Can't feel the love here.
I am not sure I get the big hate on for this guy. Sure, he was an asshole in school and said some pretty creepy things. He is probably not the statesman we would like to see in charge of a company with a market cap of $218,706,670,501.
He's still basically a kid and has made himself a billionaire. That's not too shabby. It's probably better than anybody commenting here will ever do.
I am not a big fan of some of the stuff that facebook did to get its critical mass. However, the operative word there is critical. Had they not gotten there fast, somebody else would have crushed them the way they crushed MySpace. The volume of users and user activity is what makes facebook worth so much and a lot of what I find objectionable that he did was basically necessary to keep the company alive, believe it or not. They had momentum and mass and they needed both to stay afloat.
Facebook is nearly unstoppable now, but it has a few vulnerable facets and it seems to me that this young man is doing his best to find and fix them. However, this has become a tricky game because the massive size of the company limits its room to move. The low hanging fruit is mostly gone and big stuff like search brings on pretty scary competitors and almost certainly government interference.
I am hardly a fan, but I really don't get the bashing. We *should* expect more from people who control massive assets and wield great power, but there is a limit to what is reasonable to expect. Somewhere back there we still have a thirty year old human being who is still forming. I think people should cut him some slack.
I will hazard a guess that a sudden windfall of a billion dollars or so would amplify faults in many of the posters here.
If I had to make a suggestion for something outside of facebook work I would say learn to enjoy helping others merely for the satisfaction of doing so. Get creative using money to reward the many less fortunate, not with handouts but with a hand up. Give people hope in communities where hope is hard to come by. Help to create a cultural ethic that values everyone, not just a few superstars.
Here, FWIW is one of the things I am doing outside of work that might be worth a go:
It is possible to enter a meditative state that is 'different' as sleeping is from waking. It is something that you can learn to do with a little practice. I learned to do it to make long waits in airports and flights on airplanes tolerable. I used to commute weekly and this turned something dreary into something pleasant. I use this to put myself to sleep from time to time and use it to get little calm spots as a sort of 'reset mechanism'. I have only used it to sort of 'escape' a state that is less comfortable. It only occurred to me when I was describing this to someone that I had never tried entering this state and staying there while I conducted my day. So ... I have set myself the task of attempting to enter this state and stay in it while I am actively doing other things. I don't know if this is possible but it would be pretty cool if it was.
A person doing this 'meditative living' is not likely to be particularly spectacular on the outside, but I think it might be really something for the person themselves.
The above might be something of a stepping stone to mastering and actively managing your mood. None of us can entirely control our environment, not even young billionaires. However, it is possible, I think, to get a great deal of control over oneself.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
