
The Zuckerberg Syndrome - redrory
http://sendmetolaunch.com/reason-3-i-actually-code-too
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danbmil99
Why is this the Zuckerberg syndrome? Is he supposed to be a super-hacker? I
thought he was more like a casual hacker marketing guy in the right
place/right time.

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redrory
My initial thoughts on Zuckerberg was that he was technically brilliant. But
maybe "The Social Network" gave me the wrong impression.

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thinkcomp
The Social Network gave you the wrong impression. Perhaps this is a better
definition "Zuckerberg Syndrome," i.e. the condition of thinking that a person
is smarter than they really are simply because they are rich. (It probably
originated with Gates, in reality.)

Anyway, Mark is smart, but so are a lot of people. And Chris was the marketing
guy who got the site in the Crimson with impressive frequency, not Mark.

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redthrowaway
Both Zuckerberg, and especially Gates, are really, truly, brilliant people.

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thinkcomp
You may have missed my point.

I have met both. Again, they are both smart, but many people are smart. Many
people who read Hacker News are technically capable of doing what each of them
has done. Of those, very few were also able to benefit from a number of the
external forces that supported each of them, and fewer still would actually
want to do what each of them did.

So while they both may be quite intelligent people, they are not the most
intelligent people ever to have lived, and are probably not even close. Being
"brilliant" and being rich are not the same and there is no causal link in
either direction!

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loboman
Can you tell anything about your impressions on those meetings?

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thinkcomp
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/the-legend-
of-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/the-legend-of-mark-
zucker_b_732625.html)

~~~
loboman
Thanks

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veb
I always thought a hacker was someone who wrote black magic code in a language
I thought I knew well. ;)

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forensic
What sets both Zuckerberg and Bill Gates apart is their will to power.

Neither of them are expert hackers. Both of them worked very very hard to get
rich. Both of them desperately wanted to get rich. Both of them seized an
opportunity when it presented itself.

Both of them understood the business environment and understood what aspect of
that environment they needed to exploit and emphasize in order to get wealthy.

But neither of them are great hackers. Quite the opposite... RMS is a great
hacker.

Zuckerberg was a dime-a-dozen php monkey. Bill Gates was just your average
chess club nerd.

