I like this post. But I think it is somewhat common that the CEO can often feel insecure despite being all powerful and cannot be threatened by you.
Case Study: Elon Musk and disgruntled Twitter Engineer Elon Musk is the majority share holder (along side with his consortium) of twitter, yet he is left flustered by an engineer asking technical questions in an aggressive manner. He had all the room to be magnanimous, caring and respectful—he could’ve turned a confrontational situation to one where he concedes that he knows little about the technical stack and turned an enemy into an ally a la Julius Caesar style. Yet, after mumbling for a bit, he just calls that person a jackass and removes him from the call. In his world, face is extremely important and he just thinks very little of the existing twitter engineers and their competency independent from truth.
The world of public opinion and perception of power is a funny thing. I think for many CEOs who have built their personal understanding of themselves around their force of will, it is often hard to take any criticism/doubt from their underlings even when they are technically invulnerable—they simply don’t want to appear weak to their underlings (whether for true or ill).
That’s an interesting example. The CEO I had in mind while writing this was a buff guy with a very force-of-will kind of character, but he appreciated such questions.
I guess all our examples were non-public, company-only meetings. I don’t know the Musk example you describe, but since we know about it, I’m guessing it was more public? Or was it secretly recorded and leaked later?
My intuition was that it was a semi-public meeting. My memory is hazy but there was a lot of people, and they were on twitter spaces (a mostly “public forum” style audio chatroom). So I don’t think it is a secret per say.
I like this post. But I think it is somewhat common that the CEO can often feel insecure despite being all powerful and cannot be threatened by you.
Case Study: Elon Musk and disgruntled Twitter Engineer
Elon Musk is the majority share holder (along side with his consortium) of twitter, yet he is left flustered by an engineer asking technical questions in an aggressive manner. He had all the room to be magnanimous, caring and respectful—he could’ve turned a confrontational situation to one where he concedes that he knows little about the technical stack and turned an enemy into an ally a la Julius Caesar style. Yet, after mumbling for a bit, he just calls that person a jackass and removes him from the call. In his world, face is extremely important and he just thinks very little of the existing twitter engineers and their competency independent from truth.
The world of public opinion and perception of power is a funny thing. I think for many CEOs who have built their personal understanding of themselves around their force of will, it is often hard to take any criticism/doubt from their underlings even when they are technically invulnerable—they simply don’t want to appear weak to their underlings (whether for true or ill).
That’s an interesting example. The CEO I had in mind while writing this was a buff guy with a very force-of-will kind of character, but he appreciated such questions.
I guess all our examples were non-public, company-only meetings. I don’t know the Musk example you describe, but since we know about it, I’m guessing it was more public? Or was it secretly recorded and leaked later?
My intuition was that it was a semi-public meeting. My memory is hazy but there was a lot of people, and they were on twitter spaces (a mostly “public forum” style audio chatroom). So I don’t think it is a secret per say.