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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

I think there's a class of narcissist that doesn't really have knowledge and beliefs as much as they have desires and things to say that get them closer to their desires.

So in some sense I think asking what Adam Neumann and Elizabeth Holmes really believe is a category error. Knowing the truth makes lying really hard. If you spend a lot of time figuring out what's true, that builds mental habits that make lying feel bad. But if mostly ignore "true", then it's much easier to focus only on what Nixon's press secretary called the "operative statement" [1]. For narcissist CEOs, I think they treat the objective truth like a child sometimes treats a scary closet: if they never look at it or think about it, it's not a problem.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/weekinreview/the-nation-t...

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I think the OP's question really involves the CFO or any accountants involved in this case. I would expect the CEO to be driven more by vision than by cold, hard facts.

I'm guessing there's a mix of "it's hard to tell bad news" and "it's hard to hear bad news".

If those two factors are strong (say, cultural reasons), a lot of red flags can fall by the wayside.

You mean the CFO who took over the helm of the company?

> I would expect the CEO to be driven more by vision than by cold, hard facts.

Vision is fine but cold, hard facts are essential too. If you let your vision get the better of you and you ignore the facts then you're on the path to self destruction.

> I would expect the CEO to be driven more by vision than by cold, hard facts.

If the facts don't align with your vision, figure out a different vision.

If one is cushioned by unlimited amount of VC money, then it can take a while to realize that the vision was untenable.

I'm guessing that the issues have something to do with the management structure.

If your CEO is delusional, it's usually possible to reign him or her in... From what I understand, Neumann had some special votes that basically allowed him to fire the board at any point.

I imagine that anyone with a pragmatic mindset willing to ask "wait, but the numbers are..." was pushed out of the picture either explicitly or implicitly by the power imbalance.

Holy crap: You're right.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/9/24/20882133/wework-adam-ne...

Thanks for the tip! I didn't realize that.

I don't know the story with WeWork's CFO. But the book "Super Pumped" documents how Kalanick used his dominance to keep from having a CFO at all for long periods.

A good CEO who is very strong on vision will build a team that keeps him in check by having balancing strengths. But narcissists don't like balance. So they build teams that let them do what they want. And when they hire somebody who isn't an enabler, that person soon ends up gone one way or another. And it's not just CEOs. You can find a good example of this in recent US politics.

I think there's a class of narcissist that doesn't really have knowledge and beliefs as much as they have desires and things to say that get them closer to their desires.

This problem is fed by the fact that they surround themselves with yes men, who only benefit by feeding the beast, until the beast eats itself.

It's called Michael Jackson Syndrome.

The show Silicon Valley had a great protrayal what surrounding yourself with yes-men can do to a person

The best part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAeEpbtHDPw

Wow, that's really good. So nicely performed. Thanks for sharing that.

Exactly.

Everyone has their own peculiar mental model of reality, sometimes more optimistic, sometimes more pessimistic, almost always with strange boundaries on the thinkable universe.

I estimate this is how the majority of bad financial situations happen, whether untenable mortgages, huge credit card bills, excessive student debt, etc.

People are usually not fundamentally stupid or poor decision makers, but they do usually ignore uncomfortable thoughts.

It's easy for that to happen to one person; it's more surprising when it happens to dozens of people.

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