So he joked around about privacy in IMs 4 years ago. We don't have any context, we don't know almost any of the surrounding circumstances. In fact, since people are publishing these IMs but aren't publishing reports of him leaking actual data, I'm willing to bet these IMs really were just jokes.
Other stories are similarly void of content.
The truth is, I know almost no one who I'd consider a sociopath with zero ethics. The chance against Zuckerberg being one is pretty small. The chance is much higher that the media have chosen to focus on him because he is: a) rich b) powerful and c) made some moves that some people didn't like in regards to privacy.
There are, in fact, published reports of him actually breaking into Crimson reporters' private FAS (Harvard) e-mail accounts with information he gleaned from Facebook. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-hacked-in...
You don't know anyone you'd consider a sociopath with zero ethics because the vast majority of people aren't. Just the same, the people who up hugely successful by most people's standards, which is to say "rich," have a much higher probability of having gotten there at someone else's expense.
You're wrong. Or at least, we have no reason to believe that you're right, other than small-mindedness borne of jealousy and self-righteousness.
I don't think my comment was small-minded at all!
Enterprise is great--I'm a capitalist, too--but who are you kidding? If all it took to get rich and create value was niceness, I'm pretty sure Hacker News would be largely unnecessary.
I take issue with your original statement because I think it's bullshit based on nothing. The laziest thing to do is just assume that all rich people got that way by screwing someone over. There are bad people at all levels of society, and I have no data to lead me to believe it's any more prevalent at higher levels of wealth. I doubt you have any data either. Feel free to post it if you do, but otherwise, this just seems like another empty, jealous rant against the rich.
What I said (which also happens to be what I meant) was that there was a higher probability that someone with a vast sum of money had reached their level of wealth by harming someone relative to someone without that same level of wealth. I didn't say "all rich people." And I gave some examples to support my point.
An example to support your point would be someone like Warren Buffet, who doesn't have the kind of reputation that Gates and Ellison have earned for themselves. He proceeded to amass his fortune, to the best of my knowledge, slowly and as ethically as one could hope for. I have a lot of respect for hard-working and successful people like Buffet, but also those who are worth a fraction of what he is.
On the other hand, I generally don't have a lot of respect for people who start off on the assumption that I am small-minded and jealous, and then go from there. If you want to make a point here that's fine, just don't pretend like I've said something that I didn't.
The statement you quoted may be correct as stated, but it strikes me as a tautology (i.e. if you're not rich then of course you didn't "get there" at someone else' expense, you didn't "get there" at all).
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/08/entertainment/et-bos...
Original article: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.html
"a sociopath with zero ethics" is a hell of a label to hang on him when you only know him through a few articles you've read on the internet.
Nobody in the public eye such as this is ever going to 'spend meaningful time' with an equal amount of people as the number whom will choose to cast a judgement on their character. So, this will have to suffice. If he has a problem with that, please ask him to sell out and go away.
Or maybe not. code duck is sorry if he was mean.
In other words, you assume he's actually a sociopath, instead of assuming that perhaps the narrow view we see from 72-point headlines doesn't paint an accurate picture of the whole man.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor-observer_bias
actors tend to attribute the causes of their behavior to stimuli inherent in the situation, while observers tend to attribute behavior to stable dispositions of the actor
i'm hardly a zuckerberg apologist (see previous comments during the whole facebook privacy hoo-hah). but wanted to point out, really, that calling someone a "sociopath with zero ethics" based on a few articles without actually knowing the guy is likely unreliable way to judge someone.