Not a lot of people get the chance to work directly under billionaire founders and CEOs.
That’s why most people take what they see in the press or movies and create their own – often false and distorted – images of what it’s like to work with them.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, for example was depicted as an arrogant nerd-punk in “The Social Network,” the 2010 film about the founding of Facebook. The film perhaps played a role in creating some of the negative images that follow Zuckerberg to this day.
But is Zuckerberg really a hard person to deal with in real life?
Former Facebook CTO Bret Taylor, who worked with Zuckerberg for 3 years, says he’s definitely “a different boss.”
“Even when we disagreed, he didn’t have this ego about him, like you could argue with him,” Taylor told Business Insider. “I mean, he would overrule you at that end if we couldn’t reach a conclusion, but I always felt like he was willing to argue it out and listen – which is sadly not that normal among many Silicon Valley CEOs.”
Taylor says he’s still good friends with Zuckerberg even after leaving Facebook, and hopes the rest of the world could see the good side of Zuckerberg as well.
“I also learned that because the movie (‘The Social Network’) came out, it was really easy to build a caricature of these people with very public profiles, but I got to know a version of Mark that was much more human that I wish other people could see.”
In fact, this is not the first time Taylor had good things to say about his former boss. In his resignation letter, Taylor said Zuckerberg’s his mentor and one of his closest friends.
Taylor left Facebook in 2012, shortly after its IPO, and is now the CEO of Quip, a mobile-friendly collaborative word processor. You can learn more about Taylor and his new company here.
Here’s what it"s really like to work with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook
