Who are the grown-ups in the room at tech companies? (SWWC, vol 4, issue 13)
Hello!
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Had I world enough and time, I'd find an outlet for the tech story I've wanted to write for a few years: How industry-defining companies handle the cultural changing-of-the-guard.
The two I'm the most fascinated by are in my own tech-coverage wheelhouse: Microsoft and Apple. The former's cult of personality around Bill Gates inspired the most Gen-X novel of all, by Generation X author Douglas Coupland, Microserfs. An excerpt:
Bill (Bill!) sent Michael this totally wicked flame-mail from hell on the e-mail system - and he just wailed on a chunk of code Michael had written. Using the Bloom County-cartoons-taped-on-the-door index, Michael is certainly the most sensitive coder in Building Seven - not the type to take criticism easily. Exactly why Bill would choose Michael of all people to wail on is confusing. We figured it must have been a random quality check to keep the troops in line. Bill's so smart.
Bill is wise.
Bill is kind.
Bill is benevolent.
Bill, Be My Friend...Please!Actually, nobody on our floor has ever been flamed by Bill personally. The episode was tinged with glamour and we were somewhat jealous. I tried to tell Michael this, but he was crushed.
In 2000, Steve Ballmer took over and by 2008, Bill Gates had stepped down to focus full-time on his foundation and do admirably weird things like release mosquitos into a room full of plutocrats. Microsoft had to figure out how to continue being a going concern when they were no longer Bill Gates' company.
At Apple, Tim Cook has had the unenviable job of following someone who thoroughly dominated both internal and pop culture. (Theranos's Elizabeth Holmes didn't ape the preppy button-down shirts Bill Gates wears when she engineered her public persona.) Apple's innovations had been closely tied to Steve Jobs' ability to contextualize tech as a tool to channel coolness and creativity, then deliver on that promise with near-frictionless user experiences. Sure, Apple products could also be used to do work, but they also tapped into the modern consumer imperative for aesthetics. How could an operations nerd (in a button-down shirt, no less) possibly follow on with that?
For both companies, the answer has been: Let an adult in the room focus on what is best for the business.
I once sat in a meeting where a coworker blurted, "How on Earth is Steve Ballmer allowed to manage Microsoft? He'd run a Foot Locker into the ground" -- but although there were several high-profile mishaps during Ballmer's tenure (Windows Vista, the Nokia buy, etc.), Ballmer also launched the Xbox and Microsoft Azure. Without the Xbox, Microsoft would not have been able to retain much of a consumer presence in the post-PC era. Without Azure, Balmer's successor and fellow adult in the room Satya Nadella would not have been able to successfully reposition the company twice -- first as a "mobile-first, cloud-first" company and then as a data-driven concern helping its customers effect "digital transformation."
At Apple, Cook's succeeded by openly embracing the idea that his mission is to bring Apple into the post-Jobs era and help it thrive. He's done that by focusing on three areas: Assuring Apple consumers that anyone can sell tech, but only Apple can sell an optimum tech experience; diversifying the income streams (pay attention to the work they're doing to bolster recurring subscription revenue); holding the line on Apple as a stealth luxury product, thus ensuring that even if total units sold goes down, revenue stays steady.
Having an adult in the room doesn't just mean, "I'm really just here to perpetuate the legacy of this company's iconic founder." Both Microsoft and Apple decided that part of having an adult in the room is having that adult look at its company's place in the wider world. Both have added a societal dimension to their corporation's personhood. Apple's Tim Cook has been very vocal about privacy and data rights. Microsoft has let president and chief counsel Brad Smith oversee a portfolio of policy issues from data privacy to citizens' security protection. (Under his watch, >Microsoft has repeatedly requested, "Please regulate visual recognition technology> and watch out for civil rights implications>.")
These companies are taking the stance that social engagement is good corporate citizenship, and good corporate citizenship is good business stewardship.
So what? Consider what it's meant for Facebook to have an adult in the room. For years, the tech media built the narrative that Sheryl Sandberg was the grown-up in the room. The mistake was in refusing to examine what the limits of "the grown-up in the room" were.
Now, as Facebook's approach toward the world comes into clearer view, the story is changing. Sandberg isn't the grown-up in the room the same way that Cook, or Nadella, or Smith are. To be fair, the definition of what it means to be the grown-up in tech has changed a whole lot since the Lean In days. But Apple and Microsoft figured it out quickly: It's in the best interest of their business to recognize and respond to changing consumer expectations of a business. Now, consumers expect their companies to acknowledge their power and impact on the world.
By contrast, Facebook's engaging in an old-school playbook: Find a scapegoat, let the press run with that narrative, and hope people confuse their misinterpretation of the past corporate narrative for current corporate reform.
Who cares? You should. Although computing technology is now ubiquitous to the point of invisibility, the industry retains some sort of broader perception as the province of countercultural savants untouched by broader societal forces. Credit myth-making books like Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, Katie Hafner's Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet or Stephen Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Or don't. There are plenty of other media vectors that promote this perspective while ignoring the many other industries steeped into sui generis arcana.
The point is, computing technology is now ubiquitous to the point of invisibility. And it's largely operated that way from a regulatory perspective -- as invisible. There is a layer of legal professionals who work to ensure that their businesses' liabilities are limited in a court of law (this is why we have EULAs), but for the most part, everything from privacy to data collection is largely left up to the presumed good intentions of the companies that want you to put cameras in your bedroom, and let apps track your physical location even if it's not relevant to the app's intended purpose, and expose your data to third parties without telling you.
We're only now grappling with the implications of it being perfectly cromulent for an American business to help organize a genocide in Myanmar, manipulate voters in a few countries, and shrug, "What's good for the world isn't always good for Facebook."
That kind of approach is understandable when it comes from a teenager who lives rent-free in their parents' house and just discovered Ayn Rand's body of work. But when it comes from a tech company? At some point, if there aren't already adults in the room, they're going to be opening the door to talk about consequences.
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Your pop culture recommendation: On a recent episode of one of the podcasts I do, Phil and Lisa Ruin the Movies, we dove into terrible children's movies we've watched with our daughter, and a listener commented, "The stories of losing control of tiny kids tastes and the flotsam and jetsam washing into the house. I am filled with fear."
And they would be right to fear, because no matter how many Haba toys you scatter around the house, the minute you let a child out into the wild, they come back talking about the $%&*ing Shopkins and it's appalling. I am especially not-enamored with how Netflix has many, many children's programs tied into really regressive toy lines, like Shopkins, Monster High, Ever After High, and so on.
But! Netflix also has a really charming animated series, Hilda, that is based on the series of children's graphic novels of the same name by Luke Pearson. The aesthetics in the series are *chef's kiss* -- no weirdly sexualized minors (I'm looking at you, Monster High), a sophisticated palette and a style that owes a debt to Studio Ghibli. The stories are gently wondering and empathetic without being anodyne. The kiddo and I are hooked on the series. And since I bought her the first four graphic novels for Christmas, I can assure you the books are equally family-friendly without being frightening flotsam.
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