Tbh I never saw that much evidence that Mark Zuckerberg was a smart guy, so much as he was a lucky and well connected one. Unlike a lot of the deified founders of Web2 and earlier he... didn't actually invent anything? If he was good at anything, it was leveraging the promise of exclusively for marketing. Beyond that Facebook was exactly the same as many other social networks from a technical perspective. Its ad system has never been particularly technically distinguished from AdWords. If he could have been said to innovate in any way it was by basically taking Google's 80/20 time and inverting it. Unlike other founders he's never really talked with technical expertise or a firm grasp of any mission other than making more money.
There isn't really a cult of personality around him for this reason: he always seemed to be an unremarkable guy who got the right money at the right time and hired the right people. IMO that's why the flip to Meta was hit with instant derision. It isn't that he makes bad choices, it's just that he basically hasn't seemed to make a choice other than edu email exclusivity on day 1.
In reality, that should be fine. CEOs for stable companies don't need to be geniuses but they don't make decisions to pivot huge companies on a dime either. I think going all in on VR is dumb. But even if it wasn't, he's the wrong guy to make that sort of call and has shown he doesn't take input at the level needed to manage it.
When building my metaphors to understand big tech, Apple is a factory. Twitter was basically a full time summer camp. Salesforce and Amazon are both Borg Cubes. Auttomattic isn't just maintaining WordPress, it runs like a WordPress site. Google is more an academic institution then a company. But Facebook? Facebook is a very popular frat house overflowing with money but no particular ideas on how to use it then to make more and have fun. When the money started slowing down, so did the party, and that's why morale is lower there than anywhere.
Anyway your realization about the fear and greed index reminds me of when I was covering economics and I discovered the VIX, or as it is more commonly known: the fear index. It's when I realized: the market, these MBA types, the people running the business world? You're 100% right. All that talk of logic and math from them is bullshit. It's all running on high emotion and personal relationships (positive and negative). It's all about feelings all the way down, there's no anchoring reality to the market or bedrock logic for decision making, at the end of the day the whole market is naught but vibes. Everything I've seen and read since has just proven that out. The real currency peg is how around a dozen white dudes at the top of the market are feeling today.
Tbh I never saw that much evidence that Mark Zuckerberg was a smart guy, so much as he was a lucky and well connected one. Unlike a lot of the deified founders of Web2 and earlier he... didn't actually invent anything? If he was good at anything, it was leveraging the promise of exclusively for marketing. Beyond that Facebook was exactly the same as many other social networks from a technical perspective. Its ad system has never been particularly technically distinguished from AdWords. If he could have been said to innovate in any way it was by basically taking Google's 80/20 time and inverting it. Unlike other founders he's never really talked with technical expertise or a firm grasp of any mission other than making more money.
There isn't really a cult of personality around him for this reason: he always seemed to be an unremarkable guy who got the right money at the right time and hired the right people. IMO that's why the flip to Meta was hit with instant derision. It isn't that he makes bad choices, it's just that he basically hasn't seemed to make a choice other than edu email exclusivity on day 1.
In reality, that should be fine. CEOs for stable companies don't need to be geniuses but they don't make decisions to pivot huge companies on a dime either. I think going all in on VR is dumb. But even if it wasn't, he's the wrong guy to make that sort of call and has shown he doesn't take input at the level needed to manage it.
When building my metaphors to understand big tech, Apple is a factory. Twitter was basically a full time summer camp. Salesforce and Amazon are both Borg Cubes. Auttomattic isn't just maintaining WordPress, it runs like a WordPress site. Google is more an academic institution then a company. But Facebook? Facebook is a very popular frat house overflowing with money but no particular ideas on how to use it then to make more and have fun. When the money started slowing down, so did the party, and that's why morale is lower there than anywhere.
Anyway your realization about the fear and greed index reminds me of when I was covering economics and I discovered the VIX, or as it is more commonly known: the fear index. It's when I realized: the market, these MBA types, the people running the business world? You're 100% right. All that talk of logic and math from them is bullshit. It's all running on high emotion and personal relationships (positive and negative). It's all about feelings all the way down, there's no anchoring reality to the market or bedrock logic for decision making, at the end of the day the whole market is naught but vibes. Everything I've seen and read since has just proven that out. The real currency peg is how around a dozen white dudes at the top of the market are feeling today.
I see you're not thinking primarily about surplus shareholder value.