Alien from Facebook: what The New Yorker learned about Mark Zuckerberg

The New Yorker magazine published a large article by Evan Osnos about Mark Zuckerberg. The journalist has been collecting information for a long time - he conducted several interviews with the CEO of Facebook himself, spoke with dozens of former and current employees of the company and with Zuckerberg's friends. The result is a story about the founder of Facebook - his childhood, character, views and hobbies, as well as how Zuckerberg copes with the problems of the company in the past two years: accusations of leaking user data and spreading fake news, including through the efforts of the Russian " troll factories. Briefly retell the most interesting.

$44 million for peace

Mark Zuckerberg likes to tell Facebook employees about the need to “move the world towards more transparency,” but he diligently limits his own openness. Since 2011, Zuckerberg has been living with his family in a mansion in Palo Alto. Protecting his peace, he was forced to sue the developer, who was going to build a mansion on the nearby territory - from it "Zuckerberg's bedroom" would be perfectly visible. The creator of Facebook won the court, but in the end he had to pay $44 million to buy out the entire territory around his mansion and get rid of potential neighbors once and for all.

Hates to lose

Instead of watching TV, Zuckerberg prefers to play board games with his wife and friends. According to one former Facebook employee, he hates to lose and is constantly “trying to figure out a way to mentally beat you in any game.” Zuckerberg once flew in a private jet and played Scrabble with a friend's daughter. After losing the first game, Zuckerberg quickly wrote a program that searched the dictionary for all the possible variants of words from the letters he had. On landing, Zuckerberg was in the lead with a slight advantage, and the other passengers of the liner were divided into two teams: some rooted for the person, others for the computer. “He’s a ruthless executive machine,” says former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo of Zuckerberg. “And if he decides to come after you, prepare for defeat.”

Doesn't like bikes

A few years ago, Zuckerberg bought a bicycle with clip-on pedals - they need to be fastened like skis or roller skates. On the first trip, he forgot to unfasten the pedal in time, fell and broke his arm. Since then, he has not ridden a bike - instead, the head of Facebook installed an exercise bike in his mansion with a screen through which he receives commands from a personal trainer.

Character

On the Facebook campus, Zuckerberg is king, top executives show him full respect. Zuckerberg has spent almost half of his life in his own company, customizing it for himself. Even the famous blue color of Facebook he chose not by chance - Zuckerberg is color blind and distinguishes blue better.

The media often writes about Zuckerberg as an arrogant, withdrawn and cold person. But company employees say that this is the wrong impression: “When I see how Zuckerberg is portrayed in the media, it sometimes hurts me, because it doesn’t look like him at all,” says one of the company’s senior managers. Another colleague adds: “He is not a bastard. That's why people have been with this company for so long." In person, Zuckerberg is much softer and more frank than during public statements, Osnos notes.

When asked by a journalist about his reluctance to publicly disclose, Zuckerberg replied: “I am not the most innocent person, and if I say something wrong, you will immediately see the consequences. I don't want to do something that will reflect badly on the people around me." Zuckerberg is often compared to his business mentor, Bill Gates. “A smart and rich person who does not have time to notice his problems in time is always considered arrogant. But I wouldn’t call Mark like that,” says Gates.

US tour and presidential ambitions

The New Yorker writes that Zuckerberg regularly faces problems for which he is not ready. And this is not about "technical puzzles", but about some aspects of human relations - the meaning of truth, the restriction of freedom of speech and the nature of crimes. The downside of Zuckerberg's Facebook status is that it's hard for him to get real, "raw" feedback. Because of this, he loses touch with reality and is forced to “pierce” the bubble in which he lives every now and then. In 2017, Zuckerberg traveled to more than 30 states to get to know the outside world better. This tour gave rise to rumors about Zuckerberg's presidential ambitions. However, David Pluff, former campaign manager for Barack Obama and now an employee of the Zuckerberg charity, refutes this: “When a politician goes on tours like this, it’s an hour [for each meeting with people], of which he himself speaks 50 minutes. Zuckerberg talked for five minutes and just asked questions.”

However, many observers felt that the whole trip turned out to be pretentious and awkward. Zuckerberg traveled with a professional photographer who filmed the entire journey as the head of Facebook feeds a calf, barbecues, or works on an assembly line at a Ford plant. Netizens joked online that the alien Zuckerberg was exploring the human race, and a former Facebook executive who was involved with the tour admitted that "no one wanted to tell Mark and no one told Mark that the whole thing looked really stupid."

Parents

Zuckerberg had a huge sense of his own potential since childhood. It was "a theological feeling of being almost chosen," says a close friend. "I think Mark always saw himself as a man who would go down in history, a man who was destined to be great." Zuckerberg's father is a dentist, but, as the founder of Facebook himself explains, he was always figuring out how to technically improve his work - for example, he invented a computer-controlled laser system for working with teeth. When asked about the source of his inspiration, the head of Facebook recalls his grandparents, who immigrated from Europe at the beginning of the 20th century: “They came, went through the Great Depression, lived very hard. They dreamed that their children would become doctors, which eventually happened, and my mother just always believed that we [her children, Zuckerberg has three siblings] should achieve even more.”

Passionate about Ancient Rome

When Zuckerberg moved to Phillips Exeter Academy (a prestigious private high school in the US), he spent most of his time coding, swordsmanship, and studying Latin. Ancient Rome became Zuckerberg's biggest passion, first for the language and then for the history. “It has so many good and bad and complex characters. I think [Octavian] August is the most charming. In fact, with a really tough approach, he set the world for 200 years, ”explains Zuckerberg. As the author of the material recalls, Augustus came to power at the age of 18 and turned Rome from a republic into an empire, conquering Egypt, northern Spain and part of central Europe. He also liquidated political opponents, exiled his daughter for promiscuity, and was suspected of organizing the execution of his grandson. In 2012, Zuckerberg and his wife spent their honeymoon in Rome - Priscilla joked that there were three of them on this trip: he, she and Octavian August. The couple named their second daughter Augusta.

Religion Facebook

Interlocutors of The New Yorker note that Zuckerberg has always considered the growth of the company and the number of users to be his top priorities. When problems arose with them in 2007, he created special "growth teams" in which engineers looked for ways to build an audience. An employee hired in 2011 recalls being told at the first meeting that “growth is our religion,” and that growth teams were considered the most prestigious within the company. He says that precisely because of the desire for constant growth, Facebook for a long time did not care that third-party developers had access to user data. Zuckerberg himself believes that the state should not limit the growth of technology companies - even if they become monopolists in their market. He believes that attempts to limit Facebook's growth will lead to the fact that American companies in some markets may force out Chinese ones.

no bad news

Zuckerberg's acquaintances note that when he disagrees with something, he finds a small flaw in the opponent's arguments, and then inflates it to cosmic proportions. In addition, knowing the boss's dislike for bad news, Facebook employees eventually began to remove slides with negative information from corporate presentations. According to a former Facebook employee, the company only wants to hear good news, and dissenting people are not needed there.

Doesn't read media

In an interview with a correspondent, Zuckerberg admitted that he prefers to use news aggregates and never visits the websites of any media purposefully. Of the publications he likes, he noted only the industry site Techmeme.

Not going to leave

During a Senate hearing on April 10, Zuckerberg prepared to address more than 40 senators. He admitted that after the scandal with the “troll factory” and the leakage of user data, the government would ask him to leave the company. In this case, he prepared a disarming answer: “I started a company. Made decisions. Made mistakes. This is a big challenge, but we have already coped with difficulties, we will cope with this one. We are already working.”

Dislikes the movie "The Social Network"

The rejection of criticism became especially pronounced after the release of the film "The Social Network" about the founding of Facebook. Zuckerberg did not like that in the film his character was driven by the desire to meet girls, because in fact he had already met his current wife Priscilla Chan for most of this period of his life. Zuckerberg was also offended by the way actor Jesse Eisenberg played him - he showed the founder of Facebook as too cold and arrogant. “The first impression is very important, and for many people this film became an acquaintance with me,” Zuckerberg told a journalist. And most of all, he was not worried about the reaction of others in general, but how this film would be perceived by his own employees.

narrated by Artem Gubenko