# Regardless, everyone has a bad boss.

**Published by:** [Durwin](https://paragraph.com/@durwin/)
**Published on:** 2022-12-08
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@durwin/regardless-everyone-has-a-bad-boss

## Content

Bad bosses are almost a norm in big companies, but why?After seeing so many controversies and issues, you have to wonder if Silicon Valley and the Tech world really have a systemic issue of horrible bosses. All I can say is this: It is not easy being boss. You can’t please everyone all of the time. Everything you do is watched, scrutinized and questioned. Will you allow rumours, chatters and whatnot to brew right under you? Or stem it quickly and risk the aftermath? Are woke employees a good or bad thing? Where do we draw the line for respect and “following the boss unquestionably”? Does having done questionable things in your personal life means that you are worse off in your professional life?Google’s Sundar Pichai, is one of the most respected and well-loved CEO in Silicon Valley.Let’s see some examples: Elon Musk, Galaxial Overload of Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company. His employees are questioning his rule after a series of contradicting and ominous instructions. He asked employees to all return to work and spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week. The proceeds to fire 10% of Tesla in the next quarter. He pushes his employees hard. Almost as hard as he works in his personal life, having 9 children with different wives. The latest involves twins with an executive at Neuralink. Is that really the ideal character and resume of a leading silicon valley CEO? Then there is the whole ongoing episode on buying Twitter.Elon actually fired a Twitter engineer instantly for talking back to him on Twitter. Ironic.Employees are scratching their head wondering what’s Elon’s infatuation with Twitter and why is he risking so much and being distracted from running his own companies. Brian Armstrong, CEO of CoinBase, got into hot water after openly rebuking employees on Twitter, who wrote an open letter to diss the chief operating officer, chief product officer, and chief people officer. Jack Dorsey, ex-CEO of Twitter and CEO of Block, has his own share of controversies dealing with employees and has notably went on sparring crusades with many others on Twitter. Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius, telling employees everything was fine, till Celsius imploded. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, ostensibly annoyed with employees asking about extra vacation days during a live Q&A session. Needless to say, those extra days off are completely eradicated shortly after.Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter, had been known to be controversial and respected in different instances.Well, does it mean all of them are bad bosses? What does it even mean to be a “bad” boss? At their level, being boss isn’t a walk in the park. Every decision they make have dire consequences down the line and not all of them are obvious. They are penalised for wrong moves and an easy target when mistakes surfaces. All I can say is, it is not easy being a big boss like them. Unless you have war experience and a level-head, approach it with caution. So why is it that it seems that Silicon Valley has so many horrible bosses?Of course we all love Michael Scott from The Office.Well, more often than not, these bosses are typically young founders who started their companies early and got shanghaied into the path of enormous success rapidly. They never went to a proper executive school that taught them how to run billion dollar companies with hundreds of thousands of employees in a VUCA world. They had to learn as they go along and make do with what they had. Sometime that means making mistakes and getting the blame. Nobody’s perfect, and we should look at it from a macro lens and only judge bosses on a long-term scale. When in doubt, zoom out. - Do you like your boss? - #startups #business #startupx #growth #success #socialmedia #culture #entrepreneurship #strategy #eth #bitcoin #elonmusk #bosses #siliconvalley #zoomout

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