On Empathy, Money, Fame, Creativity, and Patience

Empathy appears to be a lost art...

I was thinking about this the other day when I read a social media posting by former Twitter exec Esther Crawford about her experience at the company and working for Elon Musk. It's a great read, but one line in particular caught my attention...

His boldness, passion, and storytelling is inspiring, but his lack of process and empathy is painful.

Musk obviously doesn't care... and he doesn't have to, because on any given day he's either the richest or one of the richest people in the world. And as that world famous philosopher Tevye from the legendary Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof put it so well...

When you're rich, they think you really know!

Musk is hardly the only rich guy missing the empathy gene...

It may, in fact, be more the rule than the exception in in Silicon Valley, where empathy might even be viewed as a character flaw.

Journalist Dan Lyons summed this up best in his book, Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us, w…