[ninininino]

Is Zuck just too...neurodivergent or lacking in social awareness or low EQ or whatever the case may be to understand morale? Or just so cut-throat/trusting that people who don't currently work there want the META paycheck badly enough that even if morale is horrible they can just backfill departures?

[glaslong]

I have a low but not infrequent amount of direct exposure to him and honestly I think it's ~30% he is extremely ruthlessly competitive at any cost, and ~70% every semi-reasonable idea he has gets immediately twisted into cargo-culting, empire-building nonsense by the VP layer.

[disgruntledphd2]

> he is extremely ruthlessly competitive at any cost

I mean, they had Carthago Delenda Est posters for a long time, so the competitiveness has been there for an extremely long time.

[IAmBroom]

But I ask you... What has Carthage done for us lately?

[neilv]

I wouldn't blame company culture on neurodivergents. It's explained by a stereotypical ruthless flavor of business, which reinforced itself with the culture they hired and nurtured.

The company has been known as kinda sketchy almost continuously since it was founded, yet people went there because it paid the most money.

If leadership is now thinking that an executive "ideas person", plus a small execution team fortified with AI, can bang out a product more quickly than the massive army of corporate workers they've been feeding at top of the market rates, and at the same quality level as the previous inefficient bureaucracy managed... isn't that plausibly correct?

Now, the company just needs to be the best-paying job available to enough of those workers. And the company believes this is getting easier for the company, due to the state of the job market. The workers who remain will remain motivated by money.

And the company may think they're not losing anything of value, since they knew that their culture was already sick.

Example: They think they weren't getting creative, aligned, diligent brilliance, amidst all the backstabbing and politics they'd created, and so mechanically executing on an executive ideas person's vision yields the same product result, faster.

From the outside, I think this shouldn't be a surprise, nor blamed on possible neurodivergence of individuals.

(Of course this isn't my own philosophy about morale and effective product teams, and I wouldn't want to work at a company like that. But you can see some company cultures from thousands of miles away.)

[IAmBroom]

> The company has been known as kinda sketchy almost continuously since it was founded, yet people went there because it paid the most money.

It was literally started as a way of creeping on cute girls.

It's never not been sketchy. I say that, despite the fact that it enables me to connect with > 1,000 friends across my continent, many of whom I hadn't had contact with in decades. Things can be both bad and good.

[stephc_int13]

I think that Zuckerberg is driven by numbers/analytics and the competition. He was lucky enough to be made a king in this world before he was fully adult, he is likely unaware of many of the realities we take for granted, and why would he care? Money is good.

[hnthrow0287345]

Same for most executives and upper management being unable to relate because companies stopped promoting within and no longer reward loyalty and seniority. They see you as something that could be dismissed instead of someone that might run or heavily influence the company one day.

[hsuduebc2]

I personally believe that he is just piece of shit. Unhinged, greedy, selfish one. Some people are made this way, some people evolve into that state. I don't really think it's some sort of diagnosis.

[dogleash]

It is a schoolyard bully mindset in adult language. Someone acts differently than your idealized version of yourself in the same situation -> insinuate that they are not just different, but they are so abnormal as to constitute a medical condition.

[bluecheese452]

This is the guy who tried to make the metaverse a thing. He has been out of touch for decades now.

[elorant]

He's also the guy who bought Instagram for $1bn and turned into a $70bn behemoth. If that's out of touch then I don't know what the opposite would be.

[jerojero]

They bought out Instagram because it was shaping out to be a huge competitor, so I think that business would have grown to be a multibillion dollar one regardless.

It was definitely very smart to buy them out when they did.

I just think you're focusing on the wrong part.

[umeshunni]

It's entirely possible that he's changed and his pulse of the market has changed in the 10+ years since that decision.

[kranke155]

He did that because it was a solid data driven decision.

Not sure he's shown ability to do anything beyond making solid decisions on which competitors to acquire.

[zeroonetwothree]

Wasn’t this like 14 years ago? So not sure it really contradicts the comment you reply to.

[hsuduebc2]

Exactly. The yes man culture must be pretty hard near him.

[simpaticoder]

It's really hard to tell if an idea is bad without trying it out first. Zuck's runway was unusually long. And who knows? Maybe he should have stuck with it a while longer. We cannot say for certain that it would always have failed.

[magicalist]

> Maybe he should have stuck with it a while longer. We cannot say for certain that it would always have failed.

Well, their execution was also very expensive and yet garbage, which is crazy with how many insanely talented people they had to work on it at one point or the other. It seems pretty clear cut as executive failure.

[frm88]

After angel funding facebook Peter Thiel took it on himself to mentor Zuckerberg personally. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TP7Z_Eqxhxk

[apothegm]

That… would explain a lot.

[renegade-otter]

We need to stop suggesting that someone who is "neurodivergent" is more likely to be a sociopathic asshole. The two are not related at all.

Back in the day you could mention in passing "oh that guy is on a spectrum", but it was always because they were awkward and quiet, not anti-social.

Zuck has spent his life from birth in a walled garden. He cannot relate to normal human emotions. In a way, that's not his fault, but we showered people like him with praise for being "geniuses" and "visionaries", which did not help matters.

[ninininino]

Someone who is neurodivergent (which is itself an umbrella term) may very well struggle to accurately detect the level of morale amongst their coworkers (or signs of low morale), or may have a more difficult time fostering the level of closeness to their coworkers to build the trust with those people that they'd be vulnerable and share their feelings of low morale.

[renegade-otter]

That all may be true, but we have other data points. There are multiple stories of Zuckerberg being warned about the dangers of "X" and "Y". "This is going to harm children", for example. He repeatedly overrides those concerns and gives the go-ahead. This is not some poor soul who has trouble connecting with people, this is a sociopath.

[mdip]

You make a good point.

I'm "neurodivergent" but when it comes to empathy/sympathy, I tend toward the over-sensitive side rather than oblivious (as does my son, who is diagnosed with ASD Type 1).

I don't take any issue with that being used in this context, though. I mean, I wouldn't really in any context as long as the person writing it isn't intending malice -- they're just words, people can misuse/abuse them -- but specifically this context. "Neurodivergent" covers a lot of ground, but in reference to Mr. Zuckerberg, nearly all of us[0] pictured one of two things: Data (Star Trek) or Data with Borg accessories attached. Which you chose largely depended on your opinion of him, but both had an android character who has no ability to feel emotions or understand the emotions that others feel.

... and since good communication largely rests on people's understanding of your message, I think OP's word choice was largely sound. :)

[0] As in those of you who, like me, have never been in the same city at the same time as the guy so we know "him" based on what we read about him.

[alex1138]

"Dumb fucks"

Arguably hacking Crimson reporters when they tried investigating him for activities at Harvard

Buying Whatsapp so he can have a monopoly

Copying Snapchat multiple times

I mean, I can go on

[carabiner]

The word is, Zuck is going through his midlife crisis (42 yo) and wants a tougher, more driven, and more masculine environment. Zuck has been pro-Trump for a while, and palling around with MMA guys. He's also open to importing 996 culture because of his appreciation of China, which stems from his Chinese wife.

[tmaly]

I think he is playing the political game and will be pro who ever is in office to protect his baby

[zeroonetwothree]

Zuck probably has ADHD (or something like that). If you have experienced it or know people that do then you know that you tend to have tons of random ideas that seem good in the moment but a few days later you realize weren’t that great.

Now imagine every time one of these ideas happen a 2000+ person org immediately starts pivoting to work on it as its top priority.