Psychopathic CEOs Are Rife In Silicon Valley, Experts Say (theguardian.com) 274
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: There is a high proportion of psychopathic CEOs in Silicon Valley, enabled by protective investors and weak human resources departments, according to a panel of experts at SXSW festival. Although the term "psychopath" typically has negative connotations, some of the attributes associated with the disorder can be advantageous in a business setting. "A true psychopath is someone that has a blend of emotional, interpersonal, lifestyle and behavioral deficits but an uncanny ability to mask them. They come across as very charming, very gregarious. But underneath there's a profound lack of remorse, callousness and a lack of empathy," said forensic and clinical psychologist Michael Woodworth, who has worked with psychopathic murderers in high security prisons, on Tuesday. According to recent studies there's a high prevalence of psychopathy among high-level executives in a corporate environment: 4-8% compared with 1% in the general population. This makes sense, according to Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bryan Stolle because "it's an irrational act to start a company." "You have to have a tremendous amount of ego [and] self-deception to embark on that journey," he said. "You have to make sacrifices and give up things, including sometimes a marriage, family and friends. And you have to convince other people. So they are mostly very charismatic, charming and make you suspend the disbelief that something can't be done." However, the positive attributes are accompanied by manipulation. "One of the main things that makes them extremely difficult to organizations is their willingness to manipulate through deception," said Jeff Hancock, a Stanford social scientist who studies psychopathy. "Psychopaths will handpick people they can use as lackeys or supporters, such as someone in HR they can have in their wheelhouse," said Woodworth.
Business (Score:5, Insightful)
What does this tell us about our economic system?
Re: (Score:2)
What does this tell us about our economic system?
Well, it's not like the US has a monopoly on psychos. We got's us some darn good ones though.
Re:Business (Score:5, Funny)
We've got the best psychos. Classy, beautiful psychos, believe me. Not loser psychos like they've got in Europe, which by the way has terrible ratings.
Re: (Score:2)
I can guess who's lawn you're not welcome on.
Re: (Score:2)
Who is lawn? Odd question, that.
Or did you mean "whose lawn"? Never mind....
Re: (Score:2)
oh dammit.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm just amazed that TFA identified the Silicon Valley as a hot spot for this. In my experience, MOST C-level executives are psychopaths. It's part of the basic job description.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know if the US has more or if it has better ones. But it's certainly better at getting them into positions where they can make a difference.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Business (Score:4, Insightful)
What does this tell us about our economic system?
That it's a damn good idea to keep government and economics as separate as possible. If you put the government in charge of the economy, then the same psychopaths have control of both government and industry. Right now we at least have the possibility of competition between the economic psychos and the government psychos, so we can get them fighting each other instead of us.
Re: (Score:2)
The vice-versa doesn't seem too great, either.
That seems to be less and less true each passing day, though!
Re: (Score:2)
The vice-versa doesn't seem too great, either.
Do you prefer the psychopaths with dysfunctional boardrooms or the psychopaths with large arsenals of weaponry?
Apportion power appropriately to your risk analysis.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, the lesson here is that it's IMPOSSIBLE to keep government and economics as separate as possible, and that trying to keep them away is not a sustainable solution.
You're right - when you allow a government, they stick their 'fingers' into business, every time, guaranteed. And when you give the psychopaths "government" power, you get 300 million dead [hawaii.edu] in just a hundred years.
I'm not claiming I know a better solution. I'm just saying we need to find a better solution.
If 300 million dead isn't going to te
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the business psychos are only held in check by government. They don't go full on destructive because it's just too expensive when they have to fight government to do it. The greatest profit is in lobbying government to be weaker and taking maximum advantage. Should government go away at no cost to them, we would see their full-on destructive tendencies. With no governmenty, how long do you think it would take for Larry Ellison to have nukes?
Re: (Score:2)
If they got rid of government they'd just become the new government. I doubt they'd be better than what they replaced.
I heard from a reliable source that he alr€@,,*&j
no carrier.
Re: (Score:2)
We tend to call resource allocation "Politics".
We tend to call allocation execution "Government".
--sr
And yes, I do have a mouse in my pocket.
Re:Business (Score:5, Interesting)
First, no, we cannot. Psychos are psychos because they don't care about you. You can't "get" them to do anything iif they don't care about you.
godzilla-let-them-fight-quote.jpg. I didn't say get the psychopaths to care about us and help us. I said give them a different target: other psychopaths.
The Founders understood this. This is why we have 3 separate but co-equal branches of government. They knew psychos would go into government (monopoly on violence, WAY better than money), so make the psychos in the legislature fight the psychos in the executive branch fight the psychos in the judicial branch and hopefully mostly ignore the little people on the ground. The problem is now the psychos on Wall Street have bought all the psychos in Washington D.C..
Re: (Score:2)
Ha! qft "The Founders understood this. This is why we have 3 separate but co-equal branches of government. " "They knew psychos would go into government " "The problem is now the psychos on Wall Street have bought all the psychos in Washington D.C.."
Re: (Score:2)
They might have called them "tyrants" or "complete fucking assholes" rather than diagnosing them with a mental disorder, but it's the same concept. It's not like people just discovered some people really, really, really don't give a shit about anyone else. I think that's been well understood through all of human history.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, the lesson here is that it's IMPOSSIBLE to keep government and economics as separate as possible, and that trying to keep them away is not a sustainable solution.
This isn't true, at all. The government has one asset: it holds a monopoly on violence. All things the government does or can do stem from that one basic fact. Having the government do anything else is bad because they will mix the assets they have to achieve objectives. Some things are more "benign", at least in modern conception, like taking people's homes by force or shooting/jailing/etc them for not paying taxes, the bulk of which antithetically go to providing other people with food and housing. Then there are bigger issues, like the fact we are coming up fast on the transition from a scarcity-based economy to a post-scarcity economy thanks to extreme automation - the place controlling who lives and dies is not the place I want deciding what to do with all the extra people who are no longer needed to drive the economy.
That's cute, you think the economy doesn't control the government. It does so on so many levels it is hard to understand how impossible it would be to separate. For example...
* The need for donor money to pay for election campaigns.
* The military industrial complex
* The Fed
* GDP growth rate correlation to election results (basically one of Nate Silver's hypothesis)
As to your point, there is no need for the government to decide who lives and dies, when people are no longer needed to drive the economy, they
Re: (Score:2)
FTFY (Score:2)
Psychopathic CEOs Are Rife, Experts Say
There. Fixed the headline for you.
In other words, why should Silicon Valley be any different?
Re: (Score:2)
The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success.
These 10 Careers Tend To Have The Most Psychopaths
Lawyer
Media (TV/Radio)
Salesperson
Surgeon
Journalist
Police Officer
Clergyperson
Chef
Civil Servant
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It tells us that it is a "scum swims to the top"-system. These fail long-term and make a lot of people miserable short-term without any real need or gain. It also tells us that the human race has still not figured out how to build societies well, except for small communities (which have their own issues).
Re: Business (Score:5, Informative)
Both are terms that are perhaps not diagnosed but often used to describe a particular anti-social personality disorder.
Some psychologists or psychiatrists want to distinguish the two by attributing psychopathy to a biochemical imbalance in the brain some people are born with. Which is backed up by some data acquired through fMRI. While sociopathy is believed to be caused by interaction between humans or more specifically the lack thereof. Severe neglect and abuse are believed to cause this kind of anti-social personality disorder which in its symptoms is the same as psychopathy.
But again, according to the DSM-IV definitions that distinction is not made to begin with.
Re: Business (Score:5, Insightful)
Please don't further confuse people, by drawing in classifications made by people that are studying the mind, cannot cure these issues, and change the definition for them "frequently. "
Makes sense. Don't confuse people by using scientific definitions that everyone can look up themselves. Better use the arbitrary ones from anonymous random internet person who bases their definition on comic books and television.
Re: (Score:2)
It really depends what you read, you are right the first thing you get when google the difference between sociopath and psychopath is the are synonyms, however if you click on the link it actually goes on to describe differences like psychopath is genetic and sociopath is nurture. Psychopath is dangerous, sociopath is crazy.
from http://www.medicaldaily.com/wh... [medicaldaily.com] the top link
Psychologists tend to break down the two groups by certain factors, and they have a lot in common. Both tend to be charming, despite being unable to empathize normally with others. They offer convincing systems of fear and disgust, but tend to lack both. Here’s the crux, though: Psychopaths cross the line. Sociopaths may hole up in their houses and remove themselves from society, while a psychopath is busy in his basement rigging shackles to his furnace.
If you go a little further (the 3rd link down) you can find from psychology today https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com] which I assume is a
Re: (Score:2)
What a pity. I take it you're not a philanthropist, a philosopher or a Phoenician either?
Re: (Score:3)
The technology of statistics as an evaluation mechanism for spectrum disorders is well understood and rigorous.
Re: (Score:2)
'Rigorous' is a word that cannot be applied in psychology. I'm not saying that there isn't value to the testing, but in the end the workings of the mind are far more complex than any categorization/grouping technique, no matter how fine the spectrum is developed.
100 years from now, psychologists will wonder how their predecessors used SSRIs without really knowing what they do, just like the way we look at lobotomies now.
Re: (Score:2)
as for being "Far More Complex", we have no idea how the feedback mechanism for even one loaded dendrite column (the analog portion assigning relative merit to previous decision points)works
Re: (Score:2)
That may well be, but getting definitions from Batman is not the answer.
Correct. Alfred is the one who came up with the answers.
Re: (Score:2)
I vote we replace the DSM with the OP's descriptions. They make so much sense and are easy to remember as everyone knows who Dexter and Joker are.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, science says the war on drugs is a useless set of regulations, same with regulations on things like what consenting adults do in their bedroom, gay marriage, and various other religious driven regulations. These are the regulations that the anti-regulation people are usually in favour of.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can't say. Grammar might decide that fewer are, though.
Silicon Valley is like other places, then (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Silicon Valley is like other places, then (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, there's always Warren Buffett, who is pretty much what the rest of them pretend to be. He started his first business in middle school, filed his first income tax return at 14 years old, made his first sale of a business at age 16, for the equivalent of $16,240 in modern dollars. Today he runs a 140 billion dollar company whose headquarters has twenty employees and no conference rooms.
Buffett is by all reports amazing to work for. Being a manager in a company acquired by him has been compared to hitting the lottery. Once he decides you know what you're doing he just lets you do your thing. When the CEO of Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad called Buffett to report that flooding was going to cost the company a half billion dollars, Buffett reportedly responded, "You're not a publicly traded company, so why are you calling me?"
Buffett may be a genius, but part of his success surely is that his genius is unhindered by personal drama. There is immense power to that combination of intellectual spark, ambition, and ... agreeableness.
Psychopathic (Score:2, Interesting)
Am I the only one who has had more issues with power tripping HR departments than CEOs?
Re:Psychopathic (Score:4, Informative)
HR is where all the social justice types conglomerate. What better place to promulgate oppressive authoritarian social control than corporate America?
How odd (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are the words "in Silicon Valley" in the title?
Re: (Score:3)
Why are the words "in Silicon Valley" in the title?
To get the ragged, tattered remains of Slashdot's technical folk to click on the link.
This pretty much explains 45. (Score:5, Informative)
Politics is just another form of business; so it's very apt to manipulations of a sociopath. and the people that voted in cheeto is fell for it... HARD. Now they have too much pride to admit they got conned.
Well known fact (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Amateurs. Balmer had Domokun. [youtube.com]
Canary (Score:5, Informative)
Silicon Valley is just the canary. This is more than a Silicon Valley issue, and frankly more than a USA issue too.
Have a look at what's happening in Canadian banks recently.
Re: (Score:3)
People like David Icke reckons these people are lizards. In a manner of speaking they are. Their brains are certainly wired very differently to any normal person with empathy.
Re: (Score:2)
Why the surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
The Top 10 Jobs That Attract Psychopaths...
10. Civil servant
9. Chef
8. Clergy person
7. Police officer
6. Journalist
5. Surgeon
4. Salesperson
3. Media (Television/Radio)
2. Lawyer
1. CEO
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/01/05/the-top-10-jobs-that-attract-psychopaths/#76b38a9c4d80
Re: (Score:2)
9. Chef
The fuck?
Re:Why the surprise? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why the surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think Ramsey is a psychopath? Being mean doesn't make you a psycho. A psycho would tell you sweet lies to extract short-term resources from you, he wouldn't tell you harsh truths and scream at you to fix your fuck-ups so you can accomplish your dreams in life.
Re:Why the surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm saying he screams at the aspiring chefs on Hell's Kitchen, or the failed restauranteurs on Kitchen Nightmares, offering what appears to me to be really good (if harshly delivered) advice, and then appears genuinely pleased when they take said advice to heart and become successful. Ramsey behaves like a well-meaning asshole, not a psychopath.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but it didn't say "TV chef," just "chef." Why do psychopaths want to work in the kitchen at Chili's so badly?
Re: (Score:2)
Never get off the boat.
Re: (Score:2)
The Top 10 Jobs That Attract Psychopaths...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/k... [forbes.com]
And the top Answer even before Spot 1 is: Contributor to the Forbes contributor network and cut-rate bar mitzvah DJ training academy. Which has nothing to do with aforementioned jobs of "Journalist" and "Media" [sic].
Re: (Score:2)
Caution! (Score:5, Funny)
If allowed to continue unencumbered, one of these business psychopaths may even attempt to run for president one day!
Re: (Score:2)
Don't be silly, who'd vote for someone like that?
I mean, imagine just how insanely awful the alternative has to be to make people vote for something like that!
hmm... (Score:2)
I don't see it yet, but doesn't this remind you of a 'business leader' an CEO who recently was elected?
I wonder how many other presidents of the United states might fit that category. Theodore Roosevelt might be a candidate.
I'm not trolling however, I actually voted for the man. I suspected at the time and still suspect both he is a sociopath or psychopath of some kind.
I considered him a horrible option for president. Simply the other choice was worse.
Hey , whatever happened to 'embracing diversity'? Aren
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
As someone who didn't vote for either of them, I'll just say you're both idiots.
Re: (Score:3)
And here we have it. Despite all the evidence that Trump is in no way a moral, religious person. Despite his three marriages, despite his well-publicised affairs, despite his misogyny, despite all the ways he shows that he does not uphold Christian values, you can't stand the idea that two people of the same gender might get married.
Your hatred for Clinton is rooted in your own bigotry, not an
Misprint in article (Score:2)
You don't have to be a psychopath... (Score:2)
Solution Is Obvious (Score:2)
Here's what the deal should be: companies can do genetic testing all they want as long as it's always strictly against the law to employ psychopaths according to the genetic test.
Re: (Score:2)
what other categories should they genetically test for?
Is there a test for likely depression?
Is there a test for 'needs strong stimulus motivation'? aka lazy.
how about a test for 'likely to deviate from sexual norm'?
What other physical characteristics should we allow to be used to make people unemployable? Skin and Hair color used to be favorites, other then being somewhat arbitrary what is wrong with that?
Re: (Score:2)
You completely missed my point. Tying the genetic testing to psychopathy means that companies would never be able to hire the CEOs they want. These companies and the breed of psychopathic CEOs would complain so loudly the law would never get passed. But if they're going to force genetic testing on us*, then we might as well make it worth our while and publicly humiliate these monsters.
*You do remember that story from a week ago, right? https://politics.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
psych (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you can't be an asshole, you are going to get back stabbed a LOT.
I worked at a smallish company (as a lowly peon, thank god) but they gave REALLY good bonuses, the amount of back stabbing going on in middle to upper management was astounding.
Really? (Score:2)
Being a psychopath is beneficial for CEOs (Score:2)
Every time you may ask yourself "is that morally justifiable", the psychopath has already done it. And he doesn't even understand what to contemplate about.
Our system reinforces that behaviour. You're better off as a psychopath in such a position. Corporations are intelligence without conscience. The closer you are to this yourself, the better you function in such a system.
Do experts diagnose people without ever meeting (Score:2)
and talking with them? A lot of so-called experts diagnosed Trump (from his public statements and behavior) as having malignant narcissism, but look where it got him!
CEO != humanitarian (Score:2)
Rife (Score:2)
4-8%, or to put it another way, 1 out of between 12 and 25, doesn't bring the word "rife" to mind.
All this is telling me is that there's a much higher percentage of risk takers in business than in the general population...shocking.
I think I've worked for several... (Score:2)
And, of course, we *know* where the biggest, sorry, HUUUUGGGEEESST one of all is....
Re: (Score:2)
As usual, none.
Proof that Hillary's employees died working for her?
none, of course
More smoke and mirrors from the right
Re: (Score:2)
Tell it to the judge that disbarred him for lying about the harassment.
Legal proof is _done_, yet Hillary and many others still defend him.
Re: (Score:2)
Clinton was NEVER disbarred. he did surrender his license for 5 years and NOT for harrassment.
Go ahead, I'll wait, prove that claim!
Legal proof is that you have NO idea what you are talking about
The paula Jones suit? Dismissed as "Utterly without merit"
Why I can't take the "experts" seriously (Score:3)
We have a class of people who:
1) Are law-abiding (even if they make use of every loophole in the book)
2) Widely recognized as leaders is a hyper-competitive environment
3) Not only survive, but thrive in that environment, and inspire others to excel as well
And the "experts" describe these people as having a disorder of some sort. They literally define business success as a mental illness.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Witness the "success" in the White House for examples.
Raise healthcare costs beyond reach for the old to give more tax cuts to the rich?
purest psychopathy possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The american psychological establishment is a highly biased and liberal leaning institution and very little of what the recommend has anything to do with what engineers refer to as 'hard science'. If you take pschy courses, which are really interesting I'd recommend at least a couple. You will find.
1) that psychology considers itself a 'social science' not unlike say history, or anthropology.
2) they do not hold themselves to the same kind of evidence based standard as what they term a 'hard science'.
(I'v
Re: (Score:2)
Psychos drive away talented people... (Score:2)
Silly Valley is not alone (Score:2)
Psychopathy in the boardroom is a DESIRED trait by shareholders
Nothing but profits matters, anyone who has moral qualms has to go.
Semantics (Score:3)
A warning to those who idolize Psychopaths (Score:5, Interesting)
I have had the misfortune of encountering two psychopaths in my life. One rented a room from me and I worked with an occupational psychopath which is exactly what we are talking about here. It took me a long time to work out what they were.
This is because the tactics of manipulation they use is beguiling and confusing. You are never certain if it is you or what is going on. If they meet your friends they will manipulate them and turn them against you with lies of 'MrKaos said this or that'. They will turn all of your peer group against you until you are dependent on them and completely at their mercy. And there will be no mercy. You will be manipulated until you either have a nervous breakdown, which I nearly did, or you kill yourself.
For me the first psychopath was eventually exposed and responded by threatened me with a meat knife, twice, and other physical threats of violence. Now I am no push over. I was in my late 20s at the time and had about a decade of martial arts training to draw on. I knew as soon as that knife moved, my life as I knew it would be over. Instead of acting threatened I acted un-threatened, thinking that I would take that knife and use it against him, because that is what would have to happen. Psychopaths admire power. If you are powerful you can beguile them enough to escape, even temporarily.
After several attempts at physical confrontations he eventually tried to ambush me. As I avoided his pathetic attempt to hurt me I sidestepped his assault, hit him under the neck and, with immense satisfaction, drove his head directly into the concrete upon which he was standing, ensuring there was no bounce and he would receive the full damage of my defense. I told him that if he ever came near me again - well you can guess what I said. He didn't stop and it took several years of being harassed and subsequent court cases to get this motherfucker out of my life.
Several years later my second encounter was an OP when I worked for a large corporation you have heard of. I was gradually exposed, like boiling a frog, to familiar patterns of manipulation and confusing scenarios. Instead of being able to concentrate on my work I had to devote energy to defusing his tedious machinations, power plays and other things. Eventually he destroyed the career of my boss, who I was friends with before he came along and almost stressed a pregnant woman into a miscarriage. Psychopaths don't have to kill to get their supply of making people suffer.
I concluded this person was an OP when he described to me, back in 2004, how he used to torture small animals like cats and rabbits for fun. This disgusted me and horrified me at the same time because as he told me I realized, from previous experiences, he was doing this to gauge my reaction. He was using this story to attempt to brutalize and intimidate me.
I responded casually, despite my insides screaming 'get the fuck away from this guy', with a description of how my father taught me to hunt and maintain firearms. That he never let me hunt animals until I was a good shot and that when I did hunt, to aim for the heart or head and try to take the animal down with a single shot. I looked at him right in the face and said 'sometimes I would see a sick animal and realize the most merciful thing I could do was to shoot them right in the head', looked at the time, said it was an interesting conversation but it was time for me to go home. I was shaking when I got to my car.
When the OP could not destroy my work, he instead tried to destroy me, unlike the previous psychopath I could not get away easily. Eventually I escaped when I snapped an achillies tendon and was no longer able to perform the role. Despite the pain, surgery and two years to learn how to walk again all I could think of was how grateful I was to have escaped the OP's final destructive plans for me. Whatever they were, they were bad. Ten years later, he was still trying. My other colleagues, who I am still in contact with, also look back with fear and horror of wh
Re: Leadership (Score:5, Insightful)
Hillary was actually a grizzled hardass compared to Trump, who is an impulsive lolcow who runs on preteen boy emotions. Admittedly this may result in more aggression, but aggression is usually not smart.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Care to explain the difference?
Re: (Score:2)
Psychopath, not sociopath. You needn't go out of your way to make the life of others miserable to be a good CEO. You just mustn't give a fuck about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most people who claim that they have a mental illness, or have been diagnosed with and possibly given drugs for a mental illness, are in fact perfectly healthy individuals with these things we can't always control called emotions.
You would not believe the number of people that say bullshit like this to those of us who have depression.
May you never have to learn just how wrong you are.
Re: (Score:2)
Fetal alcohol syndrome has visible signs.
The 'labia' (cleft in the lips just under your nose, not 'meat flaps') doesn't form. You can have some sympathy, while not putting them in positions where they can cause too much damage.