 What I have to say right now might be a little cringe. Thinking a lot about the phrase, you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. And when I think about that saying, the first thing that comes to mind is Silicon Valley or particularly Silicon Valley tech CEOs. There was a time not too long ago when tech CEOs were practically worshiped by many. They seemingly inspired people and were revered as wise geniuses who are going to change the world and shape our future in a positive light. We all seemingly thought that they were the ones that were gonna create a better future for us all. But lately it seems like that illusion has completely shattered. So I thought in today's video we'd talk about why. Before we get into this video, if you like this video then give it a like if you want to. And if you like these types of videos or this type of content, don't forget to subscribe and join the journey. And let's get into the video. This video was inspired by Myel Gavet, a 15 year veteran of the tech industry who wrote the book Trampled by Unicorns. Big tech's empathy problem and how to fix it. As well as the article posted in the New York Post that's titled Why Silicon Valley CEOs Are Such Raging Psychopaths. So are Silicon Valley CEOs psychopaths? Well, I'm not an expert in psychology so I definitely can't answer that. According to the Hair Psychopathy Checklist, the universally accepted tool used to address psychopathy. A psychopathic personality includes traits such as a grandiose sense of self-worth, a lack of remorse or guilt, poor behavioral controls, pathological lying and a lack of empathy. And the problem is a lot of those traits are traits that are celebrated in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley has equated being an asshole with being a genius which may be a reason why so many Silicon Valley CEOs have been exposed for horrible behavior in recent years. Silicon Valley itself is so interesting to me because on the outside, Silicon Valley proclaims to be this woke accepting work culture that's paving the way for the future and creating all of the incredible technology that we're seeing and experiencing today. But when you actually look behind the curtain, Silicon Valley culture is toxic in every single way. The saying coined by Facebook of move fast and break things is also a saying often used in Silicon Valley, primarily used within engineering teams who often spend a lot of their days finding bugs and fixing bugs. So they're moving fast, breaking things and then fixing the bugs that they found along the way. But when you equate this engineering team mentality to an entire startup of moving fast to break things, you can see how that could be maybe a destructive mentality to put on an entire company, maybe? And who time and time again receives the worst fate at the hands of brutal and immoral tech CEOs? The employees do because if the CEO is moving fast and breaking things, what or who are they breaking? So how did the companies of our future become such dumpster fires of toxicity? One can argue, as I kind of am doing today, that it's sort of all of Steve Jobs' fault. Steve Jobs is no doubt one of, if not the most iconic tech CEOs of all time. He created one of the most successful tech companies and was a huge part of Pixar and is revered not just as a CEO but as an artist and creator in a lot of ways. His success in Silicon Valley led to what can only be called the Steve Jobs effect with people mimicking his philosophies in lifestyle, believing it may help them get ahead in their career. Or they simply worship Steve Jobs as much, much more than just a successful tech CEO. For example, Steve Jobs wore a turtleneck and jeans every day because he believed not having to choose an outfit left him more time to focus on company choices, which is something many others within Silicon Valley mimicked. Steve Jobs was also known for his brutal management style. For far, far too long, it was widely known that Steve Jobs was the biggest asshole in tech, but it was justified as if it was some sort of necessary evil in order to run a company efficiently. So other CEOs, bosses and managers all started to act like assholes too. You can clearly see the effect of Steve Jobs in Elizabeth Holmes and the way that she dressed, spoke and acted within the company Theranos. So where did this narrative come from and is the Steve Jobs effect healthy for people and companies? Walter Isaacson summarizes Steve Jobs like this, let Jobs's legacy not be his management style but his passion for what he wanted to achieve. Because the truth is, though Steve Jobs was always in pursuit of perfection within his company and products, Steve Jobs was not a perfect leader. He was in many ways a tyrant known to use manipulative tactics and was deeply hated by all who surrounded him, including his family. And saying this is not to stomp on the legacy of a dead man who undoubtedly accomplished great things. But to shatter the illusion that he was in some way an untouchable God that should be worshiped and followed because his management style is not good nor a healthy one. For example, Steve Jobs had a terrible communication style. He would interrupt others and meetings and overall his routine communication in his company was terrible. The only thoughts, opinions and input that mattered to Steve Jobs was Steve Jobs' own thoughts, opinions and input. He created an extremely toxic company culture of secrecy, surveillance and distrust. His team would work in silos and under surveillance, something that probably sounds familiar if you watch Elizabeth Holmes documentary on HBO. Non-performers would be fired instantly and fear was the key driver for performance. Steve Jobs was also known to be self-obsessed and wanted to take credit for everything Apple did. Apple co-founder Steve Woznak invented the first Apple computer but Steve was rarely credited for so by Steve Jobs. Jonathan Ive, the design head of Apple said in an interview, I pay maniacal attention to where an idea comes from and I even keep notebooks filled with my ideas so it hurts when he takes credit for one of my designs. Imagine a boss that takes credit for every single idea, design and creation within a company. Jobs was also highly unethical and driven by greed. The employees at Foxconn factories in China where iPhones were produced were treated poorly, paid low wages and lived in inhumane conditions. Apple has also been accused of tax evasion on many occasions and Jobs made zero charitable contributions despite leading the largest company on the planet. There's much more that could be said regarding unethical things that Steve Jobs has done but I wanted to mainly cover his questionable leadership style so you can see the patterns that started to appear between tech CEOs of today and the legacy of Steve Jobs. Apart from Steve Jobs, who is another well-known tech CEO slash predecessor, Bill Gates. Bill Gates for a very long time was seen as the antithesis of Steve Jobs. While Steve Jobs emphasized design with Apple products, Bill Gates emphasized functionality with Microsoft products. While Steve Jobs sought glory and credit and put on legendary presentations, Bill Gates for the most part kept a low profile. Steve Jobs never donated to charity. Bill Gates became known for his charities and charitable contributions. So is Gates the tech CEO to look up to, to mirror and admire? No, definitely not. Though Bill Gates was seen for a long time as this unproblematic king while sitting atop as the status of the richest man in the world, all of that public image has pretty much been wrecked by recent events. Recently news circulated about Bill and Melinda Gates splitting after a 27 year long marriage and then suddenly the floodgates opened with reports of Bill Gates inappropriate conduct within and outside of Microsoft surfacing. Former employees described to Vanity Fair inappropriate workplace behavior by Bill Gates that they had to put up with, as well as Bill Gates having romantic relationships with subordinates within his company and putting stressful, inappropriate demands on his workers. There are also other very disturbing reports of affairs and questionable actions and lifestyle choices of Bill Gates in his personal life. But for the sake of staying on track for this video, I'm going to solely focus on Bill Gates actions within Microsoft. If you're around me aged or fairly clueless of extensive tech company history like myself, what you probably don't know is that Bill Gates was extremely hated by many around 20 years ago. The public did not like Bill Gates and many saw him as a bad person. Bill Gates also received some bad publicity for Microsoft's initial loss of a 2001 antitrust case. But since then Gates went on a 20 year public relations effort to frame himself as the good guy geek that so many people came to know him as. While many of his charitable efforts are and were objectively good, at the core of it all was a focus on reframing the public's perception of himself to appear like an unproblematic and tumble person. But now following the divorce, decades of stories of Gates being difficult to work with have resurfaced. And it came out that Gates had used shady tactics to keep his true self hidden from the public, such as his liberal use of non-disclosure agreements. A former employee even said, for such a long time you were told you have an NDA, you can't talk. And it's important to keep in mind that all of this information that has recently come out are just initial reports. All of it is relatively new in a developing situation with more probably coming out soon. But nonetheless all those years of careful PR, NDAs in a crafted public image was virtually destroyed overnight with the onslaught of articles about his hypocrisy and overall horribleness. And I don't know why, but I think she did it and I just can't prove it. And if so, well, hashtag girl boss. So overall Bill Gates is not the untouchable, unproblematic role model he's been portrayed to be. And for his alleged inappropriate behavior in his company, I'd say he's nowhere near a role model CEO. Shortly after Apple and Microsoft's rise, there is another harmless geek CEO on the scene who was just really passionate about books and wanted to start a bookselling platform. You guessed it, Jeff Bezos. And as most of you probably already know, the initial story that was told about Jeff Bezos was also a complete lie. Or at least the truth about who Jeff Bezos is changed very quickly. Because Jeff Bezos has been exposed for having an extramarital affair, running frantically away from taxes, treating Amazon employees in inhumane and unethical ways and giving very little charitable contributions, despite for a very long time holding the title as the richest man in the world. And overall, there are many reports of Bezos being an asshole. There's a lot to unpack regarding Jeff Bezos and some of his, one could say, evil villainous characteristics. But I'm going to try my best to do so as concisely as possible. As most of you probably know, Amazon began as an online bookstore that ruthlessly undercut publishers. Bezos reportedly instructed the company to approach small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle. Amazon also skimped on sales taxes for most of its existence and only recently began paying in all 50 states. And over the last several years, there have been a series of investigations into the poor treatment of the company's warehouse and delivery workers who often endure extremely long shifts in unhealthy work conditions. Sometimes literally working themselves to death. The number of horrific stories regarding the poor treatment of Amazon employees is insurmountable, deplorable, and something that could have been preventable if a more ethical and empathetic workplace culture was created. But instead, Bezos has done everything in his power to keep his workers down, mainly through his extensive efforts to prevent unionization of Amazon workers, even subtly threatening workers who hint at an interest in unionizing. Workers here describe conditions as something out of a dystopian nightmare. Workers are taking on one of the most powerful companies on the planet with a vote later this month on whether to unionize. And they faced an avalanche of union busting and response. Workers say they've been spammed by anti-union text messages and emails and are subjected to vote no messaging along the walls and even bathrooms of the warehouse. It's been so bad that members of Congress sent a letter to Jeff Bezos imploring him to quote stop the strong arm tactics immediately. But still, Amazon is gaining more and more power, responsible now for almost half of America's online retail purchases. Amazon also acquired Whole Foods and MGM. Bezos also personally bought The Washington Post and his space company Blue Origin is beginning to take flight. So Jeff Bezos's power and influence has spread into a lot of categories. One could say a lot of important and essential categories. Recently, Bezos announced that he's stepping down as Amazon's chief executive. And I'm curious if Amazon's culture and problematic aspects will change alongside his absence. Regardless, while his employees are struggling and suffering, Bezos continues to live a lavish lifestyle and not give anything back into the society his company has greatly disrupted. Next on the list, Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg that we know of doesn't necessarily have a reputation as a mean and abusive CEO, just a very dangerous one. Facebook is undoubtedly among the most influential businesses in the world. The company has a huge impact on politics and social welfare, something once seen as a positive in connecting and bringing together the world. But now it seems we're reaping the damaging aftermath of. The problems associated with the Zuck mostly have to do with the problems associated with Facebook and Mark's complacency regarding these problems. The business model of Facebook depends on advertising, which in turn depends on manipulating the attention of users so they see more ads. With content-focused platforms such as TikTok and YouTube, this isn't as much, and I said as much of a sinister thing because user interest is retained based on the quality of the content they're presented with, as well as if that content fits with the user's interests. But Facebook isn't solely a content or entertainment platform. Its original purpose, or while the one that was advertised to the masses, was to connect you socially to friends, family, acquaintances, and stay updated on your social circles' lives. In fact, many still believe Facebook's mission to be connecting the entire world, not necessarily just entertaining them. So to jump from that purpose to keeping users' attention to feed them ads is a bit more questionable. One of the best ways to manipulate attention is to appeal to outrage and fear. Emotions that increase engagement. While on other platforms there's just a page to present you content you might be interested in, Facebook has what they call the news feed where they present you a variety of information and a variety of formats all intended solely to keep your attention, not truly inform you. So people become consumed with a false reality based on their existing interests and echo chamber that the users believe is a commonly shared reality when it's just not. To create this type of engaging algorithm requires an insane amount of research and data. So to feed its AI and algorithms, Facebook gathered data anywhere it could and basically began to find ways to spy on everyone. Facebook even traded this data to get better business deals. The worst part is though Facebook took these liberties without thinking of the social implications when criticism has come and even government questioning, Zuck doesn't seem to understand the problems and doesn't change very much. Oftentimes doing the bare minimum to keep the government and the public at bay. Are you willing to change your business model in the interest of protecting individual privacy? Congresswoman, I'm not sure what that means. Will you commit to changing all the user default settings to minimize to the greatest extent possible the collection in user and use of users data? Congressman, this is a complex issue that I think is deserves more than a one word answer. Well, again, that's disappointing to me. Currently, regulators are examining Facebook's possible monopoly on our time and social media activities with its purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp, which are acquisitions that are believed to have given Facebook far too much power. 2.7 billion people use all of these services each month. That means 2.7 billion people's time and attention is in a lot of ways in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg with very, very minimal checks and balances. And the Facebook machine has routinely been weaponized by bad actors under Zuckerberg's watch. So the Zuck is mainly a dangerous CEO with more power than any one person should have, who continues to play naive to the amount of power and potential danger him and his company possesses. Not much is known about Zuck's personal life, especially nowadays. What's known about his early career as a founder paints him in a childish way. He showed up to a pitch with Sequoia Capital in his PJs and his first Facebook cards read, I'm CEO, bitch. There's the movie The Social Network, which paints Zuck as a total prick and there's countless internet memes that paint present day Zuck as some sort of zombie lizard hybrid. A senior level employee confirmed this, telling Vanity Fair that Zuckerberg shows little emotion and comes across as robotic. A venture capitalist told a reporter for Vanity Fair regarding Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley, he's fucking destroyed this town. Anytime there's an inkling of innovation here, anytime a new idea comes up, Zuckerberg either buys it and shuts it down or copies it and shuts it down anyway. Mark Zuckerberg has also been criticized for his purchasing of insanely large amounts of land in Hawaii, which is assumed to inevitably displace the native people who have lived there alongside their ancestors for decades, if not centuries. So though there isn't much known about Zuckerberg and the inner workings and details of how he behaves as a CEO, Bill is public knowledge is not the greatest and it seems Facebook as a whole is beginning to show cracks. And the last CEO we'll talk about today, we got to talk about him, the conundrum that is Elon Musk. Some people love or maybe even worship the guy and others vehemently hate him. Public opinion of Elon Musk seems to constantly flip back and forth between these two extremes. So is Elon Musk a hero or a villain? That's not entirely for me to say, but let's talk about the reasons why people love and hate him so intensely. A few weeks ago on my Instagram, I asked people what their thoughts were on Elon Musk in order to better assess both the love and the hate side. And this seems to be the general consensus regarding why people love him. A lot of people love Elon Musk for his successful companies. From PayPal to Tesla to SpaceX to flamethrowers, Elon Musk also branded himself as the savior CEO. While other CEOs are out here trying to ruin the planet, we're at least doing great damage to it, Elon Musk is creating companies that invest resources into renewable energy and things that will help climate change, not hurt it or things that will help the climate not change, not hurt efforts to help claim something like that, right? On top of that, Musk has started generally cool companies like SpaceX because space is pretty cool and living on Mars seems maybe fun, though the ways he's spoken about his plans to colonize Mars. We think we've got something that will enable people to move to Mars for approximately half a million dollars. Half a million dollars? Yeah. Maybe not as cool and fun. Musk also plays into memes and social media hype fairly well, at least well enough that for a while his public image was the cool and hip billionaire who's shaking things up. Joe might want to sit down. What I have to say right now might be a little cringe. Many people also believe that Musk wants to break the status quo and Musk seems to understand internet culture which has helped his general likability. Being able to interact with the public on a daily basis in a format like Twitter has definitely helped him seem more relatable and likable in comparison to someone like Jeff Bezos. So if that's all the case, why do people hate Elon? Well, there's an awesome article written and posted on Quora of all places detailing the good, the bad and the ugly of Elon Musk in extensive detail, including his first company. He started with his brother, the problems regarding his involvement with PayPal and more that I don't quite have enough time to get into Foley in this video but I'll link the article below in my resources. Most criticisms of Elon start with the fact that he isn't what he sort of branded himself to be, an engineering tech genius of sorts. He definitely knows more about engineering than I do, enough to be a CEO of various tech companies. But for example, Elon sort of bought the company Tesla. He didn't found it and he didn't create the technology that the cars run off of or the hardware or software. And on top of that, the story of his involvement with Tesla isn't even that simple. Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpening approached Musk to become the first investor in their company called Tesla and Elon was all in. He wanted the car to be an image of the sustainable future. He wanted it to be a luxury brand and not some silly looking Prius. Because of that, he had a lot of say with setting up the company in Silicon Valley and with the visual design of the car. As soon as Tesla created their first workable concept car, they decided to have a big press event. The event was a success with 30 high profile clients pre-ordering the car for $90,000. The bad news for Elon was that in the press release he wasn't listed as the founder. To make matters worse, a New York Times article about the company also left Elon Musk out and he was pissed. On top of that, as Tesla was beginning to work on fulfilling their first round of pre-ordered cars, things weren't going well. The parts for the car were way too expensive and everything was behind schedule. Musk was not happy, so he plotted a coup. He called for the board to replace Martin Eberhard as CEO. They agreed and the original founder of the company was gone and after an interim CEO, Musk took over in 2008. So not only did Musk not found the company Tesla, but he didn't even enter it on necessarily good terms with the original founders and sort of edged them out for his own benefit. Both Tesla and PayPal were not Elon's original concepts nor companies he created from scratch. They were both already in existence before he got involved. That being said, I do think it's important to give credit where credit is due. And I will say that both Tesla and SpaceX are demanding companies Musk was able to run at once with both at various points looking like they're about to fail and go out of business. And he's been able to keep them running and beat the odds for both companies. But this wasn't without lots and lots and lots of controversy and even problems with the companies that were directly caused by himself. Elon's leadership style was harsh and fierce. At one point to crank up the pace of the Tesla Model S design, they had two sets of employees working 24 hours a day. In 2010, SpaceX had just successfully launched their Dragon capsule. And right before the party, Musk called in his top executives to yell at them in tuxes in front of their significant others. Because one of the parts for a future rocket was behind schedule. During this time, Elon also got divorced and his ex-wife Justine wrote many, many articles about some really bad aspects about her story being married to Elon. He would say many abusive things to her, like if you were my employee, I would fire you. Which is an interesting thing to say to your wife. And overall, she felt like a trophy piece of sorts pressured to look and act a certain way that was so different than who she really was. He was also sued by the original founder of Tesla, Martin Eberhard for his ouster from the company. There have also been reports of unsafe work conditions in Tesla manufacturing and overall poor treatment of employees and a toxic work environment for many. If I don't bring this up, I'm sure there may be some comments about it. So I do have to mention there was a theory that Elon Musk staged a coup in Bolivia in order to gain control of lithium for his Tesla batteries. But looking into reports of this, many found the claims to be unfounded and not backed by anything other than a single tweet Elon Musk made regarding Bolivia, which he made sarcastically, but many took as a confirmation that he did stage a coup in Bolivia. When you actually look into the details of the cancellation of the lithium exploitation contract, much of the way things went down doesn't align with the supposed Elon Musk lithium conspiracy. And the whole theory disregards the political complexities of Bolivia. So overall, that's one thing that I'm not going to 100% say he was involved with as there's really not enough information and much of the information about the situation sort of proves that he wasn't. Another reason why some people dislike Elon Musk is for his pretty bad or odd takes on things during COVID. And most recently, Musk has gone under fire for what many call stock market manipulation due to his tweets regarding cryptocurrencies, primarily Dogecoin, and the effects his tweets have had on various stocks. This led many to be concerned that his younger audience, especially on Twitter, could be easily manipulated by him and that he could use that for his own personal gain. Elon Musk also has a weird and creepy dad who fathered a child with his stepfather and owned an Emerald Mind in Zambia, but that's a story for another day. I'd say Elon Musk out of all tech CEOs is one I, as I'm sure many, feel a cognitive dissonance towards regarding whether or not he's good or bad. So many of us wanted him to be the change, a world savior of sorts, but he's just not and he won't be. Musk and Dogecoin will not save you. I'm sorry, but it's true. And of course, lastly, I do have to note that there is only one tech CEO who does nothing wrong and we love them and we support their platform. There's only one tech CEO that will know as being unproblematic in this video and that's Susan, the CEO of YouTube because we love them and we would hate if they would suppress this video. So Susan, we love you. All of this begs the question, can we separate tech CEOs from their companies? I'm sure there'll be some comments on this video saying something along the lines of, Steve Jobs needed to be an asshole in order to get things in his company done. Steve Jobs was a genius and people just didn't understand him. People are too sensitive nowadays. The role of a CEO is to boss people around. So what if Bill Gates cheated on his wife? That's his personal life. But research by the FBI found that companies managed by psychopaths tend to have decreased productivity and low employee morale. And that's not to say that every tech CEO is a psychopath. But I definitely think that empathy is not a valued trait or a trait that's often sought after in tech CEOs. The person at the top of the company more times than not creates the workplace culture. They'll likely hire people that are just like them, encourage risky or immoral actions and cut out anyone who questions their decisions. And these companies are the same companies that are building our social media algorithms, AI and tools that we use in our everyday lives as well as services that we've become dependent on. How are the products that they're building being affected by this kind of culture? Overall, the lesson of Silicon Valley is kind of a lesson for everyone. No one should be putting all of their hope into one person to solve the world's problems. Society isn't a Marvel movie. There are no heroes and villains. There's not going to be one person who's going to come and save the day. And all people are capable of being corrupted, even you and me. So let's stop idolizing people for being assholes. And let's look at the bigger picture and realize that human innovation comes with human problems. And let's realize that that successful billionaire is probably most likely a bad person in some shape or form. And that's really all I have to say on this subject. Thank you guys so much for watching. And if you made it this far in the video, comment, we love you Susan. And let's hope YouTube CEO Susan sees this video. And I'll catch you guys in the next video. Bye.