Gallery: Brilliant Bastards: The Toughest Tech Bosses Who Haven't Been Fired Yet
Alan Levenson01larry-ellison
There is no question that the tech world is filled with Grade A jerks. The most revered man in Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, is the patron saint of all of them. Being a bastard in the service of perfection is an [acceptable way to go](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/business/2012/07/ff_stevejobs/all/ ), according to many a tech CEO’s playbook – just look at what Jobs accomplished. But what to make then, of two recent high-profile firings? First there was Scott Forstall, Mr. Apple iOS, shown the door last month following the launch of iOS 6. And this week, Microsoft sent Steven Sinofsky, the chief architect of Windows 8, packing. The new operating system has been billed as the most ambitious, most important step for Microsoft since Windows 95, and you dropkick its boss? The commonality between the two men goes deeper than the launch of two important operating systems. By most accounts, both men were hard-driving, perfection-oriented, uncompromising, narcissistic fellows – a huge pain in the arse would be another way to sum it up, as some of their [colleagues have done.](http://hal2020.com/2012/11/13/live-long-and-prosper-stevesi/) Does that mean the way of the tantrum-tossing, egomaniacal boss is on the way out? Are Apple and Microsoft leading the tech industry to some kumbaya future? It’s not quite time to start baking your celebratory cupcakes, says Robert Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford and the author of *The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t*. "A single-minded focus on excellence and nothing else in Silicon Valley can be very effective, especially if you mix in there some skill and taste,” Sutton says. “But when you are an asshole, your enemies are lying in wait. When you have performance issues then they come and shoot you." It’s a dynamic as old as Julius Caesar, Sutton notes. Carly Fiorina certainly fits that profile. Steve Jobs the first time around does too. Michael Eisner, thanks to Jobs, got shanked after some wobbles at Disney. In the case of Forstall, Siri and the Apple maps debacle didn’t do him any favors. And while it is too early to call Windows 8 a flop, Windows RT hasn’t been lighting the world on fire. If nothing else, Microsoft’s whole confusing jumble of marketing around Windows 8 and its various permutations [has been a shambles](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/10/why-windows-just-cant-win/). Hello Mr. Sinofsky, Mr. Ballmer wants to see you. But being a tough boss has its place in the highly competitive tech world. Those people who are always interrupting, grabbing the attention or sitting there with an angry scowl during meetings are often thought of as “leader” material. To take power and keep it, it often helps to have a bit of the bastard in you. And as many a jerky boss have proved, it can also create billions in wealth, for the jerk and investors. The lesson of Forstall and Sinofsky is that brilliance and toughness can take you far, but there is no room for error. Jobs knew when to turn his perfection-at-all-costs personality off; he could woo reporters and partners one minute, and humiliate his underlings the next. If Jobs had launched a clunker before his death you can bet his enemies would have come pouring out of their cubicles to crow about it. "If you are an asshole you had better be a great performer because you are creating enemies,” Sutton says. “If you are going to be an incompetent boss, you better be a nice guy." Above: Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle --------------------------------- If you are going to be one of the world’s great narcissists, you might as well have the big boats, fast cars and an island to go with them. And if you are as big a jerk as Ellison, you should also have someone who can clean up your mess: the good cop to a bad cop. Robert Sutton calls it a “toxic tandem,” and for the longest time Ray Lane, now a partner at Kleiner Perkins, played that role for Ellison. That’s why Lane can’t stand Ellison, and why he and a long list of other ex-Oracle employees are waiting for the reigning king of cad to falter. Perhaps the neatest way to sum up Ellison's personality is the title of the 1997 biography on the Oracle boss: *The Difference Between God And Larry Ellison (God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison).*
02steve-ballmer
Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft ----------------------------- The Microsoft CEO is known for his bellicose tantrums and withering criticism. He and Sinofsky butted heads by all accounts, but in this battle Ballmer came out on top. Robert Sutton recalls going to speak at Microsoft after his book came out, and being told by Microsoft employees about a class that boiled down to dealing with the abuse that would be hurled at them by Ballmer and Bill Gates. "A woman, a lawyer at Microsoft raised her hand at the end of my presentation and said, ‘I am thinking of all the VPs here, and I can only think of one who isn’t an asshole.’ I remember thinking, am I really hearing this?" *Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired*
Eirik Solheim03marissa-mayer
Marissa Mayer, CEO, Yahoo ------------------------- After joining Google as employee number 20, Mayer spent an impressive 13 years at the company overseeing various products. But she rubbed some employees the wrong way. She rolled her eyes at subordinates and could come across in meetings as a “meticulous art teacher correcting first-semester students,” [*The New York Times* wrote](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0). “Good students are good at all things,” she was quoted saying of a job applicant who got a single C in macroeconomics. One Google engineering group reportedly ["threw a party"](http://gawker.com/361601/) when they were taken out of Mayer’s purview. *Photo: [nrkbeta](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/nrkbeta/3284770496/in/photostream/)/Flickr*
04bobby-kotick
Bobby Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard -------------------------------------- As CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick oversees some of the entertainment world's most lucrative franchises, including *Call of Duty*, the latest installment of which [was just released](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/gamelife-weekly/). During his long tenure, Kotick has [ticked off many gamers](http://kotaku.com/5559201/a-delightful-chat-with-the-most-hated-man-in-video-games) with comments that make him sound like a mercenary, and not the kind you want to be in a videogame. He's gotten in trouble for suggesting that popular franchises should be beaten into the ground, that he wants to take the fun out of videogames, and that he doesn't play games himself. In each case, he says the comments were exaggerated or taken out of context, that talking to investors is different than talking to gamers, and that not playing games isn't the same as disliking games. Still, in many gamers' minds, Kotick has become the corporate titan they [love to hate](http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Bobby-Kotick-the-CEO-of-Activision-disliked-by-some-in-the-gaming-industry). *Photo: [Bobby Kotick](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/bobby-kotick/7249009256/in/photostream/ )/Flickr*
05mike-arrington
Mike Arrington Founder, CrunchFund ---------------------------------- File under bastard you hate to love. As the founder of TechCrunch and its venture capital offshoot CrunchFund, Arrington pioneered a new approach to writing about the tech industry that turned trade-pub minutiae into bloodsport. Equal parts Silicon Valley cheerleader and gadfly, Arrington also cultivated a unique ability to make the story about him, no more so than when he brought down the [wrath of his AOL boss Arianna Huffington](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/business/media/michael-arringtons-audacious-venture.html?_r=1) by starting a venture capital fund to finance startups even as he wrote about them. A [comically self-absorbed](http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/08/not-leaving-quietly/) [tech blogger](http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/18/the-rumors-are-true-i-am-leaving-techcrunch/) [soap opera](http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/06/the-end/) ensued. In the latest installment, Arrington last month [returned to TechCrunch](http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/getting-the-band-back-together/) as a weekly columnist. *Photo: [Robert Scoble](www.flickr.com/photos/scobleizer/3435409516/sizes/l/in/photostream/ )/Flickr*
Peter Erichsen06julian-assange
Julian Assange, Founder, WikiLeaks ---------------------------------- Julian Assange may cut a somewhat timid figure today, holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, but the WikiLeaks boss is still the very difficult man he was in his secret-spilling heyday. Here’s a taste of the Assange [school of management:](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/wikileaks-revolt/) After he unilaterally decided to release 392,000 classified documents, WikiLeaks staffers began to voice their displeasure with their boss. That tack apparently was a non-starter. One exchange between Assange and the manager of the WikiLeaks chat room was punctuated by this Assange zinger, “I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest. If you have a problem with me, piss off.” Plenty of WikiLeaks staffers did just that, including the site’s German spokesperson who compared Assange’s treatment of his employees to “some kind of emperor or slave trader.” *Photo: [New Media Days](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/newmediadaysdk/4515586555/)/Flickr*
unknown07nikesh-arora
Nikesh Arora, Chief Business Officer, Google -------------------------------------------- Arora’s reputation as a blunt, all-business antidote to the happy-go-lucky academic culture at Google precedes him. His ego and hard-driving nature has earned him some detractors at the Googleplex. But the computer geeks who rule Google keep him around, presumably because the results of his sales division — $12 billion in profit last year on $38 billion revenue — speak for themselves. *Photo: [NRKbeta.no](nrkbeta.no)/Flickr*
08mark-pincus
Mark Pincus, CEO, Zynga ----------------------- The kingpin of casual gaming seems to produce controversies as prolifically as he makes new games. He caught [flack](http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/) for pairing his players with scammy subscription companies (who he later [disassociated](http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2009/11/-ensuring-zyngas-user-experience-removing-all-cpa-offers.html) himself from). He was captured on video telling aspiring entrepreneurs how in Zynga’s early days “I did every horrible thing in the book to just get revenue right away.” He has repeatedly been [accused](http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/) of stealing game ideas from other companies. The San Francisco City Attorney even [went after](http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/08/zynga_guerilla_marketing.php) Pincus’ company for defacing sidewalks. He’s controversial inside his own company too, an ex-employee says, throwing computer screens and yelling in weekly product meetings. *Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired*
Max Whittaker09vinod-khosla
Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures ----------------------------- Khosla, a venture capitalist running the firm that bears his name, may have a [reputation](http://uncrunched.com/2011/10/01/brutal-honesty/) for being difficult. But he says entrepreneurs [don’t have to jerks](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/09/do-you-need-to-be-a-jerk-to-be-a-successful-entrepreneur/) to be successful -- he just prefers an honest, no-nonsense style. ["We prefer brutal honesty to hypocritical politeness,"](http://www.khoslaventures.com/our-focus-assisting-entrepreneurs.html) reads a statement on his firm's website. "You might hurt some feelings," he [added](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/09/do-you-need-to-be-a-jerk-to-be-a-successful-entrepreneur/) in an essay on TechCrunch, "but it likely won’t do net harm among the A players.” Of course it’s also Khosla who decides whether you are an A player. *Correction 11/18/12: This story has been modified to remove an unsupported claim.* *Photo: Max Whittaker/[TechCrunch](http://www.flickr.com/photos/techcrunch/5036850181/in/photostream/)/Flickr*
