Former Meta exec blasts Bay Area tech culture

Nick Clegg, longtime British politico and one of Meta’s most prominent former executives, is hawking a new book — and he just started using his press tour to skewer Bay Area tech culture.

Clegg became Britain’s deputy prime minister in 2010 when he led the center-left Liberal Democrats, before eventually falling from power five years later and landing in California in 2018. He was an outsider, brought in to lead the Instagram and Facebook owner’s policy efforts; until his departure this January, he performed the herculean task of publicly defending the scandal-plagued company. Now, Clegg is out — replaced by a deputy with closer ties to Trump — and has written a book based partially on his experience as a top Mark Zuckerberg lieutenant.

In interviews with the Guardian and Bloomberg published over the past few days, Clegg stuck up for Zuckerberg and longtime business head Sheryl Sandberg, but he didn’t mince his words when criticizing the habits, refrains and culture of their Silicon Valley ilk.

Speaking with Bloomberg about the tech industry’s “overcorrection” toward Donald Trump and the president’s isolationist attitudes, he called Silicon Valley “a place of stampedes and fads” and said that while the industry may pride itself on challenging norms, “it’s the most conformist place I’ve ever lived in my life.”

“Everyone dresses the same, they drive the same cars, they listen to the same podcasts, they claim to read the same books,” Clegg said, getting in a thinly veiled dig. “You get this extraordinary herd behavior and everyone thinks they’re being super insightful, but in fact everybody’s kind of following the same trend.”

He made similar statements to the Guardian, calling Silicon Valley “cloyingly conformist” and “born of immense sort of herd-like behavior.” The accusations ring true beyond any political shift. In recent years, tech’s cadres of venture capitalists and executives have proved themselves quick to pour money into trends like cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. The hordes of skilled software engineers that keep companies in the Bay Area also create a sort of monoculture, where the newly rich share supplement tips and invites to niche tech events.

Clegg also skewered Silicon Valley for birthing a unique type of victim mentality. Lumping together “Elon Musk and all these other tech bros and members of that podcast community,” he told the Guardian that, “far from thinking they’re lucky, they think they’re hard done by, they’re victims.”

“I couldn’t, and still can’t, understand this deeply unattractive combination of machismo and self-pity,” Clegg continued. He emphasized that he wasn’t talking about Zuckerberg: “It is a cultural thing, from Elon Musk’s chainsaw-wielding stuff to any Silicon Valley podcast. If you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” 

It isn’t totally clear who else Clegg was talking about — podcasts and podcast appearances have become common territory for major tech figures — but Musk is one of several who paint themselves as victims of unfair treatment in the press and in politics.

Discussing his own political shift on two podcasts in December and January, internet pioneer Marc Andreessen said there was previously a “deal” where a tech founder would invent a new product, make a ton of money and be regaled with glowing coverage in the press — plus love from the public.

“What I experienced was ‘they,’” Andreesseen, waving finger quotes, said on Bari Weiss’ “Honestly” podcast. “The people in charge of all this basically broke the deal, in basically every way that you possibly can. So basically every single thing that I just said for the last decade has been now held to be presumptively evil.”

The tone has certainly shifted since Andreessen began in tech; the industry went from an interesting lark to an economic, social and political juggernaut. As for the billionaire’s feeling that a “deal” was broken — this might fall under Clegg’s charge of “self-pity.”