On HBO’s “Silicon Valley”, Thomas Middleditch plays the introverted genius and computer scientist Richard Hendricks. Over the course of the show’s four seasons, Richard has been screwed over, screwed people over, been the voice of reason, and has singlehandedly fucked everything up. Frankly, he’s all over the map. By the season four finale, it’s not unusual if you don’t know whether you despise Richard, or if you truly admire him. But is this anti-hero behavior that out-of-character for a tech CEO? Before I dive in, I’d like to share this quote from Mark Zuckerberg himself: “You can be unethical and still be legal, and that’s the way I live my life."
Silicon Valley startups don’t succeed right away. Take Elon Musk; he was ousted from his first two companies, and Tesla was severely and consistently late with releasing cars. SpaceX had many launch failures before its evident success, and Elon’s social life and reputation took a huge hit because of these setbacks.
Howard Schultz of Starbucks is another great example. Starbucks had to be reinvented twice in its lifetime. A few years after the startup, Howard took your average coffee shop and infused it with inspiration from Italian espresso bars. When that idea failed, they had to close every Starbucks store in the world to completely retrain employees on pouring espressos in order to “perfect the craft,” Schultz reveals in his book.
Knowing that failure is inevitable for any startup, Pied Piper becomes that much more realistic. This is why the writing in Silicon Valley is so convincing; the past four seasons have contained the trials and tribulations in which all companies must go through before success. It is also why Richard Hendricks is a grade-A douchebag.
Elon Musk and Steve Jobs were both a nightmare to work with, as is Richard Hendricks. The personalities of these men are similar; they’re passionate, they’re highly intelligent, and they’re egotistical. Even among other traits, it’s going to be hard to work with anyone carrying those three around. Like Jobbs and Musk, Richard has created something that, in his eyes, (the algorithm) could change the world. By bearing this almost fictional reality, Richard demolishes friendships and ethics to make his vision palpable.
In the show, Jared (played by Zach Woods), becomes personally upset at Richard’s aggressive and illegal business tactics. However, most entrepreneurs have done either exactly the same as Richard or worse to get their company where it needs to be. Carly Fiorina memorably committed treason for her business to get ahead, and Zuckerberg hacked a rival site during the birth of Facebook. This sentence will hold as literally every asshole move that Jobs pulled during his climb. He is undoubtedly the most famous example of this, often stealing ideas and patents as well as many other unethical controversies.
Richard will snap at his coworkers due to stress, and that’s normal. However, Richard does change the an ex's new love interests' screensaver at a tech convention while he was supposed to be focused on a highly sensitive operation. This demonstrates impulsivity and stupidity, traits that our real-life other CEOs don’t possess. If anything, Elon Musk has been praised for his caution. I hope that next season Richard will focus on what actually matters. If Richard is going to be a villain, I want to see Tywin Lannister, not Joffrey.
