Mark Zuckerberg recently advised young people to build relationships instead of only focusing on objectives. The founder of Facebook was speaking with computer scientist Lex Fridman. The MIT scientist hosts the “Lex Fridman Podcast.”
The Meta CEO said that he was able to launch Facebook in 2004 because of the personal connections he had forged while at school, rather than dropping out of college or foregoing other interests to focus on building the world famous social media platform which is visited by close to 3 billion people each day.
Zuckerberg said that “the most important decision” made on campus was the people you spent time with as “you become the people you surround yourself with.” He also mentioned that his belief was that people were more “objective focused” and might not focus on the “connections” and the people with whom they were “building relationships.”
Although Mark Zuckerberg remains the most popular face behind the social media platform, Facebook was co-founded by Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Andrew McCollum, who were also students at Harvard. The company they founded–Facebook, now called Meta, had a market cap of $582.58, Friday afternoon.
Although there was a messy split, Zuckerberg maintains that he continues to try to prioritize relationships over objectives. He said that he would only hire a person to work with him if he thought that he could work for that person, instead of being the person’s boss.
The Meta CEO said that such an environment would be more cohesive as well as more productive. Such an environment would facilitate goal achievements. He added that it was “all about finding personal compatibility” and compared it to “choosing friends or a partner.”
However, this strategy has failed Zuckerberg in at least one instance as he was a big defender of Peter Thiel, who was one of those who influenced him in not fact-checking political ads on his social media platform.
This aberration by Zuckerberg made three longtime board members leave Facebook. It also lead to criticism from both Republicans and Democrats on how Facebook manages the content posted on its platform.
