Re: Lynched?
What really irked me was Marc Andreesen's attitude. Out of all of them, he should have known better.
I agree he ought to have known better, in the sense that he should have performed due diligence. But I wouldn't assume his past experience or technical skills1 makes him qualified to assess the acquisition of a software company; that's a rather different skill set. Even various executive and board positions in the industry don't necessarily offer many opportunities for learning how to do that, or developing good habits for it.
I suspect Andreessen is the more typical type who believes a string of successes in a rather small range of specific ventures makes him broadly qualified in other areas. Linus Pauling was an extreme example of this: a couple of Nobel Prizes2 and suddenly he's telling everyone you can cure cancer with megadose therapy.
There are people who have the capacity to be experts in multiple areas – Feynman did useful work in genetics – but they're rare. Most people just can't motivate themselves to take on that kind of cognitive load. It's so much easier to just assume that you're the smartest guy in the room and coast.
1Such as they are. Yes, he has a B.S. in Computer Science from UIUC and he co-wrote Mosaic. Those are both worthy accomplishments but neither rare nor particularly impressive.
2OK, one was the Peace Prize, which, yeah, not a signal of anything useful.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
