Technology executives and politicians have more in common than the former would care to admit. At least that’s my observation after many years observing both.
Here’s my Sunday column explaining why:
In another journalistic lifetime I covered politics, including several statewide campaigns and one presidential contest. It turned out to be fine training for the technology world, because leading politicians and the tech elite share some key attributes.
The parallels are not precise, of course. But over the years I’ve noticed some fairly uncanny similarities among these folks and their vocations.
Let’s look at the major ones.
Compressed Time: There’s never enough.
This may seem counterintuitive, because we generally perceive government to be working slowly. But when it comes to compressing vast effort into too little time, a political campaign strongly resembles technology’s product-development cycle.
Campaigns have drop-dead deadlines, namely Election Day. Candidates, campaign staffs and supporters work unreal hours. A campaign is called a race for good reason: there’s only one winner.
The technology business lives on Internet Time. Instead of Election Day, the deadline is the product launch date. Being second, in a market where the first mover has a massive advantage, can be a disaster.
The analogy continues even after Election Day or product shipment, because the cycle just starts again. No politician or tech executive ever feels he or she can relax for long. Someone is waiting to take advantage of any weakness.
Hype and Lies: Why tell the truth when exaggeration or deception works better?
Maybe this and other less-noble attributes are related to the lack of time, or the public’s incredibly short attention span. They’re still unnerving.
Building up a candidate or CEO — a campaign or product — is an exercise in raw hype. Consultants and marketing people orchestrate buzz and attention with cynical tactics that nonetheless seem to work.
Politicians learn to say anything to get elected and do anything to stay in office. The incessant distortions from presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush are sickening. They are not surprising.
Tech executives are equally brazen. The word “vaporware” — denoting a product that has been promised but which fails to arrive in any timely way, if ever — was coined by technologists. And Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates’ videotaped deposition in the Microsoft antitrust trial showed a man so unfamiliar with honesty that it helped poison his colleagues’ subsequent testimony.
Masters of the Universe: Big achievements engender bigger egos.
Egomania doesn’t always accompany power, and arrogance doesn’t necessarily equate with wealth. But there does seem to be a relationship, and nowhere more so than in politics and technology.
When sycophants are constantly telling you how great you are, it must be easy to start believing in your greatness. You convince yourself that the rules are for other people. Gore repeatedly violated the rules to which he’d agreed in last week’s debate, and when asked about this by a reporter, he responded that he didn’t care.
What’s legal isn’t necessarily right, but that distinction eludes many in the tech industry. Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison called it a public service when his company paid private investigators to go Dumpster diving — or was it “opposition research”? — in search of sleazy activities by Microsoft.
Degree of Difficulty: This stuff is hard.
Politicians face competing interests. They live in a world where compromise is not only necessary but valuable. Getting anything done is enormously difficult. The press and the public carp when politicians fail to achieve perfection, but to politicians, that just shows how poorly informed the rest of us tend to be.
Technologists, too, shake their heads at the criticism. By some measures, it’s something of a miracle that million-line software programs work as well as they do. Bugs are part of the system, and users just don’t appreciate the challenge.
Changing the World: Deep down, technology and political people genuinely believe they’re making a difference.
Politicians can have cynical motives, and frequently do cynical things. But I’ve often been moved by their deep-down commitment to public service. The system in which they operate is corrupting, but most are not corrupt.
Technology people have tended to distinguish themselves from typical widget-makers and others in the business world. Their field is so nascent, and such a catalyst of change, that they can dream, sometimes realistically, of having outsize impacts.
All these similarities make me wonder sometimes why the tech leaders exhibit such contempt for politicians. Maybe, when it comes to certain characteristics, it takes one to know one.
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