“Raging psychopaths” got my attention, as I was reading a New York Post article about Silicon Valley CEOs.
I’ve written about high tech businesses, myself, but I haven’t talked about raging psychopath CEOs. Not yet, anyway! I’ve been focusing, instead, on disruptive problems plaguing disruptive businesses. And empathy, as well, a word that comes to mind when I’m writing about business, and other things. We sure could use more empathy!
In the New York Post article, “Maëlle Gavet, a 15-year veteran of the tech industry, recalls an unsettling conversation she had at a Silicon Valley cocktail party in 2017.” She “was chatting with an early investor at Uber and mentioned some of the disturbing news surrounding the company’s co-founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick. There were revelations about spying on passengers, sexual harassment, a toxic macho work culture,” and more, according to the article.
“The (early) investor, Gavet told the Post, just laughed and said, ‘Oh, no, he’s so much worse than anybody knows… He may be an asshole,’ the investor told her, ‘but he’s my asshole.’”
According to Wikipedia and Forbes, Gavet “was ranked #4 among Time Magazine’s list of The Top 25 Female Techpreneurs,” in 2016. “She was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum,” that year, as well.
“In February 2018, a 61-year-old livery driver shot himself in front of City Hall in lower Manhattan, claiming he’d lost his livelihood because of competition from Uber cars,” according to the article. “I will forever remember the reaction of two of my friends working at Uber at the time,” said Gavet. “During a dinner party, I asked how they felt about the suicide, and they were both like, ‘It’s sad, but it’s the cost of disruption.’”
In one of my articles about disruptive businesses – an opinion piece, published in the September 10, 2018 issue of the Las Vegas Business Press – I suggested that disruption was thrilling. But there was a downside. The Fox-TV station in San Diego, for example, had a story about “chronic nuisance issues,” involving dockless scooter and bike companies. CNBC had reported that Boston was “pushing back against (short-term rental) properties being rented out as commercial operations.”
In my Business Press article, I mentioned people in communities along a membership airline’s flightpath saying they could “no longer have conversations in their homes because of the planes.” People living in seven communities, some 20 miles north of San Jose, California, were expressing concerns. They were attending public hearings. Some even held a demonstration at a small airport the airline firm was using. But, the powerful, multi-passenger planes are still flying over the communities.
“Shaking things up is OK, as long as companies thoroughly evaluate how new business models might be perceived by people outside their customer base,” I said in the article. That was my way of touching on empathy, an emotion business executives, perhaps, needed to cultivate more.
Well, that was back in 2018, and consider where we are now, judging by the New York Post article, and judging by current events in business… and in government.
While we’re at it, Yahoo! Finance just published an article by John Huey, who was the editor of Fortune Magazine and editor-in-chief of Time Inc. Mr. Huey explains “Why Mr. Market” — as he refers to the stock — “doesn’t care if democracy is collapsing.”
He writes, “As for (President) Trump and the chaos he continues to wreak, you always have to remember that the stock markets are absolutely amoral. They are only interested in return. So the prospect of Trump abolishing democratic norms and establishing himself as a bona fide autocrat would be just fine with Mr. Market. But only as long as he kept corporate tax rates unreasonably low, continued his enabling of short-term profiteering through the freedom to pollute and endanger low-paid workers, and has the bottomless balance sheet of the Fed available to fund rampant government spending in the private sector (no matter how corrupt).”
That’s the problem, but we can always hope things will change.
Maëlle Gavet, in the New York Post, says, “I’m an optimist, but I’m also a capitalist. I believe there are ways to make a company more empathetic, more reasonable, a force of good in the world. And I believe in the long run, that would actually be beneficial for the businesses.”
I totally agree!
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.