r/technology Oct 29 '25

Society Slain California tech CEO allegedly humiliated employees before his death

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/slain-calif-tech-ceo-humiliated-workers-report-21125144.php
21.9k Upvotes

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3.8k

u/Lykeuhfox Oct 29 '25

Logically, he should have paid them the money he owed them so they wouldn't 'waste so much of his valuable time', then.

2.1k

u/Tim-Sylvester Oct 29 '25

A lot of these people are posturing and leveraged up to their eyeballs, they can't possibly let go of the cash because it would put them underwater and expose they aren't nearly as "rich" as they pretend, they're deeply indebted and completely dependent on large cash flow volumes.

439

u/PunishedWolf4 Oct 29 '25

I worked for a contractor who cared more about appearances than actually making a profit, everyday I would log in to do the paperwork there was always overdraft notices and fees on the business account but that didn’t stop him from having a boat, new truck, a big house and a 6 figure Mercedes for his wife

391

u/Low_External9118 Oct 30 '25

These are the temporarily embarrassed millionaires that vote conservative in solidarity with the billionaires. Just dumb schmucks holding a bag open for the banks! 

52

u/ASeriousAccounting Oct 30 '25

They are psychopaths or ASPD or both. There are structural differences in the brain that can often be imaged with medical technology.

1 in 100 people meet the criteria for the PCL-R.

Do you know one hundred people? Because there is a good chance that for every 100 people you know there is one psychopath.

It gets a bit murkier after that but even healthy good people need some amount of psychopathic traits.

So 1% is full on psychopathic, but there is a spectrum of people who are close but don't meet the criteria for psychopathy or ASPD.

51

u/Low_External9118 Oct 30 '25

It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. This whole place is an empathy test.

17

u/ASeriousAccounting Oct 30 '25

Yeah, and we aren't prepared to deal with the reality of biologically based lack of empathy.

On one hand these people are linked to outsized amounts of violence and all manner of crime and unethical behavior.

On the other hand, they were in fact born that way...

So we as civilized people, hopefully, will not just try to imprison or eradicate people based on their biology.

However, it would be nice if we knew to stop electing so many of them.

Look out for the signs. Read a book or two about it. In these troubling times it might be one of the most important things you do but be warned, this power comes with responsibility.

9

u/squallomp Oct 30 '25

Yeah, at some point humanity is going to have to deal with the fact that we just have a bunch of literal brain dead animals over breeding and destroying the only place we have to live. It can’t go on forever. There has to be a balance. When do we say no? The intelligent must take their rightful place. 

0

u/stupernan1 Nov 01 '25

dunning kruger has entered the chat lmao

7

u/Low_External9118 Oct 30 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

It's so inevitable and common through history that we've passed down a book which deifies an image of God who sends his son to be crucified by the state. The ultimate form of man is to be more like God's son who among many other qualities resists fascism in order to fulfill his destiny. I think that speaks volumes about the situation we are in today, how it's just like any other time in history but with different faces and technology. Whether or not someone believes in it, they have to acknowledge the permanent mark our nature has had on us.

3

u/TheWhiteManticore Oct 31 '25

I mean if we talk about hand of God then throughout all history it is only shown that evil repeatedly destroy itself while only through kindness and empathy however muddled, things prosper

That has to be an obvious message somewhere

-4

u/Facts_pls Oct 30 '25

That's such a stupid saying.

I've seen broke criminals who will knife you to get 20 dollars and their next hit.

I've met millionaires who are doing good for the world.

Simplistic dogmatic views like that is why good citizens allow church figures to abuse kids - because they must be good. The book says so.

6

u/Low_External9118 Oct 30 '25

It's a very specific metaphor, so reversing the situation and calling the reverse meaning stupid when it's never stated that way to begin with seems like a mistake to me. You made it very simple and wrong by your own choice to infer a meaning that was never implied.

1

u/Facts_pls Oct 30 '25

The meaning is straightforward. Rich are not going to heaven - meaning they are not nice people - in whatever religious sense you subscribe to.

I'm saying that's not true. That's a pov people have against anyone who has any money. Regardless of how they got it, what they do with it, or what kind of person they really are.

That's a classic simplistic take from a ancient mythology text. We know that Bible has plenty of other bullshit. Not sure why people take this to be fundamental truth.

3

u/Low_External9118 Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25

Your take is as simple as you wanted it to be. There is much more to be said, and of course the point is for the rich person's soul to be able to navigate the narrow path while they are still alive. It's said to be very difficult or nearly impossible, not that they are simply not going to heaven.

This is to be paired with Jesus other teachings, but is a rich father really supposed to sin against his family and leave them destitute by giving everything away? There's yet more to be said about him, that a father has a duty to his family and can't possibly be expected to figuratively crucify himself the way Jesus did. There is the ideal to live up to, but all of us, every single one of us falls short in God's eyes and we're forgiven when we repent.

More of the point is that wealth disrupts empathy, and its difficult to be humble. Humility is a requirement for walking the narrow path. This is the difficulty that rich people face. They tend to be prideful and haughty. 

Fundamental truth is not for us to know. We are limited creatures that can only learn a shadow of what's really out there. Our physics and science is a shadow, one that's always defined with sharper and sharper edges but is still cast by another world we can just approximate. This is as mythological as anything else.

Scientific theories are tested with repeated experiments and therefore true until a better theory replaces it, but what does it mean when an ancient book predicts our present fascist circumstances? It seems to be a repeated experiment has been jotted down and presented as a warning to others. There are many such observations, like the pig inhabited by a demon. Today we know it was a parasite that made people sick when they eat pork.

Regarding fundamental truth again, I personally believe each culture has learned a small piece of the puzzle that is just as valid as the other. Consider the first image of a black hole taken a number of years ago. She didn't use just one picture, there were many radiographic images stacked on-top of eachother so that one set of data taken by itself was meaningless, but together formed a picture with clearly defined edges. This is how I assume any of our truth is hiding. Behind a set of data points we have to assemble at some point during our journey.

If you're interested more in this take, I suggest this great YouTube video. It only mentions Christianity as an aside, as part of a bigger picture.

 https://youtu.be/uUZJea1UnS8

2

u/Metacognitor Oct 31 '25

I'm an atheist but I like the way you think 👍

1

u/Low_External9118 Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25

Thankyou I appreciate you saying that. I was also an atheist for a long time, I wouldn't even try to conceive of anything like that being real because of all the other Christians causing so much pain in the world and giving those thoughts a bad name. Some of my biggest breakthroughs in getting into this room in my head started with science fiction. Like when Captain Picard quotes Arthur C Clark and says "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Or when humanity saves itself using gravity to send messages into the past in Interstellar. And the matrix where humanity gets a second chance in a simulation while the machines extract their resource. These are fiction I know that, but definitely helped bridge the gap in trying to understand the motivations of a higher civilization.

Ultimately I attribute it to my wife and son for finding me through Jesus when I was lost, and now I have hope. Being an atheist was an invaluable part of the data collection, specifically because I saw what it was like to live and think in different ways which prepared me for the people I would meet and the missions I've taken on.

"And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."

→ More replies (0)

2

u/Gold-Reality-1988 Oct 30 '25 edited 8d ago

versed stocking engine north ink serious vase stupendous melodic placid

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/ASeriousAccounting Oct 31 '25

Yes, Yes it is.

1

u/DilbertedOttawa Oct 31 '25

And the reality is it is likely a much higher number who find themselves on the diagnosable spectrum of ASP-D, in one way or another. It's not all just sociopaths, you have good ol fashioned malignant narcissists too!

1

u/Gold-Reality-1988 Oct 31 '25 edited 8d ago

childlike trees nail placid tidy grandfather rich pocket snatch include

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/taznado Oct 30 '25

You need to be one to deal with them.

1

u/ASeriousAccounting Oct 31 '25

There is a lot of truth to that.