From Optimism to Reckoning: Reflections on Silicon Valley with Steven Levy 7|43

Summary

Radical Candor Podcast — Episode Summary

Episode Title: From Optimism to Reckoning: Reflections on Silicon Valley with Steven Levy
Date: December 10, 2025
Hosts: Kim Scott, Jason Rosoff, Amy Sandler
Guest: Steven Levy (Wired Editor at Large, Silicon Valley chronicler)

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Episode Overview

This episode brings Steven Levy to Radical Candor for a candid, often somber reckoning with Silicon Valley’s journey from revolutionary optimism to uneasy complicity with power. The conversation examines how the tech world, once a source of counterculture excitement and ideals, has become entangled with wealth, power, and politics—leading some of its former champions to question the values and choices they helped shape. Together, the team and Levy probe the industry’s “soul search,” the role of executives under political pressure, and the moral questions facing anyone who works in tech today.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Lost Ideals of Silicon Valley

• Steven Levy recounts the early excitement of Silicon Valley:
  • Compared tech pioneers to musicians who were “changing the world.”
  • Describes a time where leaders “had values that I shared. They were going to do good for the world, and they sold that idea to their employees, and everyone was doing God’s work.” (04:23 Steven Levy)
• The shift to transactional, power-centric behavior:
  • Growth and scale brought “more transactional” relationships and diluted values, even before Trump. (04:42 Steven Levy)
  • “As the companies got bigger, as it became the mass product in the world… it was getting more transactional, as someone said.” (04:45 Steven Levy)

Tech and Politics: From Defiance to Deference

• Silicon Valley’s evolving political posture:

  • Early, visible resistance under Trump’s first term (e.g., Sergey Brin protesting the Muslim ban, Google refusing government AI contracts). (05:02 Kim Scott, 05:08 Steven Levy)
  • Hostility even toward “regulatory” Biden from both right and left in tech; growing support for Trump due to deregulatory promises.
  • The tech industry’s financial and public allegiance to Trump amid fears of regulation and retribution. (06:14 Steven Levy)
  • CEOs “elbowing each other to see who can get in front of him to suck up to him the most.” (06:32 Steven Levy)

• Disillusionment and shame:

  • Kim Scott describes the feeling as “like a punch in the gut,” and Steven Levy calls it “shameful.” (06:46 Kim Scott, 06:52 Steven Levy)

The Broken Promises of Technology

• The failure of tech’s utopian vision:

  • Highlighted by Zadie Smith’s quote: “When the Internet came, I was like, hallelujah… That is not the Internet we have. That is not what occurred.” (07:16 Kim Scott)
  • Levy: “The last part’s kind of an understatement… What we didn’t count on was those algorithms and toxic content gets favored over boring content or sensible content.” (07:43 Steven Levy, 08:31 Steven Levy)

• Social media’s unintended consequences:

  • Jason Rosoff: “Not only is it not leveling the playing field, but it’s actually causing harm… That we have this sort of, like, promise… running hard up against the reality.” (08:33 Jason Rosoff, 09:09 Jason Rosoff)
  • Levy discusses Mark Lemley, a prominent IP lawyer, who chose to “fire Meta as a client” over ethical concerns—an unusual act of principle in a climate of fear. (09:33 Steven Levy)

Leadership, Integrity, and Capitulation

• Tech leaders caving to pressure (example: Tim Cook of Apple):

  • Despite personal disagreement with Trump, Apple CEO Tim Cook “bends the knee” to protect Apple, presenting a gold-plated trophy to Trump, a move Levy calls “the most shameful product in Apple’s history.” (12:04 Steven Levy)
  • “What’s the point of being a billionaire if you can’t say what you believe? Like, if you have less power, not more.” (12:59 Kim Scott)

• The rationalizations of tech billionaires:

  • Marc Andreessen’s “deal”: make billions, donate to charity, sins forgiven—his argument that regulating AI slows potentially world-changing innovation is met with heavy skepticism by the hosts. (13:13 Steven Levy, 13:55 Kim Scott)
  • The panel critiques the endless “trust us, tech will save us” narrative:
    • “[Social media is] very clearly dividing us. So for someone to try to make the argument that, like, hey… everybody’s going to be cured of cancer in 10 years… strains credulity.” (14:10 Jason Rosoff)

The Age of Extraction and Platform Power

• The 'Age of Extraction':

  • Platforms like Google, Meta, and Amazon, once focused on user benefit and openness, have shifted to prioritizing profit—manipulating feeds, search, and results for their own gain. (20:20 Kim Scott, 20:39 Steven Levy, 21:00 Steven Levy)
  • “All these apps we use are worse than they were before and they’ve been insidified, to use Cory’s term.” (21:51 Steven Levy)

• Government regulation and competition:

  • Example: DOJ blocking Adobe’s acquisition of Figma protects innovation and competition, showing that tough regulation can yield positive outcomes for creators and consumers. (22:24 Steven Levy, 22:43 Steven Levy)

Values, Corruption, and Individual Agency

• The role of CEO values:

  • “Does it matter what the CEO’s values are?” Kim Scott and Steven Levy discuss how companies like Meta (Zuckerberg) and Amazon (Bezos) reflect the strengths and limitations of founder values—especially as money, ambition, and outside pressures mount. (24:29 Kim Scott, 24:38 Steven Levy)
  • Zuckerberg’s evolution (“I’m done apologizing”) and growing identification with power and “masculinity.” (26:03 Kim Scott, 26:22 Steven Levy)

• Employee dislocation and coping strategies:

  • The environment has shifted from open discussion to conformity; dissent is less tolerated.
  • Employees without the option to leave (“they self-select out”) must “try to express your values from your work” or make change in alternative domains.
  • “What advice might you have for someone… working at a company where they disagree vehemently with the position… how can they find community or minimum commiseration?” (27:02 Jason Rosoff, 27:52 Steven Levy)
  • The importance of contributing outside work—politics, volunteering—as a channel for agency. (31:30 Jason Rosoff)

• Collective action and the corrupting influence of money:

  • Kim Scott reflects on her own career, driven by ideals later undermined by the reality, musing about “atonement” and how tech’s internal systems lacked a check on wealth.
  • “I think that money corrupted Silicon Valley. That's what happened. Too much money in too few hands.” (35:59 Kim Scott)
  • “Money and power, too… And how we get it back, I don’t know. I don’t see AI changing that equation.” (36:47 Steven Levy)
  • The group agrees that “it’s not going to be a billionaire who’s going to save us. It’s going to have to be collective action.” (36:57 Kim Scott)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On tech’s lost utopia:

• “When I actually started writing about it, it was the mid-70s… Then in the early 80s … I never touched a computer before then, but talking to those people, it blew my mind. They were full of exciting ideas… They were going to change everyone’s life.”
  —Steven Levy (02:30–03:31)

On the current tech-political reality:

• “To my surprise, the CEOs of Silicon Valley, the big companies, are elbowing each other to see who can get in front of [Trump] to suck up to him the most.”
  —Steven Levy (06:32)

On disillusionment:

• “I can’t even think of the right word. Disappointing is not it. It's like a punch in the gut to watch this happen.”
  —Kim Scott (06:46)

On social media’s impact:

• “It turns out behind the scenes, those places are pulling the levers to make sure horrible stuff gets circulated more.”
  —Steven Levy (08:31)

On tech leadership and values:

• “What’s the point of being a billionaire if you can’t say what you believe? Like, if you have less power, not more.”
  —Kim Scott (12:59)

On self-serving narratives:

• “The promise of the internet being this great equalizing force for communication, then the promise of social media… That’s not what has happened.”
  —Jason Rosoff (14:10)

On regret and atonement:

• “I feel like I made a series of big miscalculations where I thought I was supporting these progressive forces, and in fact, I was doing the opposite. How do I atone for these sins? … It does not feel like a sufficient atonement.”
  —Kim Scott (34:29, 34:38)

On what went wrong:

• “Money corrupts, power corrupts. And I'm certainly not going to stand here and say I'm incorruptible. I think we need to change the system.”
  —Kim Scott (35:59)

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

• Levy’s early experiences & optimism for tech: 02:30–03:33
• Arrival of transactional, self-serving focus: 04:45–04:49
• Silicon Valley’s shifting response to politics: 05:02–06:32
• Feeling of shame and disillusionment: 06:46–06:53
• Zadie Smith quote/Internet’s lost promise: 07:16–07:43
• Meta and ethical stands in law: 09:33–10:54
• Tim Cook’s dilemma and tech leaders’ capitulation: 12:04–12:38
• Marc Andreessen’s ‘deal’ and AI hype skepticism: 13:13–14:52
• The ‘Age of Extraction’ explained: 20:20–21:51
• Example of government regulation working (Figma/Adobe): 22:24–23:17
• Zuckerberg’s changing values and leadership impact: 24:29–26:22
• How employees can find agency under dissonant leadership: 27:52–32:18
• Reflections on atonement and systemic change: 34:29–36:57

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Flow & Tone

The conversation mixes nostalgia, frustration, and candid self-reflection. The hosts and guest speak conversationally, with bursts of humor and vulnerability, drawing on personal experience and sharp critique. The tone is urgent but hopeful—keen on examining hard truths but also searching for avenues for individual and collective action.

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This episode is a must-listen for anyone grappling with the moral complexities of working in tech or seeking to understand how idealism cedes ground to power and what—if anything—can be done to reclaim lost values.

Transcript

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Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Radical Candor Podcast. I'm Kim Scott.

[Jason Rosoph]

And I'm Jason Rosoph. And today we're joined by Steven Levy. Steven has been covering Silicon Valley since the days when tech leaders saw themselves as rebels, challenging authority, not bending the knee to it. As Wired's editor at large, he's chronicled the evolution from idealistic homebrew computer club to today's billionaire CEO at Mar A Lago Moment. His recent essays on AI, Breaking Bad, the Intrinsification Trap, and what Went Wrong in Silicon Valley ask the questions leaders need to hear. How do you maintain your values under pressure? What's the cost of silence? And can an industry that seems to have lost its way find its soul again?

[Kim Scott]

Stephen, welcome to Radical Candor.

[Steven Levy]

Great seeing you.

[Kim Scott]

Great to see you. What folks may not know about Stephen is that he was one of the early champions of my writing career. I had written a novel about what it was like to work at Google, and Stephen read it and wrote a nice article about that unpublished novel. Nobody else published it.

[Steven Levy]

But still not published.

[Kim Scott]

Still unpublished, but you can buy it. It's called Virtual Love. But this is not an advertisement for Virtual Love. This is really. I feel this great sense of betrayal. And maybe first and foremost, I betrayed myself. And when I read your article, it really spoke to me and expressed a lot of what I felt. So, first of all, thank you. Thank you for writing the article. And maybe you want to explain to folks who haven't read it what your article is about, and then we'll jump in.

[Steven Levy]

Sure. Yeah. The headline in the article was, I Thought I knew Silicon Valley. I was wrong.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

And the thing that first drew me to writing about technology was the exciting Reverend Transformational nature of it. I started my journalism career. A lot of what I did was, like, cover the rock music world. Yeah, that was exciting to me. Because when I got into that music, it was changing the world. You know, it was the late 60s, very early 70s, and it. I thought I was riding something, a wave that was like changing the world. But when I actually started writing about it, it was like the mid-70s, and it wasn't that way anymore. And then in the early 80s, I did a story for Rolling Stone about computer hackers. I never touched a computer before then, but talking to those people, it blew my mind. These were fascinating people. They were full of exciting ideas. They were doing something really important, and they were going to change everyone's life.

[Kim Scott]

They were the new musicians.

[Steven Levy]

Exactly. One guy who was covering the tech world, who had also been in the other world, and he kept saying, we're on the Led Zeppelin plane. We're on the Led Zeppelin plane. These people, you know, they had counterculture roots. They were doing with their engineering counterculture, what music had done, but in a bigger way. You know, instead of talking to, you know, Jimmy Page, I talked to Steve Jobs. Yeah, I think that's cooler. And, yeah, so I rode that through the personal computer revolution, the Internet boom. And I always felt the people I was talking to had values that I shared. They were going to do good for the world, and they sold that idea to their employees, and everyone was doing God's work. Yeah, right.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

And I think even before Trump took office, that began to change as the companies got bigger, as it became the mass product in the world. Right, yeah. So you don't want to hang it all on Trump, but.

[Kim Scott]

No, no, no. It was getting worse before him.

[Steven Levy]

Yeah, it was getting more transactional, as someone said.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

And then Trump comes along the first term. I think a lot of the big companies sort of deferred to their employees. They didn't jump on the Trump train wholeheartedly.

[Kim Scott]

Well, and you had Sergey Brin going to the airport, like, objecting to the Muslim ban.

[Steven Levy]

Exactly, exactly. You know, and Google wouldn't do the. The contract with the Department of Defense, the AI contract maven. They sat that one out, so to speak. And then Biden came along. We could talk about this. They had a different view of Biden. One thing researching this story that took me aback was I knew that Biden might not have been a favorite of the people in Silicon Valley. Yeah, but everyone hated him in the tech world. I mean, not just the libertarians. You know, it was the liberals who said, he's out to get us. He wants to destroy technology. I didn't think that was the case. And even in areas where they were Saying, yeah, we need regulation, like AI. When they saw an opportunity for someone else to come in and say, I don't want to regulate you at all. You're part of our competition globally, you know, why hold you back? And they jump for that, you know, kind of crypto. We could talk about that. Obviously, they despise the sec.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

And, you know, just hate.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

And threw hundreds of millions of dollars towards the Trump campaign. You know, the crypto people helped him. So now we have Trump and he is a person who likes to be sucked up to.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah. Have his ring kissed.

[Steven Levy]

And to my surprise, the CEOs of Silicon Valley, the big companies are elbowing each other to see who can get in front of him to suck up to him the most.

[Kim Scott]

I can't even think of the right word. Disappointing is not it. It's like a punch in the gut to watch this happen.

[Steven Levy]

Yeah. I think it's shameful.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah. So many friends of mine have said, you know, it's waking people up at 3 in the morning, like, making us feel physically ill. And I think that's part of why your article struck such a nerve. It's like, how is this happening?

[Steven Levy]

Yeah, exactly. What happened to Silicon Valley?

[Jason Rosoph]

I saw the quote that you pasted in, Kim. Why don't you read that? Because I feel like it's present.

[Kim Scott]

This sums it up. This is from Zadie Smith in an interview, I think, with Ezra Klein a while ago. She said, when the Internet came, I was like, hallelujah, finally we've got a medium which isn't made by the man or centralized. We're just going to be talking to each other, hanging out with each other, peer to peer. It's going to be amazing. That is not the Internet we have. That is not what occurred. That sums it up pretty well.

[Steven Levy]

Yeah. The last part's kind of an understatement. Look, I was right there talking about how there's no borders in cyberspace and.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

You know, every person has speaks with equal weight.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

I think social media was part of that toppling that. It seems weird that something which gives the power to anyone to, you know, just type something and it goes around the world. Hundreds of millions of people can read it. But what we didn't count on was those algorithms and toxic content gets favored over boring content or sensible content. And it turns out behind the scenes, those places are pulling the levers to make sure horrible stuff.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

Gets circulated more.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

Yeah.

[Jason Rosoph]

In the article that you talked about Mark Laemmle firing Meta as a client. So this Is like, after we already know it's bad, not only is it not bad leveling the playing field, but it's actually, like, causing harm. So they fire Meta because he sees not only what the platform is doing, but the head of the platform, Zuckerberg, is out there projecting this sort of toxic masculinity, neo Nazi madness. Very few people publicly at least, followed his lead. And you wrote, everyone fears repercussions because this administration is vindictive. And I kind of wonder what that says about the moment that we find ourselves in.

[Kim Scott]

Right.

[Jason Rosoph]

That we have this sort of, like, promise, this vision of, like, where technology could take us running hard up against the reality. And it's not just fantasy. Right. Like, I. I do think the administration has demonstrated itself to be vindictive. So I'm kind of curious, like, how does that play into your feeling of dislocation from Silicon Valley and maybe what you observed of the leaders that he profiled.

[Steven Levy]

Yeah. Lumley, for listeners who might not know, he's an intellectual property lawyer. He teaches at Stanford. He's a leader in his field. He's worked for a lot of the big companies doing IP law. He always thought it was not a political thing to do. It was part of the law. And he'd argue a case and he could see the value of the other side of the case. And then at a certain point, he said, I'm doing this work for Meta. He said, how could I be working for a place which is being so harmful to the world? So I. He fired Meta as his client. And that was very unusual. That's why I wanted to talk to him. He said, well, yeah, I took a stand, but I have tenure here at Stanford and I'm going to have clients for my outside work no matter what. And I think, though, that's something that a lot of the people I'm talking about have a similar luxury. Even if they can say, hey, I'm in charge of this corporation, I have responsibility to the shareholders. They don't have a response. They have a responsibility to themselves. Look in the mirror as well. So I think of Tim Cook, the person who I actually admire. I've known him for a long time. Tim Cook doesn't like Donald Trump.

[Kim Scott]

I think that's safe to say.

[Steven Levy]

He's never said that publicly, but I think we. It's pretty clear that Tim is not a MAGA kind of guy.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

He's how many years from retirement? Not many. He's a billionaire. He has gone through a lot. His integrity has been intact. So here he is in a position where unless he shows fealty to Trump, unless he bends the knee, Apple will have some consequences. They'll have tariffs. You know, Trump threatened that first, Apple spent a million dollars to get Tim on the dais at the inauguration. Right? Yeah, he did that. And then Tim doesn't go to something in the Middle east where, you know, Trump wants all the tech people there, right? And then he says, boy, Tim wasn't there. Maybe I should give it a 25% tariff. Well, as a CEO, Tim has to think about that. But as a human being, Tim could say, you know what? I'm going to retire. I don't need to do this. So not only does he not retire, and you could argue he's a steward of Apple, you know, he wants to keep that going. He shows up in the Oval Office with this. It's kind of like a fatted calf, this object with a gold base, a solid gold base. And then the glass little legend on it, like, you know, donald Trump, the greatest, and how could you do that? Right? It's the most shameful product in Apple's history. And he's sitting there in the Oval Office, he's unboxing the thing, right? Like it's the new Vision Pro or something, you know, lovingly pulling it out. I can't believe that.

[Kim Scott]

I mean, yeah, when I saw that, I was like, maybe I'm giving Tim too much credit, but I'm like, what has he been threatened with that he's willing to do that? Because it does seem so. Like, I do admire him. It's shocking.

[Steven Levy]

He made a choice. And, you know, personally, I think one day he might second guess that choice.

[Kim Scott]

To go back to your question of what is causing these. What's the point of being a billionaire if you can't say what you believe? Like, if you have less power, not more. Which is what it seems like is happening to these people.

[Steven Levy]

Well, the ones who say what they believe are is Marc Andreessen. And what he believes is that terrifying. You know, if you want to regulate AI, you're kind of a murderer. Because if you don't regulate ii, we're going to solve diseases much quicker. So just think of all the people who would be dying because, you know, we didn't let AI go as fast as possible to find these magical cures, right? And he talks about this thing called the deal. The deal is you're a good person, you give money to charity, you make your billions of dollars, and people love you, People say how great you are, and he's not loved. We hurt his feelings.

[Kim Scott]

So sad. Yeah. But he also says, your sins are forgiven. That's the thing in his deal. He's like, I give some money away and all my. Like, he's admitting that there's something wrong here. Nobody made that deal, except that a lot of people have gotten away with it.

[Jason Rosoph]

And I think we have to confront the fact that the promises of tech billionaires have led to a series of catastrophes. Like the promise of the Internet being this great equalizing force for communication, then the promise of social media to bring us all together to connect us. That's not what has happened. The Internet has made it so that the cost of control has gone down. And then for social media, I don't think anybody can honestly argue that it's connecting us. It is very clearly dividing us. And so for someone to try to make the argument that, like, hey, just, just trust me, like, if we don't regulate AI, everybody's going to be cured of cancer in 10 years. It, like, I mean, it strains credulity. Is understatement.

[Steven Levy]

The understatement of the century. I mean, some of the things they're saying about AI, this idea that we're going to have such abundance, we're going to have kind of a utopian society. And people say, well, what about all the jobs that won't be there? They say we'll have universal basic income. We'll all be living like billionaires. I think Sam Altman said the best off person now will be no better off than the least well off person after A.I. i mean, what. Yeah, yeah, what's that about? But even dialing down the hyperbole, you see what's happening now. We're the richest country in the world and we're denying food stamps to people. So why would they think that even if the bounty they promised from AI came through, that they would distribute that equitably?

[Kim Scott]

Yeah. There's every reason to believe they won't. And yeah, I think, Stephen, like to go back to your question, what happened when I met you, when I very first met you, and this was probably 2005, something like that. My unofficial title was High Priestess of the Long Tail. Right. Do you remember the Long Tail? Because we all believed that all these little creators were going to be able to survive. The Internet was going to be this great source of decentralization. And of course. Exactly. It's the opposite. It's, you know, 10 people control the whole thing. And in fact, I think we're moving quickly to a world where we're going to have state controlled media. Whether it's state controlled media or three people controlling the media, it comes down to. It doesn't even matter whether it's the state or these three people. It's bad either way. Like, why do we believe that? Because I did believe in the long tail back then. I did believe it, like, what was going on?

[Steven Levy]

Well, there was a period where it looked like it was unfolding, but when the big companies became the marketplaces and they controlled it for their own means, the level playing field got tilted. I read recently, I think Facebook or Meta supplied this claim that like 7% of the things you see on your feed in Facebook come from people you actually know. Less than 10%. This thing's made by connectivity, right?

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

And it's a broadcast medium of what they serve to you that they think you're going to react to, whether you're happy about it or not.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah, we're foie gras geese.

[Steven Levy]

Zuckerberg would like that.

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[Kim Scott]

Talk a little bit about the Age of Extraction because it seems very relevant to everything you wrote. It was a good explanation of why these platforms got so much power.

[Steven Levy]

Right. I see Tim's book the Age of Extraction as a companion piece to Cory Doctorow.

[Kim Scott]

Yes.

[Steven Levy]

So basically, this theory is. You could see it yourself and the apps you use that these companies start out, they want to serve people.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

They want to do the best for their customer. Right. Whether it's connecting people on Meta or whether it's. Amazon's always going to give you the best deal, make it easy to find what you want. Google is always going to give you the search results you're looking for. That's going to be at the top of the stack.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

And then they become kind of monopolies.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

They lock you in and they realize they could make more money by not giving you the easiest, best search result, the place to go. They used to take pride. You know this, Kim. Google is saying we're great because we want people to leave us right away.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah. Not so much anymore.

[Steven Levy]

No, no. Now they want to send you to someplace where there's a payoff on the other end. Put in a search result for a hotel and try to figure out which is the hotel's website. At Amazon, you look for something, I want to buy a coffee pot. And they're not going to show you the best, cheapest coffee pot. You might have to scroll down several pages.

[Kim Scott]

You know, it's faster now to go to Google and search for the coffee pot you want in.

[Steven Levy]

Or chatgpt. Give me research mode. Right. It'll kind of think for a while give you the coffee pot that you used to get right away on Amazon.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

All these apps we use are worse than they were before and they've been insidified, to use Corey's term. Tim has a societal view. He's really good at finding really interesting stories to illustrate this from history. Under the Biden administration, they got tough. They started suing these big companies, blocking these mergers, and that's what made the people hate Biden in Silicon Valley. But you look at it, Tim's argument is that we're actually helping competition by doing that.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

And just take one thing that happened under the Biden administration. There's a company called Figma. You know that company? Yep. Great company. Which came across with, you know, this collaborative way to do design. They were, you know, whipping Adobe's ass. And Adobe wants to buy them.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

Okay. And Lena Konzon. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to fight you. So they didn't merge. Right. And then two years later, Figma goes public, dying.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

Huge valuation. Right. So there's a case where, hey, you know what? Things are better off because that merger didn't happen.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah. The creators are better off. Everybody except Adobe is better off.

[Steven Levy]

Right. Adobe has to lift this game now.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

And they can't be initiatified.

[Kim Scott]

Yes. Yeah. Maybe it's better for Adobe in the end. So let me ask you a question. If we go back to, like, your. Your article and another theme that you had in the article was about the CEO's values. When I very first met Mark Zuckerberg, I was working at Google and I was interested in social media. Probably again around the time I met you, 2005, he gave me his business card which said, I'm the CEO, biatch. And I just remember thinking, this is an evil.

[Steven Levy]

You still have it?

[Kim Scott]

No. I was so disgusted, I threw it away. I should have kept. I wish I had kept it. But the, you know, I would say his values are not mine as articulated by his business card. But I was talking to a couple of friends, we both were talking about the fact that we're angry at our former employers, we're disappointed by our former employers, and that I think there's a big difference, though, between the companies where the CEOs started out bad and the companies where maybe they got corrupted by money. Did we just drink the Kool Aid? Does it matter what the CEOs values are?

[Steven Levy]

Well, yeah, especially a company like Meta, where the CEO is in such control of the company. He always has been.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

But I mean, I spent a lot of time with Mark Zuckerberg when I was writing a book about Facebook, as it was called then, and a great.

[Kim Scott]

Book, by the way.

[Steven Levy]

Well, thank you. I felt that I was watching someone grappling to some degree with some of the things that the company was doing. He was thinking a lot about free speech. He did this year. Long journey. He went to go to all 50 states. And someone who was very close to him told me, no doubt, nor mine. He was running for president. Not like, officially, but, you know, setting it up. Right. But I felt he had a genuine concern for immigrants. He funded a school in East Palo Alto. I didn't think that was entirely.

[Kim Scott]

But now he shut it down.

[Steven Levy]

No, it's like he shut the school down. He, you know, embraced someone who has the exact opposite view of immigration. He doesn't say, yeah, well, I kind of like Donald Trump, but we disagree on this. He's not saying that. You don't hear him say that.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

And he's espousing this kind of masculinity stuff. I think what happened with him is he's always been very ambitious and very.

Aggressive and doing what he wants to do.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

Trump gave him license to say, I don't care about these people who were trying to hector me about my values. And he even said, I'm done apologizing. Yeah, I'm done. Even if he. If things happen in Meadow where he should apologize for, that's not him anymore.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

So I think he has changed.

[Kim Scott]

You think he's gotten worse? He wasn't as bad as. Maybe I was being too harsh on the business cards.

[Steven Levy]

Well, I don't know. He was always sort of the least liked CEO in Silicon Valley.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

You know, when I. When I. People would tell me, not always on the record. You know, it's off the record that, you know, I don't like this guy. So maybe it's no surprise that he's, you know, behaving that way now. But then you take someone like Jeff Bezos, another guy who espoused great values. I'd spent a lot of time talking to him. I wouldn't have predicted that he would become this sort of mega socialite. What happened to him?

[Jason Rosoph]

I think one thing that's really difficult is to figure out, because I think one of the things that makes it feel so dislocating is when the effect of people capitulating is that everybody's sort of. Now everybody's afraid to speak up, because it's not just like the individual contributor at Meta isn't afraid of Donald Trump, but they are sort of afraid of putting a toe out of line in a company that seems to be very happy to support his latest policy. What advice might you have for someone who finds themselves in A situation where they're like working at a company where either they disagree vehemently with the position that the company is taking, maybe they don't feel super empowered to find another role someplace else at the moment, but how can they find community or how can they find minimum commiseration? Is there a counterculture growing in Silicon Valley?

[Steven Levy]

I talked to someone who was executive at Meta and they were saying it used to be we would discuss all sorts of things. Now it's more like it was sort of before the revolution. Right. You know, you leave your politics at home. You know, if you're not comfortable with it, you leave. I just did a big interview with the head of Palantir. That's a company where, well, they take pretty strong stances. You know, they unabashedly support ice. They were supporting the Israeli military. And their communications person said just last week at a conference or a couple weeks ago, saying, well, you know, we don't fire people for having different views, but it's self selecting that people who can't take it, they'll leave. Yeah, I think if you're not in a position financially where you can do that, what you would try to do is try to express your values from your work. Yeah, right. I mean, think I'm building a good product. Of course, if the product you're building is a horrible product, which is going.

[Kim Scott]

To doing evil things make, you know.

[Steven Levy]

Make kids commit suicide, then you really should, you know, figure out what it takes to live yourself, how tough it is to get another job. But a lot of us sometimes wind up working for places people don't share our values. But the work we do, we're proud of. Take the Washington Post, run by the fellow we were talking about, Jeff Bezos. For the first few years, he let the editorial side do whatever they wanted. His editor, Marty Barron, wrote a book saying what a great guy he was. He never bothered to interfere. So then the election in 2024. They were about to endorse Kamala Harris. He said, we're not doing endorsements. Then he says, I'm going to change the editorial page. I want to make it about free markets, which is what the Wall Street Journal page, you know, wants to be. Right. A lot of people cancel their subscription. I have friends who work there who do work they're proud of. There's still great stuff, the Washington Post. And they were thinking like, you know, please don't unsubscribe. We're still here.

[Kim Scott]

You know, it's really hard to know right now what to do. I Have a bunch of friends who. I mean, people who work at Apple. There's plenty of people who are shocked that Apple took the app out of the App Store. That allowed people to warn each other when ICE was coming to their neighborhood. And then Google did. Google took it down, too, but it didn't get as much press. I don't know what the hell I would do if I were still working there. But I have some thoughts.

[Steven Levy]

A lot of people go to startups now. OpenAI was started because Elon Musk and Sam Altman didn't want AI in the hands of powerful companies.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah. And then they became powerful.

[Steven Levy]

It's not a good situation when your own values are in conflict with the organization that you're contributing your labor to.

[Jason Rosoph]

I think two things occur to me. One is there was a period of time where the disruption that was happening in Silicon Valley was in the direction of disrupting the current power structure and redistributing that power to many people. It's very easy to satisfy the criteria that you were describing, Stephen, which is like, I may not agree with everybody or exactly what we think about this particular issue, but I actually think we're moving the world in the right direction. And so there's a lot I can be really proud of. But I think as that shifts, one of the things that Silicon Valley is not used to is having to exercise power in other domains. One of the things that was surprising to me was how much more sort of obvious and prevalent local politics was on the east coast as compared to what it was like when I first moved to Silicon Valley 15 years ago. I think there's a shift, like, people are starting to recognize maybe there's other domains in which I need to exercise some of these beliefs and use my agency and my power, my labor, in order to, like, help move the conversation forward. So I'd be thinking about that, too, is like, maybe I can't express all of this through work, but maybe I can get involved in volunteering for organizations or being part of the political process. And that's just not something I think a lot of people in Silicon Valley have had to think about very deeply. But that does seem like an option as well. If you don't think you're, like, harming people, you could stay in a place for quite a while that you disagree with if it gave you the flexibility to actually contribute in some other way to what you thought should happen in the world.

[Steven Levy]

That's a good point. You know, and again, I underline the work that you are doing. You feel is good for the world. That mitigates a lot.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah. Those journalists at the Washington Post should keep writing.

[Jason Rosoph]

I've seen people make the same argument about, like, the CDC and stuff. Like, they're like, there's a bunch of people who are writing, I think, quite eloquently about, like, please don't quit, Please don't resign. The problem is you either won't be backfilled, which will still shift the balance of power to people we disagree with more strongly than you, or you will be backfilled with people who are willing to toe the line.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah, maybe a better way to ask the question is, what should I do now? I started my career in Moscow in 1990, and I thought it was about, you know, the revolution and dismantling totalitarian regime and all of this. This was 1990. It was the Soviet Union. And instead, what I was supporting at the time, without really quite realizing what I was doing, were these neoliberal policies that the Clinton administration was putting forward. And I didn't get it. Okay. I was 20. I can blame myself for not getting it. So then I go to the Federal communications commission in 1996 after business school, and we're, you know, it's the 1996 telecom act. There's section 230, et cetera, et cetera. And again, I thought this was about the telecommunications revolution. Power to the people. But instead, like, we deregulated tech forever. I thought I had these progressive values, and yet what we were doing was, again, super neoliberal. And then I took a job at Google and read the letter that Larry and Sergey wrote before the company went public. And it was all about, we're going to reward and treat people well. We're going to make the world a better place, you know, and then the rest is history. I feel like I made a series of big miscalculations where I thought I was supporting these sort of progressive forces, and in fact, I was doing the opposite. How do I atone for these sins? What should Kim Scott do? I want advice. I mean, I wrote an article. I wrote an op ed in the New York Times, which I love doing, but it does not feel like a sufficient atonement.

[Steven Levy]

Well, I mean, look, you're helping people go through situations like this. You're doing something.

[Kim Scott]

Thing.

Feels like too little, too late.

[Steven Levy]

But, you know, we do what we can, right? You're not still working for Google?

[Kim Scott]

No, I'm not. In fact, I don't even have any stock.

[Steven Levy]

I don't think everyone who works for Google is a Criminal or bad person.

[Kim Scott]

But no, in fact, I still love Google.

[Steven Levy]

I think, as Jason said, you be active. Otherwise, this is part of a larger picture.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah.

[Steven Levy]

Of what's happening in the country and in the world where concentrated power is being used against people. So there's a political path to take. You say you feel. How did I miss that? Well, it wasn't all there back then.

[Kim Scott]

It wasn't so clear.

[Steven Levy]

Yeah. And you know, when I was talking to those guys in 1999, you know, they were a couple of goofballs in an office. Right.

[Kim Scott]

Yeah. It was fun.

[Steven Levy]

There were no super yachts.

[Kim Scott]

There was a real commitment to doing the right thing, being good people. And I believe that commitment is still there. But it is very unsettling that those who used to be so vocal about it are being so silent now.

[Steven Levy]

What happens to anyone if they're worth a hundred billion dollars?

[Kim Scott]

It's not good for sure.

[Steven Levy]

You know, if my income had built up over the last couple decades to $100 billion, God knows what a creep I'd be, you know?

[Kim Scott]

Yeah, me too. I mean, money corrupts, power corrupts. And I'm certainly not going to stand here and say I'm incorruptible. I think we need to change the system. And in fact, I think this is a good summary, a good place to almost end, which is, I think, for example, at Google there was this, you know, we're going to systematically strip power away from everyone at the company. Nobody is going to have unilateral hiring, decision making, power firing. You know, it was a system of checks and balances and it applied to all of the usual sources of power that any leader at the company, including Larry, Sergey and Eric had. With one exception, it did not apply to money. I think that money corrupted Silicon Valley. That's what happened. Too much money in too few hands.

[Steven Levy]

Yeah, money and power, too. Yeah, yeah. And how we get it back, I don't know. I don't see AI changing that equation.

[Kim Scott]

And it's not going to be a billionaire who's going to come in and save us. It's going to have to be collective action. I really do believe so. I'm signing up to be some. I hope there's a leader I can follow. I'm looking for them. Well, Steven, thank you so much for joining us. For everyone listening, you can read Steven's work weekly on Wired and of course check out his [e-mail] it's all linked in the show notes. You can also join the radical candor community to get real time peer support and solidarity. Go to radical candor.com community to sign up.

[Jason Rosoph]

And if you do want to find the show notes, head to radicalcander.com podcast if you're a visual person, you'll be able to see a video version of this podcast on YouTube and Spotify. And last but not least, praise in public and criticize in private. If you like what you hear, please rate, review and follow us on whatever platform you listen to your podcast. If you have feedback or questions for us, you can always email them to us at any time. Podcastradicalcandor.com we'll see you all soon.

[Kim Scott]

Thank you so much Stephen. Keep speaking truth to power.

[Steven Levy]

Thank you.

[Kim Scott]

Take care. The Radical Candor podcast is based on the book Radical Candor Be a kick ass Boss without losing your Humanity by me, Kim Scott. Episodes are produced with thanks to Podium Prince Production company with script editing by Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co founders Jason Rosoff and me. It's hosted by Amy Sandler. Nick K Me is our audio engineer. The Radical Candor podcasting music was composed by Cliff Goldbacher. Follow us on LinkedIn Radical Candor the company and visit [e-mail].

[Steven Levy]

And Doug here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Jason Rosoph]

Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[Steven Levy]

Cut the camera. They see us.

[Jason Rosoph]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. Affiliates excludes Massachusetts.

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