Technology has a know-it-all problem

BY: Elizabeth Spiers

NEW YORK: Jesse Powell, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, this month released to its 3,200 employees a 31-page document that purported to describe the company’s values. But based on the edited version later published online it appeared to reflect the values of Powell himself. He characterised his beliefs as “libertarian,” a political philosophy that emphasises a commitment to the protection of individual liberty. Powell also vowed that Kraken was committed to supporting a “diversity of thought.”

Neither theme is uncommon in the rhetoric of Silicon Valley’s elites, but Powell’s behavior as an executive illustrates why these ideas often ring hollow in practice. To demand that some workers pass an “ideological purity test” regarding the benefits of cryptocurrency, as Powell was once quoted describing it, does not demonstrate an openness to diversity of thought. And vowing to “control the language” that people use to describe their own gender identity, as Powell also reportedly did at a company-wide meeting, hardly shows a commitment to protecting individual liberty.

Meanwhile, Powell has said things to employees on Slack that would make a labor lawyer blanch — among them that most American women are “brainwashed” and that the question of whether they’re less intelligent than men is unsettled. (He later said these comments were taken out of context or called them jokes.) Then there was that time he tried to lead a discussion about who should be allowed to say the “N-word.” So, no, Powell’s toxic behavior is not rooted in his libertarianism or his commitment to diversity of thought; it’s simply an outgrowth of his narcissism, which has allowed him to turn the company he runs into an ideological vanity project.

And Powell isn’t alone. Earlier this month, it was reported that SpaceX employees had written a letter asking that their chief executive, Elon Musk, please, for the love of God, stop tweeting and generally displaying the erratic behavior that is causing chaos within the company — and which in any other industry might result in removal. “It is critical,” the authors wrote, “to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.”

Musk promptly fired several of them, claiming the letter was distracting the company from its mission (which is, of course, exactly what the letter claims Musk is doing).

Technology companies are certainly not the only enterprises whose leaders have taken political stances: Executives at Hobby Lobby, Martin’s Famous Potato Rolls and Bread and Chick-fil-A have aligned themselves with conservative politics, while the leaders of companies such as Ben & Jerry’s are unabashedly liberal. Nor are they the first to litigate culture wars within their own companies, as Disney and Starbucks know too well.

But the culture of Silicon Valley puts a lot of faith in the idea that technology is inherently world-changing and that the aims of the industry are high-minded. High-profile executives are lauded as innovators and revolutionaries whose vision exceeds that of ordinary mortals — and they often develop followings of people inside and outside of their industry who view them that way. The most prominent exemplar of this phenomenon is Musk, whose fans range from the merely enthusiastic to the slightly unhinged. This has, perhaps understandably, reinforced Musk’s deluded belief that he is capable of understanding and resolving problems beyond his ken, including the rescue of Thai children stuck in a cave, and fixing Twitter, where the product-level expertise he has displayed is mostly limited to his prolific use of the platform.