Writes Kim Scott, former executive at Google and Apple and author of "Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity," in "'Founder Mode' Explains the Rise of Trump in Silicon Valley" (NYT).
"Founder mode" is a coinage that refers to a management style where the founder makes decisions on his own.
Interesting that Kim Scott speaks of Musk buying Twitter (and losing money on it) "to silence his opponents." Didn't he replace the people at Twitter who were silencing their opponents?
Scott ends her article this way:
Will founder mode continue to worm its way through Silicon Valley? I do not believe it will, for the simple reason that it doesn’t work. It may be brutal, but it is also incompetent. Emotional dysregulation, bullying and bloviating are not leadership attributes. People who cannot manage themselves should not manage others. Leaders who can self-regulate understand the wisdom of accepting checks and balances on their own power from employees, boards and the government. Humanity’s superpower is our ability to collaborate. Great leaders, including great founders, know how to bring people together and help them work better together. They create hierarchies that optimize for collaboration, not domination. The authoritarian playbook can be seductive. Coercive leaders can appear to get lots done in the short run, especially when they promise special treatment to their supporters. But in the long run, they damage lives, companies and even democracies.
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Projections from NYT. The irony of Alphabet Corporate adoption of principals before principles, founders notwithstanding.
Always a unique perspective from the NYT. A sort of heads-up-their-backsides kind of vibe. It never gets old.
"Coercive leaders can appear to get lots done in the short run, especially when they promise special treatment to their supporters."
Bah! Humbug. Joe Biden didn't get anything done, at least nothing worth doing.
Kim doesn't seem to understand that sauce for the progressive goose is also sauce for the conservative gander. If Twitter would--and did--accede to government requests to silence or diminish this or that, why can't X accede to its owners political whims and preferences. And Ms. Scott is publishing her op ed piece or "news story" in the New York Times. And the NYT treats its readers as members of the proverbial "Mushroom Society" i.e. Kept in the dark and covered with dung. In its own way, the NYT and many of its MSM confreres are very, very "coercive" in what stories they choose to tell.
Envy
"Didn't he replace the people at Twitter who were silencing their opponents?"
No, no no ... they only silenced "disinformation."
What is disinformation you ask?
"Shut up," they replied.
The value of owning a printing press is the power you have to keep things OUT of the news.
X needs to take a tip from the Times and switch back to Intern Mode.
Who, besides Kim Scott, says Musk is silencing his opponents? Before Musk bought Twitter there were regular reports of conservatives being censored. I haven't seen any reports of liberals being censored since Musk took over.
Kamala Harris has an X account. If Musk was going to silence her, he'd delete that.
She doesn't use it because X also has Community Notes ... which allows the mere hoi polloi to fact-check her ass and the ability to ratio her lies.
Before Musk, Democrats had control of all of the levers of information suppression. They must eliminate him to regain their power.
He's in just as much assassination danger as Trump.
"Founder mode" is a coinage that refers to a management style where the founder makes decisions on his own.
There is really no way to prove that this is what Musk or any other Boss is actually doing. The person can quietly accumulate points of view, assess, weigh, extraplolate, etc., and then announce what he or she has decided without explaining how the thought process occurred and who or what contributed to it.
It can be important to try and achieve consensus but not always possible and at the end of the day, the one in charge has to make the decisions and everyone else has to fall in line or get out of the way.
Anyway, Musk bought Twitter, he can break it. It belongs to him. Isn't that what the left wants? For it to fail?
"Interesting that Kim Scott speaks of Musk buying Twitter (and losing money on it) "to silence his opponents." Didn't he replace the people at Twitter who were silencing their opponents? "
"Interesting" isn't the word I'd choose. More like detached from reality. If we need one word, I'd choose 'delusional'.
It isn't wrong when WE do it. It is only wrong when YOU do it.
That explanation helps one understand the protests of the Left.
Who has been silenced? I would expect there to be a hue and cry about this, and names named - but, nothing. Who places a valuation of $12 billion on the enterprise? It's privately held, and not up for sale - not so? Where does the number come from, then? And I notice she didn't mention the embargo by major advertisers, who all just decided independently, at the same moment, to pull ad revenue. What a coincidence ! And nothing whatsoever to do with poison pen articles of faked research about secret Nazi signalling by that poison little troll toad, David Brock and Media Matters.
Nothing to see here, folks, just the Progressive Left fighting dirty to the limits of their twisted imagination, behind the scenes, and strapping on the angel halo to point their finger, and blame the mess on the victim.
'Repeat a lie often enough...'. We see how it works against Trump. It'll work against Musk.
They just hate it when the shoe is on the other foot.
"Who places a valuation of $12 billion on the enterprise? It's privately held, and not up for sale - not so? Where does the number come from, then?"
Yes, it's a red herring.
Founder mode sounds incorrect. Founders typically are minority owners, maybe 10% max and have other shareholders and a board to answer to.
Elon is more like a sole proprietor. He owns 94% of x and has no board, he is the sole member of the board and answers to nobody as long as he is up to date with his loans.
John Henry
Coercive leaders can appear to get lots done in the short run, especially when they promise special treatment to their supporters. But in the long run, they damage lives, companies and even democracies.
Holy shit. This person is absolutely impervious to irony and hypocrisy. All of the coercion and special treatment of supporters comes from the Left, not the Right, and liberals continue to enjoy strident free speech on Twitter/X.
What's the meaning of "centaur" in the context of the headline?
Nice to see regular mode back. Evennicer if I have finally figured out how to turn italics off. ( The trick is: comment has to have some additional content in it, you can't just write a bare closing italics tag
Well now my closing tag got stripped
We’ll Community Notes forces the people who post on X to know the facts that they’re writing about or face humiliation. I can see how that would silence a lot of lefties.
Didn't he replace the people at Twitter who were silencing their opponents?
Yes, and he cut a lot of dead wood besides.
"Leaders who can self-regulate understand the wisdom of accepting checks ...".
I am guessing that Kim Scott has accepted a few checks.
Musk did overpay quite a bit in my opinion- he (or someone else) probably could have bought out the shareholders for about half what he spent but I imagine he didn't want to have to deal with a bidding war with another billionaire. However, there is no real assigning a present value to the enterprise without a public offering and it is quite possible that a lot of the value is in the intangible connection all of Musk's ventures have with each other- there is certainly value there that I can't imagine myself which is why I have a lot of doubt about my own evaluation of his purchase price.
However, Scott's essay is hilarious- Musk hasn't silenced his opponents as far as a I know and I think Scott would have listed some names if Musk had done so. All Musk did was remove the boot from the neck of those the previous management had silenced in furtherance of their own political preferences though they always dress up it up as silencing misinformation like good little Nazis.
"Didn't he replace the people at Twitter who were silencing their opponents? "
That's where the logic of this article falls apart. Instead of using Twitter/X to silence people, Musk restrained the obvious political censorship that was taking place on the platform. The author talks about Musk using X to "silence his opponents" but it's pretty obvious that he didn't do that. Musk has encouraged people with different views than him to engage on X. Any silencing on X by people on the left has been people self silencing by people leaving X. I suspect that the author's logic is: Look what Musk made us do. He silenced us by making us choose to leave X.
Also, Musk is not using X to push his personal beliefs. He's using his personal account to do that and he was doing that before he bought Twitter. And anybody else has the same power to do that. He is not providing any free X advertising on the platform to the Trump campaign.
This is complete and utter bullshit. First, he owns the company, he can name it 'Booger' if he wants to.
Next, the company is running quite well without all the dead weight of marketing Karens organizing office parties and buying trade show shwag.
Third, if Musk were to announce X is for sale, the liberals would move heaven and earth to purchase it, and would pay well above Musk's purchase price. They MUST have control. Money no object.
Musk has a long-term plan for X that goes well beyond a social media network. The only way he 'loses' is if he is throttled and lawfared out of existence by a liberal tyranny in DC.
I wondered about that, too.
Guy builds reusable rockets, high end electric cars, a global satellite network. What a failure.
italic off
Centaur? Half-man, half-horse?
Maybe a playful Mr. Tumnus is more like it.
He fired 80% of the staff and the place still functions. That's the part that terrifies the Left - their sinecures may not be so safe after all, the work ice cream bar gets closed, and the bottom line once more reigns over the fee-fee's.
Musk isn't shutting down opposing views, that would be Google and Facebook. The Left has gone nuts, and I am so old I remember when there were left wing intellectuals. Many were communists and wrong about everything, but they were intellectuals.
Note that for the left, if you don't silence their opponents you are "silencing" the left since they now have to share the space. And they don't play well with others.
“Who has been silenced? I would expect there to be a hue and cry about this, and names named - but, nothing.”
I have to agree with this. I haven’t seen censorship of the left on X. As I said on the other post about censorship, there are still many trending anti-Trump topics.
You buy control of an existing company or a organization, you then staff it with people you want or like. Everybody does that. Ford Motors, Detroit Free Press, or the University of Michigan. And as noted above, if Musk were to offer X for sale the billionaire tech bros & their widows would sell the gold in their mother's teeth to pay his price. To paraphrase the former sex pest Minnesota senator, " some hypocritical hypocrites being very hypocritical". IOW the NYT at its usual.
The author talks about Musk using X to "silence his opponents" but it's pretty obvious that he didn't do that.
I guess you all (Althouse included) missed this
"Founder Mode" is how most small businesses become successful and sometimes turn into mega-businesses. Governance by committee or with checks and balances does not work for start-ups or growing mid-sized companies.
And how is that relevant to Musk and Twitter?
Writes Kim Scott, former executive at Google and Apple and author of "Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity,"
Old saying in business: “No ass kickers without ass lickers.” If Kim Scott was a “kick ass” boss, it’s easy to imagine her surrounded by obsequious yes-men (and yes-women).
I would like to know the "meaning" of centaur also.
Before steam and ICE, to have the mobility of a horse with hands to hold tools or weapons, not to mention other equipment, and in most paintings are pretty handsome, what boy wouldn't consider such a thing really awesome.
I really hadn't thought about this. Nowadays, centaurs would have a hard time with cars and elevators, for starters. Is a centaur the product of a more primitive mind? Is this just h8ting on Elon? Or does being a "centaur" mean you're statue worthy?
I have not tossed this metaphor before.
Freder Foreperson: And how is that relevant to Musk and Twitter?
Scott's last paragraph:
"Will founder mode continue to worm its way through Silicon Valley? I do not believe it will, for the simple reason that it doesn’t work. It may be brutal, but it is also incompetent."
Scott's article is based on a false premise.
Sometimes it's better for one person to make decisions than to have everything passed by a committee. Who better than the founder? If you don't like how they run the business they created, make your own. (Remember when so many people were saying that if Trump didn't like getting removed from Twitter, he could just make his own platform?)
“Interesting that Kim Scott speaks of Musk buying Twitter (and losing money on it) "to silence his opponents." Didn't he replace the people at Twitter who were silencing their opponents? “
No. That’s why he did it. He fired those who weren’t contributing to the bottom line (in particular, the censors), and kept those who did (his coders). This is how M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) typically works. The purchaser sees how he can increase the value of the company, making it more profitable, buys the company, implements those measures, and reaps the rewards. This is what Mitt Romney was good at, and how he made his money. Sometimes, the purchaser increases the value through synergy. But. In a lot of cases, it’s through reducing expenses. And that is what Musk did - he cut his salary expenses by over half, by cutting out the deadwood, taking the gamble that he wouldn’t lose as much in sales revenues. And, it was probably a good gamble - many of those vowing to leave Twitter if they didn’t continue their egregious censoring, ended up sticking around. In the long run, he probably could have afforded almost a 50% revenue drop, and it doesn’t appear to have been anywhere near that.
“I guess you all (Althouse included) missed this”
Yes, I DID miss this. I would love to know what is in the hacked vetting documents regarding JD Vance. Even Trump said he loved Wikileaks back then, so why is Musk censoring this?
“Musk tried claiming the dossier was “one of the most egregious, evil doxxing actions we’ve ever seen” because it included private addresses. But the Hunter Biden laptop files he publicized had private addresses and other personal information, including nude photos.
This is more than just hypocrisy. It’s an articulation of what Musk means by “free speech”: promote causes he likes, suppress causes he doesn’t.”
Oh gosh, now I’ll have to take back my kind words regarding X’s equal opportunity free speech. Darn.
Hassayamper writes, "What's the meaning of "centaur" in the context of the headline?"
If Kim Scott knows her mythology, it means Elon Musk is a disruptive element in need of being killed. There are dozens of named centaurs in ancient literature, and with sole exception of Chiron, the mentor of Achilles, they were all riotous and randy drunkards, thoroughly untrustworthy and dangerous. All the male Olympians and most of the demigods killed their share of the half-horses, all to the benefit of mortals.
Skilled equestrians are sometime metaphorically called centaurs, but I doubt Kim Scott implies that usage, nor do I believe she equates Musk with the wise and kindly Chiron. The most obvious implication is an invitation to assassination, just like Rick Wilson's "put a bullet in Trump" comment
What concerns me most his lack of geopolitical insight; both his and of his inner circle. He is not hindered by a deep understanding of US interests or national security concerns or even loyalty to US and/or democratic interests.
Anyone willing to engage him on substance is attacked and ridiculed by Musk and his entourage to a degree that is profoundly stifling and crushing open debate.
In a way he is and may try to become a global Trump, converting a mass of people to his point of view by alpha male behavior, something that obviously worked for Trump, and use the heft of those easy to manipulate masses to further his ambitions. Given his kowtowing to Xi, Modi and Putin and his attacks on relatively more democratically accountable people, the pattern isn't very reassuring.
What’s funny here, is that practically any MBA would have quickly recognized what Musk was doing with his acquisition of Twitter. Maybe not up front, but the week where he fired all the censors, but pulled all nighters with the coders. The salaries, office space, etc for censors were cost items. How were they contributing to the bottom line? They weren’t. They were the company’s largest personnel cost, and weren’t contributing to the bottom line. Ok, maybe a little, but not near as much as Twitter was paying for the censoring. Maybe if the government had been paying for all of the Twitter people they had direct numbers for. But probably not, even then. And, they were losing potential and actual customers due to the censoring. What gave Musk’s game away though was when he spent some all nighters with the coders. Probably didn’t really help them, but he made sure that they knew that they were valuable to the company, and he wanted them to stay (he has apparently done similar with SpaceX and Tesla engineers).
What’s also funny is that the NYT has people writing about this, who don’t have a clue here as to what actually happened. It comes from hiring J School activists, instead of B School MBAs.
She prefers censorship behind the scenes like the old days.
"What concerns me most his lack of geopolitical insight; both his and of his inner circle.
I've seen no evidence of any "geopolitical insight" ( jejune buzzword) in Bad Genes' comments. Consequently, I'm disinclined to give him any more authority on the subject than my cat, perhaps less. The cat at least knows where the litter box is and what it's for.
Give us some examples of being attacked and ridiculed by Musk. And of kowtowing to Xi, Modi, and Putin. And where is his entourage?
To "silence" is a verb meaning "to allow competing voices," so as to force speakers to compete based upon the insufficient quality of their thinking rather than via monopolization. It is a very real threat to our Democracy.
How long ago was it that you asked, as a serious question, "Who is Elon Musk?"
How long ago did you ask "who is Kim Scott?" My guess is that the answer is "Never", because you never heard of her before this post. She us "a former executive at Google and Apple and author".
Now the fact that Musk is a billionaire who has created great wealth, and is responsible for huge advances in science and technology does NOT mean that his opinions on political or social issues are correct. Think of Henry Ford.
But on what possible basis could you think that Kim Scott's opinion on Musk's investment decisions is worth the time it takes you to read it?
Musk took away their hammer of censorship and they'll never forgive him for it.
What concerns me most his lack of geopolitical insight...
Well, if you're concerned, I suspect he'll get right on it. Make it all better for you. And only you.
Can you imagine someone reinforcing their personal views? The nerve!
"But the Hunter Biden laptop files he publicized had private addresses and other personal information...."
Well it's a little hard to take umbrage, when you're busy spinning lies to the world, announcing that it's all just Russian Disinformation, I guess. Maybe they thought they couldn't get away with having it both ways, in the same news story.
Jim. He doesn't even know what that means.
Musk over estimates the power of Twitter. One of Trump's own pollsters found that of the thousands of people polled only about 10% were on twitter. An many of those were only episodic viewers. Many more were on FB.
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