I recall Steve Jobs was known to blow up at his staff, sometimes seemingly randomly. He arguably created a hostile work environment. He also denied and estranged his own daughter. Let's not put CEOs on a scale.

@kcplate

Site isn't allowing me to reply, but I guess I can edit here?

What I meant by scale was weighing CEOs or their behavior against each other. It sounded to me, and maybe I read it wrong, from the comment I replied to that Musk's issues were being levied against Musk with the implication (Their first sentence) Jobs didn't have issues like that. A better example of Jobs tanking Apple stock price was the partnership with Microsoft. At the time that was seen as Apple marrying the evil Jobs regularly criticized. So much for thinking different. But my point was the other things carried some form of risk and certainly didn't paint Jobs as not having character flaws.

So I'm in agreement with you, he's human, Musk is human, mistakes are allowed to be made without, I don't know, "cancelling" someone I guess. Maybe it's just fashionable to pick on Musk right now? I don't know some people are so judgmental. I mean honestly, what does the average HackerNews user know about the nature of the Tesla engineers reviewing Twitter code? While it could be a problem, it could also be legal and considered above board. No one here seems to know the contractual agreements and why would they? Companies don't publish every thing that runs across executives desks.

Exactly what is the point here? I’ve seen fast food shift supervisors blow up at their staff and know at least one person who is estranged from a child. Are CEOs (including famous ones) not allowed to be human. I have never met a human that wasn’t to some degree or another a shithead at various points of time.

I think their point is exactly that, they're human. The whole Twitter acquisition seems impulsive, petty, and obviously was poorly thought out.

I think personal flaws can taint professional accomplishments. And the worship of these strong/genius people only reinforces bad behavior.

Of course there should be some slack given for indiscretions of youth. No one is born perfect. For adults though, let's keep our eyes wide open and praise the good works--not the flawed people who do them.

billionaires aren't smart, they just had an easier spawn point and loadout

Musk's, Gate's, Zuckerberg, other-tech-billionaires spawn point was about as good as any other upper middle class American kid's. If you exclude genes were they probably got a bit luckier than average.

I can sort of see how that may be the case with Musk and Zuckerberg, but Gates? Is it normal in US for upper middle class fathers to be partners at multi-national law corporations?

… and specifically to have a company-defining early deal go to someone who shared a board membership with their mother? Microsoft didn’t even have a product when the deal went through (they bought a CP/M knockoff from a smaller company). Gates certainly executed well but most people wouldn’t have had the opportunity to even attempt something like that.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influe...

Do you remember why he got kicked? He could miss big too.

Because Jobs spent 70% of his career without any sort of social media or globally interconnected world around.