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537 points donohoe | 10 comments | | HN request time: 1.016s | source | bottom
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CyberMacGyver ◴[] No.44510796[source]
One time they let her speak publicly it turned out to be a disaster. She never had any say and worst part is she was not even a good fall guy, it was clear who’s pulling the strings. The most immaterial and inconsequential hire ever.

I love all the replies on Twitter thanking her but during her time the valuation dropped 80% and they were suing advertisers for not advertising. Remarkably inept.

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sorcerer-mar ◴[] No.44510983[source]
It's weird that you say both she had no material power and also seem to imply the valuation drop and lawsuits were due to her ineptitude?

Anyway she volunteered to be a puppet for a man who is clearly off the rails and her legacy will forever be stained.

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josefresco ◴[] No.44511093[source]
Both things can be true: Valuation did drop during her tenure, AND she was not to blame.

Therefore the praise is weird, because she seemingly neither helped nor hurt the business.

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madeofpalk ◴[] No.44511788[source]
One would imagine that a CEO lacking power is the precise reason a company would perform poorly.
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1. falcor84 ◴[] No.44512212[source]
Indeed. It was such a paradoxical situation from the start, with her both reporting to Musk as the chairman and owner, while at the same time "managing" him as the CTO. I'm surprised that the charade went on for as long as it did.
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2. ethbr1 ◴[] No.44512231[source]
I'd imagine the paycheck helped resolve the quandary.
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3. nradov ◴[] No.44513874[source]
I mean I've been in a few jobs where I had to "manage" my boss in order to accomplish anything.
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4. xdavidliu ◴[] No.44513947[source]
I wonder how this setup compares with Mira Murati and Greg Brockman.
5. JohnMakin ◴[] No.44515115[source]
were those jobs fun? Certainly havent been for me
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6. teyc ◴[] No.44515268[source]
On Acquired podcast, Ballmer spoke of his experience as CEO with Gates as CTO. It was hell.
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7. majewsky ◴[] No.44515370{3}[source]
To a certain extent, you always have to manage your boss, whether as an individual contributor or as a subordinate manager. A boss managing multiple people does not have the same mental bandwidth as all the people in their team combined, so the employees cannot bring every matter to the boss's attention. Choosing which matters to bring (and how to present them) is precisely what managing upwards means.

(In fact, if you're being praised

When someone says that they need to manage their boss, what they usually mean is that the boss reacts poorly or unproductively to bad news, or that they like to interfere in parts of the work process that would best be left to the employees, and so this normal part of everyone's job turns into a constant walk on eggshells.

8. prepend ◴[] No.44515699[source]
I just listened to that episode yesterday and that’s not how I perceived it all. Ballmer barely described it as much as I remember.
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9. ◴[] No.44515751{3}[source]
10. prng2021 ◴[] No.44516824{3}[source]
What’s there to perceive? Ballmer talked at length about how challenging it was and how often they disagreed on things.

“That's where I moved back to be president of the company and then CEO, and Bill and I went through a year where we didn't speak”

“Basically our wives were the ones who pushed us back together. We had a very awkward dinner at a health club down the street here, but we get back together. But we never really got the right mojo.”