Will Mark Zuckerberg Retire From Facebook in 2022? (cringely.com) 51
Among tech pundit Robert Cringley's predictions for 2021? "This year is going to be a tough one for Mark Zuckerberg."
[W]hile I don't expect Zuckerberg to abandon his CEO job this year, he eventually will, simply because it isn't as much fun as it used to be and there will come a point (maybe in 2022) when leaving the top job will help Facebook's stock...
Zuckerberg no longer has any who have faced what he is facing today. He has outgrown his own psychological support system... Zuckerberg's primary role models have been Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Page. Each modeled different ways to manage through dominance. Steve was a brilliant tyrant ("I know I'm an asshole," he told me more than once); Bill tried to technically dominate by claiming to identify bad code from across a room (he really can't); Larry taught by example to hide behind the algorithm, blaming it for, well, everything from nonexistent customer service to employee income inequality. The only unique truly self-actualized character in this mentor group was Steve Jobs and Steve is dead...
But none of those guys faced what Zuckerberg faces today, calling all the shots and making all the hard calls by himself. That has to be exhausting... [T]he social media market is in transition and none of my kids have Facebook accounts, which I think is telling... And so 2021 will see Facebook poked and prodded and taxed and regulated and possibly even torn apart. Google will be, too, but Facebook is frankly less essential and more vulnerable. How Zuckerberg responds will be where he blazes his own managerial trail. However it goes will take a toll, though, and even Zuck will eventually decide it's better to become a philanthropist and find some new way to change the world. Though probably not until 2022.
Zuckerberg no longer has any who have faced what he is facing today. He has outgrown his own psychological support system... Zuckerberg's primary role models have been Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Page. Each modeled different ways to manage through dominance. Steve was a brilliant tyrant ("I know I'm an asshole," he told me more than once); Bill tried to technically dominate by claiming to identify bad code from across a room (he really can't); Larry taught by example to hide behind the algorithm, blaming it for, well, everything from nonexistent customer service to employee income inequality. The only unique truly self-actualized character in this mentor group was Steve Jobs and Steve is dead...
But none of those guys faced what Zuckerberg faces today, calling all the shots and making all the hard calls by himself. That has to be exhausting... [T]he social media market is in transition and none of my kids have Facebook accounts, which I think is telling... And so 2021 will see Facebook poked and prodded and taxed and regulated and possibly even torn apart. Google will be, too, but Facebook is frankly less essential and more vulnerable. How Zuckerberg responds will be where he blazes his own managerial trail. However it goes will take a toll, though, and even Zuck will eventually decide it's better to become a philanthropist and find some new way to change the world. Though probably not until 2022.
Yes (Score:2)
And I will be stepping in to fill his role.
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ok la (Score:3)
It is rare that I see so much nonsense pushed into three paragraphs. Considering the last two months, that really means something. We should give it up for Cringley, that is amazing!
Re:ok la (Score:5, Insightful)
It is rare that I see so much nonsense pushed into three paragraphs.
Indeed. The author says that:
1. Nobody uses Facebook anymore
2. Facebook may be torn apart because it is a monopoly
Huh?
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Hardly nonsensical. Facebook is has been loosing its grip on social market for a while now. Privacy issues are becoming harder to ignore. Zuck's not the right guy to address these. Rebuilding trust in the network will require a management cleanup.
Management (Score:3)
Most managing, you see, is copying behaviors from a short list of role models
I can't imagine why anyone would ever write that.
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I don't have a high opinion of managers as a general rule, but even the worst managers in the world do more than "copying behaviors from a short list of role models."
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The really bad ones are the creative ones.
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Oh no, did a manager do something "creative" to you?
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I think the worst that ever happened to me was getting forced into team building drum sessions. It was actually kind of fun. I knew someone who decided to diagnose all her employees with psychological disorders and devise treatment schemes for them though.
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I was told to read a book about communication (Radical Candor, which is actually not bad) and when I tried to implement it, I was put on a PIP as a direct result of trying to have radical candor.
My current approach is to frequently give my managers reassurance. I've found that the bad ones tend to be remarkably insecure and need to be told over and over that they are ok.
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Ha, Radical Candor sounds like the last thing you want to have in a business environment. I'll have to read it.
My solution has been to not have a manger. It's working out great.
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My solution has been to not have a manger. It's working out great.
That's what I'm looking at for my next step.
He has a good gig (Score:2)
He gets to rule over an empire now (he has more than 51% of the votes) Why give that up? What if he decides he wants to build a rocket company? Right now, he can spend other people's money (well, a multiplier on his money) to do that. The only reason to give that up would be if you didn't want to share.
Cringeworthy Cringley (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does slashdot, year after year, post from this “tech pundit”?
A) He’s not a real person, rather a moniker handed down over time.
B) “His” predictions aren’t any better than the layperson’s, and “he” often has no idea whatsoever what he’s talking about.
Oh, and being a CEO is hard. Waa waa. Ain’t only facebook, son.
Could we get a translation into English? (Score:3)
Zuckerberg no longer has any who have faced what he is facing today.
I have no idea what that means.
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Zuckerberg no longer has any who have faced what he is facing today.
I have no idea what that means.
What he is saying is that all the other "founders" have moved on. Gates, Jobs, Page, Brin, Yang, etc. have all either died or moved on to other things. They aren't the CEOs anymore.
This would be an insightful comment if it was true (It's not) or if all the founders had no families or outside life and instead got together every evening after work to drink a few brews and "support" each other (they didn't).
Amazon, Netflix, and Oracle are still run by their founders. And they rarely, if ever, even talk to e
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It's like he has this image of the Zuck calling these guys up every time he needs a pep talk.
*Sigh* Things were so much better before Uncle Steve died...
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Why does slashdot, year after year, post from this âoetech punditâ?
Tech pundits are like food critics or insurance company doctors: they talk a lot about - and pass judgment on - subjects they don't actually practice themselves. Why anybody pays any attention to what they say is beyond me.
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In the 1990s and early 2000s when people thought they were losing their jobs to Indian H1Bs, they used to say sarcastically "why won't the CEOs replace themselves with Indians?" .. Microsoft and Google took it literally.
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The reason Microsoft no longer has to go to hearings is because Ballmer lost them all the market share.
And the new guy, regardless of his race, hasn’t done anything too exciting. I think he’s actually a good CEO, letting his people run the divisions within the company without major “corporate vision” that undoubtedly goes wrong.
It won’t bring Microsoft back to its heyday which was primarily due to luck and incompetence from Scully and other competitors in the market but neither
Tech pundit Robert Cringley (Score:1)
complete crap. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: Mythology... (Score:1)
I once sat in the same passenger seat as Gates did a year earlier. Through that contact I inherited amazing super coder powers.
I post silly shit on slashdot by day but under the cover of darkness, I change into Bill Gates Super Coder!!!
My super hero agent said it was a shit name but gotta give props for the source of my powers.
Re:Mythology... (Score:4, Funny)
I've spent a lot of time looking at Gates' code. It is good, compact and efficient. He aced the SAT so it's not surprising his code is clear-minded and logical. But it's 8-bit era code, hyper-focused on efficiency and saving bits. It's like every section of code is solving a puzzle to see how efficient and compact it can be.
He hired and trained programmers who did the same thing. As we moved into the 32-bit era, readability and reusability became more important as programming concepts, but he didn't get the memo and neither did his company. As a result they wrote code that is neither efficient, nor readable, nor compact. (In the same way that the complexity of C++ makes it hard to write idiomatic, efficient C++ code, despite the hyper-focus of the language on efficiency).
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He Improved the Pancake-Sort Algorithm though ... (Score:2)
During his first year of college Gates began working on an algorithm for the math problem known as Pancake Sorting presented to him by the professor Harry Lewis. This problem asks the minimum number of flips required flip all the pancakes in order of size.
Gates created an algorithm that was the fastest anyone had every seen in over thirty years . This algorithm was later published in collaboration with another scientist named Christos Papadimitriou.
from https://historythings.com/the-... [historythings.com]
Cringely (Score:2)
Isn't cringley already retired? Why can't he go fishing (for fish, not BS) or do something else retired people should be doing? He is clearly exhibiting signs of post-(not pre)-dementia. Can he not self check-in to the Arkham Asylum? Do they take walk-ins? Any mental health facility that lacks internet acess will do.
Nonsense (Score:4, Interesting)
He has no reason to retire. He got to where he is by intentionally setting himself up to be corporate god king from the beginning, he's always been a dominating sociopathic asshole and there's no reason to believe that's changed in any way.
And if he left FB wouldn't change significantly anyway so who cares?
Otoh, if Facebook was shutdown or broken up that would be interesting.
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I do think, though, that Facebook may have to either ditch WhatsApp and/or Instagram to fend off antitrust regulators, particularly in Europe. Not sure if Zuckerberg wants to see that happen during his watch.
Old Social Media is dying (Score:5, Insightful)
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Zuck's departure would be admitting that Facebook's time has passed.
Indeed it has. Unlike inventions like dishwashers and tractors, which opened up new possibilities by vastly reducing the hours spent in menial labor, it would be Facebook's (and its ilk's) destruction that frees people from the wasting of their lives prattling over nothing and admiring their vacuous likes. The old argument of what the internet would be has been won by the balkanizers, not the uniters. Being a global citizen is a prison. Being everywhere is being nowhere. Being endlessly available is being l
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How do you propose a social media platform would "handle free speech... without having to be judge" but also "effectively handle fake news"? Will the fake news judge itself?
I'm all for seeing Facebook crumble, but it's going to take more than deposing the Zuck to make a better platform. There would need to be fundamental changes in the way social media operates, most obvious one being no algorithmically-generated feed or suggestions. Yet these are the very tools that drive engagement (addiction). Not only d
is this article (Score:2)
a form of pressure on Mark who appears to be a somewhat uncompromising figure to step down and hand the company over to someone who plays along nicely?
Does anybody actually care? (Score:2)
Meemaw and peepaw can still share photos of their grand-kids.
"Changing the world" (Score:2)
Perhaps he could devote some of his time and energy to figuring out how to undo the damage that his company has done. I've got friends and family members who no longer speak to each other thanks to the monetizing algorithms running on Facebook.
Great job there, Zuck.
I don't care... (Score:1)
Need to think outside of the "Tech" box (Score:2)
A "tech pundit " lists 3 tech entrepreneur CEOs as Z's "primary role models"?
Well if Zuck really did use them as role models then no wonder he's in trouble.
Facebook is a publishing company more than a tech company.
A more suitable role model would have been a media mogul like Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch was known as the "King maker" at the height of his powers.
The problem for Facebook and Zuck is that they didn't play the political game but focused on the tech and the bottom line.
The rich and powerful don't buy n
How hard can it be? (Score:2)
How rough can life get when you are young, healthy, and have a couple billion dollars? He can buy a house across the lake from the Gates place and join them in trying to impose his ideas on society through NGOs for the rest of his life.