khazhou

Well, I don't have all the data points, but it seems to me that snakeoiler should stand out as an anti-pattern. Maybe VCs see it differently. Maybe they'd inform me that the snakeoil CEOs are sometimes frauds, but the non-snakeoil CEOs always fail (not enough energy, not charismatic enough to attract talent, etc).

("Huckster"... that's the word I was looking for)

There's a lot of discussion here of how this was predictable given the absence of a visible prototype for so long, and the over-the-top secrecy of the project. However, for me this was a predetermined failure when I first read an interview with the founder. Classic Super-Visionary snake-oil salesman. He could say nothing about the product, except for how it would change the world more than the world had ever been changed in the history of world changes. Sure, ok. I don't remember Larry and Sergey being like that (because they had a real product). Or Bezos, etc.

Frankly, I'm shocked at how the investors couldn't see past this CEO.

Ironically, I knew you knew. Does that make me a super-pedant?

Did anyone else smell poop while reading this?

(there's gotta be a word for that effect)

Pretty sure he knows that.

No one is saying a company should operate without a leader. And also, no one is claiming that just anyone can be a good CEO. Some competence in the unique CEO skillset is required. Every CEO is expected to keep their organization from devolving into tribal chaos, for example.

I don't remember reading anything to that effect.

I could easily be wrong but I didn't think he meant the engineer literally worked 48 hours without sleep or rest, then literally slept for 48 hours. I took it as: the engineer regularly shut out everyone for ~2 days straight and did long, extremely focus coding sessions, then shut out all work for a couple of days to decompress. Taken that way, it's not bi-polar or mental-health issue at all. Seems like this engineer just had the guts to stand up to everyone's ordained-from-the-heavens schedule of interruptions: "I'm gonna ignore distractions for two days to work, then ignore distractions for two days to rest."

All CEO bios like to begin by noting how early they wake up, and how the work out every morning at 6am at the very latest. I used to think this was a form of self-aggrandizement. "I'm a powerful CEO because I have superhuman discipline and stamina that you can't even imagine!"

Now I just wonder: am I lazy?

I can't tell if you mean "part of the furniture" is good or bad.

I've been at several places, usually in the 3-5 year range. But at this exact moment, I'm a bit envious of people who have been at the same company for 8-10 years, and get to enjoy mastery over the system, organization, etc.

Trying new things is fun, but it can be a drag always playing catchup.

I suspect your starting point was different than OP's. He is describing (I think) a crippling nervousness. This is very different from just tensing or run-of-the-mill nervousness.

All your advice is great, but (from personal experience) it's not enough to overcome phobia-level tension.

I think many people don't understand what phobia-level tension even looks/feels like. My own worst moment: presenting an architectural diagram to a VP, I started panicking, and repeated the phrase "...and we're going to build an abstraction layer..." three or four times in a row, in a slow monotone voice, until someone in the room snapped me out of it. Embarrassing is an understatement.

I always say: Analogies are like raccoons.

I would suggest, if this is at phobia-level for you, it's worth thinking about why you're getting so nervous.

I went from enjoying public speaking to absolutely dreading it (feeling like I'm falling off a cliff, trembling voice, sudden drops in blood pressure leading to complete loss of train-of-thought). This was literally career-limiting, and I could see how I was being excluded from projects that would require presenting to VPs + execs.

I spent a lot of time reflecting on it, and realized what had happened was that I had taken over management of a failing project, and I wasn't turning it around. Our VP was extremely harsh, and drew out everyone's professional failures/limitations. But I realized that my sudden and complete inability to present, was linked to me "knowing" that my work sucked, or knowing that no matter what I said, it was gonna end badly with me looking like an idiot.

So I would suggest you might think about whether the public-speaking nervousness also happens when you're asked to present something you're happy, proud, and knowledgable about, or whether it's connected to insecurity in your work, project, or your own mastery of the material you're presenting.

When the first web browser came out, for me (and, I've heard, very many others) it was a "where were you the day of..?" moment. I literally remember the afternoon X-Mosaic came out. Computer lab, 1993, a group of grad students huddled around a SPARCStation, I walked over and tried out this new program. No, I didn't see the huge eventual potential that day (the World Wide Web would remain an ad-free space for a few more years), but it was a definitely a "today everything changed" moment.