, etc.

See the HP Memory Project at https://www.hpmemoryproject.org for some of the stories. ("Jim Catlin's Packard Story" and Packard's 11 rules, "Bill Hewlett and the HP Medical Plan" for their anonymous payment for medical bills for an employee's premature baby, etc.)

The padlock story at https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/john_minck/inside_h... is also pretty well-known, and used as an example of promoting institutional trust.

Packard's support for apartheid profits keeps him definitely on the scale.

[1] Probably better if you were a white male not as subject to the "mixture of machismo and misogyny" of early HP - https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/barbara_waugh/barba... .

[lake_vincent]

Just because the Great Pyramids were built with slavery doesn't mean that slavery is okay, or that there is not a better way to build a pyramid.

[bckr]

The pyramids were not built with slavery

[jjtheblunt]

how were they built?

[q-big]

> Just because the Great Pyramids were built with slavery

They weren't build by aliens with alien technology? ;-)

SCNR because we are talking about Elon Musk with his space obsession.

[whatwherewhy]

Don't be absurd, we are not talking about anything comparable to slavery.

I am asking - show me the person who found the better way.

[kevinventullo]

Were Larry and Sergey not considered nice?

[gavindean90]

I don’t think it’s nice or not thing but more a management strategy thing. Hard-driving can be great at extracting value from an organization but it isn’t as effective at exploring potential as other management styles.