Every day when I look through the headlines there’s always another story about Facebook, Google, or another tech company abusing their users and offering the same old platitudes about how important user privacy is to them or being investigated/fined by the Feds, European Union and some other country.

Ho-hum, business as usual.

There is still a certain amount of choice about using Facebook, Google-Android, various apps, and smart products, such as Samsung’s smart TV, all of which can be hacked. And while it takes effort, to some extent you can protect yourself and your privacy.

But even Facebook and Google’s efforts to dominate pale in comparison, as do the dreams of power of every despot, politico, religious zealot, or military organization, to the future Amazon sees for itself.

Amazon’s incredible, sophisticated systems are no longer being used just to serve up good deals, fast delivery times, or cheap web storage. Its big data capabilities are now the tool of police forces, and maybe soon the military. In the corporate world, Amazon is positioning itself to be the “brains” behind just about everything.

Add to that Amazon’s belief that they have no responsibility in how their tech is used.

Rekognition, Amazon’s facial recognition software is a good example.

Civil rights groups have called it “perhaps the most dangerous surveillance technology ever developed”, and called for Amazon to stop selling it to government agencies, particularly police forces. City supervisors in San Francisco banned its use, saying the software is not only intrusive, but biased – it’s better at recognising white people than black and Asian people. (…) Werner Vogels, Amazon’s CTO,  doesn’t feel it’s Amazon’s responsibility to make sure Rekognition is used accurately or ethically.

In one form or another, with great power comes great responsibility has been a byword starting with the Bible and down through the ages to Spiderman.

When a company wields the power to bring the modern world to its knees one can only hope it will take that to heart.

Image credit: judon / aparagraph.com

(‘Jerk’ is used here as an umbrella term for bullies, manipulators, bigots, rotten attitudes, rudeness, cruelty, etc.)

Jerks have been around since the dawn of man.

In today’s workplace you can find jerks at any level of an organization.

It’s always been difficult to call out the jerks, because they are usually bullies and good at intimidation.

The rise of individual jerks, some of them extremely powerful, has fostered the rise of institutional jerks, also very powerful.

Some are in tech and run for companies that are household names — Facebook, Google, Amazon — others aren’t as well-known, such as Palantir.

However, you can find them everywhere, in politics — national, regional and local. In religion — any of them. And any other arena you want to focus on.

Their power is more far-reaching and they believe they are untouchable.

Sadly, they often are.

But how much worse is it when the institution itself is the jerk?

Talk about untouchable.

WeWork is on a role to lead the newest crop of institutional jerks.

The company acquired and plans to monetize software that tracks employees throughout a company.

Euclid’s website says the company is “focused on redefining the workplace experience of the future.” Translation: optimizing every aspect of the physical workplace so workers are their most productive.

Euclid does this by tracking how people move around physical spaces. Its technology can track how many people showed up to a meeting or to that after-work happy hour. The company can see where employees tend to congregate and for how long. It’s all done over Wi-Fi.

Sound creepy?

It is.

Governments are getting into the act, too.

While the legislation varies slightly from state to state, it generally requires contractors to install software that allows “automatic verification” of their hours billed. Some bills, such as those being considered in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, are as exact as requiring a software solution that takes screenshots of “state-funded activity at least once every three (3) minutes” and store that data for seven years. The New Jersey and Pennsylvania proposals also require logging “keystroke and mouse event frequency.”

Now comes the question that the jerks never seem to think about.

How do you recruit talent, let alone top talent, into an environment that says up front, “we don’t trust you”?

As for the private sector, there is no way that any kind of monitoring or surveillance will remain secret — any more than salaries did.

Companies that choose not to go down that road will enjoy a more productive, creative and loyal workforce, not to mention one heck of a recruiting edge.

Image credit: Steve Baker

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Why is it that  founders who start out by claiming they want to stand against evil, just connect people, give people a new way to earn, or in some way make the world a better place, so often morph, to be polite, into jerks?

Money? Power? Drinking their own media Kool-Aid?

All of the above?

Or is it that, as opposed to morphing, given the right circumstances, even if transient, they always were jerks?

People, especially in our age of self-branding, work hard creating their image, so when considering it, caveat emptor.

Because what you see ain’t necessarily what you get.

Hat tip to KG for sending me the quote.

Image credit: Shut The Front Door

Do you care about the appalling conditions of many workplaces? Not overseas, but here, in the US?

Do you care about the impact enterprise has on the environment?

On people?

Do you fret, because you can’t DO anything?

Or can you?

Fashion has a terrible environmental report card, especially so-called “fast fashion.”

Change happens when we consumers vote with our feet and take our money elsewhere.

Fast fashion may be on its last legs. Take it from H&M, which was forced to admit in its March financial report that it had $4.3 billion of unsold inventory left hanging on its racks, along with a massive drop in sales. In fact, the Swedish company has started incinerating clothes in power plants to generate energy. When you consider all of the raw materials, chemical pollution, human labor, and transportation costs required to make just a single shirt, the scale of the waste is astounding.

Brands may seem impervious to complaints, negative press and exposés, but the operative word is ‘seems’, as Ivanka Trump learned when she was forced to shut down her fashion line.

The business seemed to be floundering: One source found that online sales of Ivanka Trump products sold on Amazon, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, and Zappos fell nearly 55% over the last year. (…) The brand was the target of a massive boycott, spearheaded by Grab Your Wallet, a movement urging people to protest the Trump family’s ethical violations by refusing to shop with retailers selling their brands.

The article made me wonder if the same approach could affect Amazon, the 8 thousand pound gorilla of ecommerce

Wait a minute, didn’t Amazon just agree to pay minimum wages to all workers?

Today (Oct. 2), he announced that he will be raising the minimum wages for his e-commerce company’s US workers to $15 an hour, a move that will affect 250,000 full-time employees and 100,000 seasonal workers.

Yes, and while it looks like a big deal, it was more in the line of self-preservation.

Earning $15 an hour isn’t likely to impress Amazon’s Prime customers, who mostly earn far more (it takes 8 hours of very hard work to pay for Prime).

But just as fashion takes a huge toll from the environment and labor, the people who deliver your packages pay an exorbitantly high price for the privilege.

For Amazon, paying third-party companies to deliver packages is a cost-effective alternative to providing full employment. And the speed of two-day shipping is great for consumers. But delivering that many packages isn’t easy, and the job is riddled with problems, (…)  Others, including several labor experts, said they felt blame should be placed with Amazon, adding that the company was pressuring courier companies to deliver more, faster. They said Amazon was profiting off cheap labor that it doesn’t have to protect because it’s outsourcing the job to companies that it doesn’t adequately supervise.

Read the article and you’ll see conditions similar, maybe worse, to those that have led to protests, boycotts and change when they’ve happen on production lines overseas.

Amazon’s response is typical.

“We have worked with our partners, listened to their needs, and have implemented new programs to ensure small delivery businesses serving Amazon customers have the tools they need to deliver a great customer and employee experience.”

Nothing about driver experience.

The problem has nothing to do with Bezos’ wealth, he earned that, and everything to do with Amazon using it’s savvy, backed by it’s power, to change the game.

So how do you get the attention of an 8 thousand pound gorilla?

The same way consumers moved the fashion industry — money.

Think of the effect if just 20% (or more) of the 100 million paying Prime members bought just two items a month from a different merchant.

There’s no question that would get Amazon’s attention.

Image credit: Drew Stephens

In a recent post, Mark Suster commented on about the latest sexcapade involving Les Moonves, CBS Chairman/CEO.

Leaders in all industries need to stand up and say that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated. Future emerging leaders in companies need to know that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated and a spotlight will be shined when it does.

I was going to comment, mentioning what happens when a power is toppled, but LaVonne Reimer (fourth comment) beat me to it.

She cited the story of Mike Cagney, who was fired from online lending company Social Finance last September after an investigation by the board of  over accusations of sexual misconduct and lying.

Powerful men getting fired for harassment and/or sexual misconduct is all too common these days, but that wasn’t Reimer’s or my point.

Our point is the aftermath — or total lack thereof.

Yet just months after Mr. Cagney departed SoFi, two venture capitalists who had been on the company’s board and knew many details of his actions invested $17 million in his new start-up, called Figure. Since then, Mr. Cagney has raised another $41 million from others for the lending start-up, which will open soon.

Suster’s idea that “Leaders in all industries need to stand up and say that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated.” means nothing as long as there are no real consequences.

Obviously, losing their jobs did not equate to losing their power.

And it’s the power that matters, not the job — because there is always another job.

Therefore, no consequences.

Image credit: Hiking Artist

Yesterday’s post cited a quote from a book, “Power is the ability to sustain illusion.”  At the time, I used it in a post that focused on the idea that powerful people often believed and acted as if the rules didn’t apply to them.

Of course, powerful people — glitterati, politirati, digirati, corporati, religirati — have acted on that premise for centuries; still do and always will.

But there is a difference, actually two differences, between then and now.

The first is the new technology that is blurring and even erasing the separation between truth and lies, reality and fantasy.

The second is far more worrying.

It’s not just people’s willingness to turn a blind eye and rationalize what’s happening, AKA, business as usual.

Rather, it’s their willingness to actively embrace it — often with their eyes wide open.

Not as active protagonists, but as passive ones.

It’s not that they are bad people, but as Edmund Burke said, The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Image credit: Angie Trenz

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

I wrote this 9 years ago, long before Facebook, Uber, Zenefits, Google, and a myriad of other companies that started on the light side of ‘but me’ and, over time, migrated to the dark side.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

A few days ago I read Fourth Down, Death, an old mystery by Michael T. Hinkemeyer, and I’ve been thinking about how true was the statement, “Power is the ability to sustain illusion.”

We see the illusions fail all the time in the news these days—think Enron, WorldCom, options backdating.

What will it take for the corporate elite to realize that the illusion is fragile and that it takes very little to crack the power that sustains it?

Put another way, when will they stop operating on a “but me” basis? ” As in, “the rules apply to everybody, but me.”

However, “but me” is also

• the mindset that yields the greatest inventions, as when two brothers thought, “everybody thinks that man can’t fly, but us,” and fosters innovation at any level;
• what lets each of us continue functioning in our crazy world, knowing that the bad and scary stuff we hear about in the news can happen to anybody, but me.

Think of “but me” as having both a light side and a dark side—then choose the side on which you want to play.

Please join me tomorrow for an updated look at the quote that started me thinking way back in 2007.

Image credit: Yaniv Ben-Arie

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

If you heard only the following comment who would you think it’s about?

He was determined to succeed by any means necessary, subordinating questions of right or wrong to the good of his career and driving himself crazy with his hunger for power and control, his hypersensitivity to perceived threats to his independence and stature, and his overarching need to measure up.

Travis Kalanick? Howie Hubler? Parker Conrad?

Nope, none of the above.

What about this quote?

“It is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standard of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.”

Marc Benioff? Pierre Omidyar? Henry Ford?

Nope, none of the above.

Both the description and the quote are about the same man.

Someone lightly touched on at school, but not explored in any depth, as were those who held the same position at other times.

Certainly most of the information in the article KG shared was new to me and I’ll bet it would be new to most of you.

The person is Herbert Hoover, the 31^st President of the United States.

The book, published last year is “Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times” by Kenneth Whyte.

Read the article (if not the book); you’ll find it very enlightening.

Then choose which parts of Hoover are worth emulating.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Why do people spend so much hard-earned money and so much precious time to become “leaders?”

Is it because leaders have influence?

Or because they crave power?

In actuality there is only one true source of power and that’s control.

There are only two things worth controlling: money and information.

It’s obvious that anyone who controls money has power.

The power that comes from controlling information is covert and insidious.

Until you see it in action.

Then it is obvious that people who control the flow of information within their organization wield great power.

And it doesn’t matter if they are positional leaders or working staff — they have power.

The power that comes from wealth can do great good or equally great evil.

But the power acquired from information control is always evil.

Image credit: Bronson ABbott

I watched a movie tonight called, “The Circle”, staring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. (A quick thank you to Amazon and Apple for finally allowing me to stream Amazon Prime to my Apple TV!).

If you have not seen the film it is about a tech company in the Bay Area. The company is basically a combination of Google, Amazon, Oracle, and any other major tech company wrapped up into one.

I won’t explain the whole plot, but one overriding theme is that the company knows everything about you.

Your health, likes, friend and family groups, credit history and so on. The company believes that with this knowledge they can help humans live their best selves.

That total transparency will lead an individual to the right path. Secrets are what breaks down society so they must be abolished.

Obviously this is a movie that has some truth in our reality, but is an extreme version of it.

However, it made me think about the current climate of sexual victims coming forward.

In almost all the cases that have been proven the events happened behind closed doors and in secret. The assaulter hid their actions behind a veil and it was only when the victim came forward that some justice was served.

I continue to be bemused that after the victim comes forward the assaulter will release a statement saying this was a mistake and they have learned from it, it shouldn’t define them and so on.

How could transparency have prevented all of this?

I am sure in some cases the acts would have never occurred. The offender would have thought it too risky or perhaps would not have considered it at all since there were no hidden places.

This is more a thought lesson, but I could see how some increased transparency would prevent this type of action.

We have all been victimized at some point. It could be as simple as a playground bully or something much worse. Humanity is not always kind.

However, I also love my privacy and want to live my life outside the view of others from time to time. How do we balance it all?

I’m not sure I have that answer yet, but will continue searching.

Flickr image credit: Alias 0591