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It’s been a fairly good few a long time for America’s high tech CEOs, as their supposed brilliance turned them into billionaire oligarchs with cultlike followings. However in 2022, issues all of the sudden regarded a bit bleaker.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Jeff Bezos’s Amazon reportedly reduce 1000’s of employees. Elon Musk, as soon as hailed as a genius, has revealed a really spectacular stage of incompetence at Twitter. Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to greater than a decade in jail. After which there’s Sam Bankman-Fried, who just lately grew to become a family title for disastrous causes.
In a yr of nightmarish tech business headlines, an vital query stays: which delusional egomaniac had it worst? Listed here are the outcomes of our investigation.
Mark Zuckerberg
Yr in evaluation: The onetime boy genius isn’t trying like such a wunderkind lately. In late 2021, Mark Zuckerberg introduced Fb wasn’t dystopian sufficient for him: the corporate was altering its title to Meta and operating full-speed into the metaverse, an imaginary, goggle-dependent world the place till just lately individuals had no legs. A yr later, whereas Zuck has saved screaming about digital actuality, Meta’s fortunes have plummeted.
In February, Zuck’s firm made historical past for the incorrect causes: its inventory worth dropped by $230bn in a day, a nationwide document. 9 brief months later, Zuckerberg advised staff he’d misjudged the fickle winds of enterprise: “I bought this incorrect, and I take accountability for that.” In an admirable demonstration of such private accountability, he fired 11,000 different individuals.
February additionally noticed Meta’s first drop in customers, and certainly, opening Fb lately has felt like visiting the ruins of Pompeii. Parts of a as soon as thriving society stay completely preserved, all however forgotten as time marches relentlessly on: TikTok, TikTok.
The underside line: Sure, Zuck misplaced $30bn on that fateful February day, however he may simply be capable of squeak by on the $44.5bn he’s nonetheless bought.
Horrible yr rating: 6/10.
Jeff Bezos
Yr in evaluation: Zuck was removed from the one tech boss to see his workforce shrink this yr. Amazon additionally introduced layoffs, with the New York Occasions reporting 10,000 jobs could possibly be reduce. In the meantime, maybe sad that his ex-wife was making headlines for large charitable donations whereas he maintains a popularity as Dr Evil’s closest real-life analogue, Bezos confirmed up on CNN to inform everybody that he would give away nearly all of his then $124bn web value throughout his lifetime. Think about dwelling on lower than $62bn! It’s a win-win for Bezos: an apparently selfless gesture that may presumably don’t have any discernible affect on his life.
A type of beneficiant donations: $100m (.08% of his wealth) to Dolly Parton, to donate as she pleases. Giving your cash to the world’s most beloved nation star is the form of under-the-radar transfer that claims: I’m doing this to heal the world, to not heal my picture.
It’s not the one time Bezos threw himself at a universally adored movie star this yr: when he flew into area in a rocket formed like a penis, he introduced alongside Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner. Sadly for Bez, slightly than singing the praises of area, Shatner later stated the journey “felt like a funeral”, evaluating the “vicious coldness” above with “the nice and cozy nurturing of Earth under” – not a really perfect commercial for Bezos’s bid to colonize the galaxy.
In actual fact, he’s struggling to colonize your front room. His personal staff just lately advised Insider that Alexa, the corporate’s voice assistant, was “a colossal failure of creativeness”. Bezos’s “pet venture” is being “gutted”.
The underside line: A collection of embarrassments haven’t knocked Bezos off his perch as one of many richest males on the planet.
Horrible yr rating: 4/10.
Elon Musk
Yr in evaluation: In April, the world’s then richest man – who has repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn’t perceive the connection between phrases, actions and penalties – made a proposal to purchase Twitter at $54.20 a share. Which, you’ll certainly agree, is hilarious as a result of it has the quantity 420 in it and Elon likes weed as a result of he’s a cool man.
When it began to appear like the sale may actually occur, Musk determined that really, possibly he didn’t need the location in spite of everything. However the firm wouldn’t let him off the hook, and after a authorized battle, he lastly went by with the acquisition, main to a different of his hilarious jokes: he carried a whole sink into the corporate constructing, apparently risking a hernia so he might tweet: “Let that sink in.”
That severe and considerate perspective has outlined his tenure at Twitter to this point. In a bid to create a Twitter 2.0 that nobody requested for, he has erased 1000’s of jobs; made up new guidelines after which canceled them; demanded that staff be “extraordinarily hardcore”, which can clarify the beds on the workplace; reinstated the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Roger Stone; tried to reinstate Donald Trump; reinstated Kanye West, then banned him once more; and banned, then reinstated, journalists. The mayhem has shattered his popularity on the left, however on the far proper, the cult round him appears solely to be getting stronger: the level-headed people over at QAnon apparently now see him as one in every of them.
He topped off the yr by taking a extremely scientific ballot of customers to see if he ought to stop as CEO. They stated sure. Let that sink in.
The underside line: From the surface, it seems like a disaster – however Musk exhibits each signal of having fun with himself.
Horrible yr rating: 7/10.
Parag Agrawal
Yr in evaluation: Initially of the yr, the long run regarded shiny for Parag Agrawal. He’d simply develop into Twitter’s new CEO after receiving the board’s “unanimous” assist.
Then got here Musk.
Although the 2 had a cordial relationship at first, it shortly deteriorated as they clashed over Musk’s buy of the platform. When Musk wished to analyze the extent of Twitter’s bot downside, Agrawal defined intimately why the plan wouldn’t work; in one other instance of consummate professionalism, Musk, then age 50, replied with an emoji depicting fecal matter.
Musk lastly adopted by on his Twitter buy in October. He instantly fired Agrawal.
The backside line: Agrawal misplaced his job, however up to now he exhibits no clear indication of being evil, and his exit might have earned him $50m.
Horrible yr rating: 7/10.
Elizabeth Holmes
Yr in evaluation: 2022 was the yr that the lengthy Theranos catastrophe lastly got here to a head.
It began in 2003, when Elizabeth Holmes based the corporate; the subsequent yr she dropped out of Stanford. Like so many different younger college students, she was chasing a dream – a dream to faux to invent a extremely cool expertise and make a billion {dollars} off it. However virtually 20 years after she based the corporate, Holmes started this yr with a conviction for defrauding traders over her firm’s supposedly revolutionary blood-testing system.
Possibly it actually was in regards to the buddies she made alongside the best way. These embrace Senator Cory Booker, one in every of greater than 130 individuals to ship letters of assist for Holmes earlier than her sentencing. She’s additionally developed a diehard fan membership, with supporters exhibiting up on the trial in full Holmes costume.
Nonetheless, she ended the yr with an 11-year sentence. So she’s a shoo-in for worst yr, proper?
Sam Bankman-Fried
Yr in evaluation: Fallacious! As a result of there’s Sam Bankman-Fried, who swooped in on the finish of 2022 in a robust last-ditch effort to say the title. His cryptocurrency trade, FTX, was on high of the world a number of brief months in the past, operating adverts throughout the Tremendous Bowl and proudly displaying its title on the Miami Warmth’s area.
However by November, the corporate had collapsed. A number of weeks later, Bankman-Fried had been arrested within the Bahamas and charged with what a prosecutor referred to as “one of many largest monetary frauds in American historical past”.
It was an unbelievable flip of occasions: what could possibly be a sounder funding than an organization constructed on a factor few perceive, whereas others worship it with weird fanaticism? A minimum of Bankman-Fried, like Zuckerberg, is taking full accountability – “I fucked up,” stated the 30-year-old, who had allegedly used an encrypted group chat that was actually referred to as “wirefraud”.
The underside line: It’s exhausting to say whether or not Holmes or Bankman-Fried has had a worse yr. However the truth that there’s any competitors tells you lots about tech and obscene wealth.
Horrible yr rating: 10/10, for each.
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