Robert Scoble penned a post called “Why GM’s CEO Should Be Fired“. Some poor soul re-tweeted it and when it flew across my Twitter yesterday, I read it. Why? I don’t know. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.
So what did the guy who’s mere touch causes a company to fail have to say? Why did GMs CEO deserve the axe?
Is it because the company has repeatedly lied about paying back its taxpayer-funded bailout?
Is it because the United States government paid $51bn for a 60% stake in a company that’s now worth $50bn?
Is it because the Chevy Volt, the car that was supposed to save the company, didn’t even come close to its price target and can’t even hit the market realistically without $7,000 per car of taxpayer money?
Is it because GM hasn’t produced a car, aside from the Camaro, that has excited people in twenty years?
Nope. It’s because dismissed the Prius as “geeky.”
I wish I were kidding. His big objection to GM’s CEO has nothing to do with the company’s complete failure and nursing at the government teet; it’s completely (for him) about how Daniel Akerson was mean to Toyota (and, of course, Scoble took it personally because, unsurprisingly, he owns a Prius).
Now I know this hurt Robert’s little feelings, and I know he thinks that the geek shall inherit the earth, but I think this is a shining example of what I always say about geeks in general… You don’t realize just how isolated and insular they are until you try to discuss anything other than tech with them. Scoble thinks Akerson should be fired for being mean to geeks in spite of a laundry list of more significant things he’s done that would be an excellent basis for shitcanning the guy altogether. Why did Robert choose this issue? Because he probably knows nothing about anything else I listed above. And why is that? Because it wasn’t reported about on Tech Crunch or Wired.
This is why I don’t hang out with the geek set that much. I can’t stand one-dimensional people who live in bubbles. If Scoble has done anything with his latest idiotic rant, it’s prove that he’s a shining example of exactly that: a typical silicon valley geek with no knowledge of anything outside of the world of tech. I’ll let you all debate the level of knowledge he has inside that world if you were so inclined.