As the heads of some of the largest companies in the world, these principal executive officers brand decisions that can touch on our daily lives, but just how much practice we really know near the filthy rich dudes in positions of ability? We examine their careers, personalities, and histories, and brand a lot of speculative guesses. From now beefy Bezos to mad McAfee, here's a expect at a few top tech CEOs.

Proper name: Jeff Bezos

Titles: Amazon CEO, Chairman, and President

Who'd accept idea that selling books over the internet would pb to becoming the richest man in modernistic history? Jeff Bezos, that'due south who. The Amazon founder likes to portray himself as having a fairly normal lifestyle. Like many average Joes, he has 290,000 acres of state and owns a major national newspaper, a space travel agency, and a company that'southward been valued at $i trillion.

Amazon gets a bad rap for the manner information technology treats its employees, merely never forget the firm'southward logo: "Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History." Bezos initially wanted just "Work hard," but thought information technology might brand morale fifty-fifty worse - if such a thing were possible. He'south too known for his explosive atmosphere - a quality rarely found in Lex Luther-like, ruthless billionaires whose workers are usually striking when non being poisoned past carry repellent.

Bezos recently revealed that Amazon wouldn't go on forever, warning that big companies tend to have lifespans of thirty-plus years, not one hundred-plus years. Whether humanity lasts that long is debatable - mayhap that's why he started Blue Origin, so he can escape to the stars with an army of automatons who will piece of work forever as we all drown/burn/starve.

Likes: Impress media, automation, money, "a strong work ethic," shouting, drones, space, striking the bench printing and pushing out 10 reps@300Ibs - with expert form.

Dislikes: Donald Trump, corporate taxes, unions, constant workplace accidents, pilus transplants, ungrateful strikers, Due south Park.

Name: Elon Musk

Titles: CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink; founder of The Boring Visitor

If Bezos is a James Bond villain, and then Musk is 007 himself. Suave and engaging, the Tesla dominate is doing everything to save mankind from itself. He's also a bit of a Twitter troll, which has gotten him into trouble on many, many occasions. Just posting the words "Funding Secured" cost him and Tesla $twoscore 1000000 and his position as chairman of the company's board. At to the lowest degree he never tweeted annihilation too crazy, similar accusing a someone of beingness a pedophile.

Musk ofttimes talks near his 120-hour piece of work weeks and one time said that slumber is not an option, which could explain why he'southward non cracking at receiving criticism -- just ask the customer who had his Tesla lodge canceled past Musk afterwards he was a chip rude about him. He'southward also reportedly prone to "rage firings," all of which shows how grouchy you lot tin get when sleeping on a factory floor for 5 hours a night.

Tesla certainly isn't a fan of government agencies, having suffered unlubed probings by the FBI, DOJ, and SEC (who Musk does not respect) – maybe that'due south why he'south bully to motility to, and eventually dice on, Mars. Let'due south see anyone attempt to monitor his tweets upwardly there.

47-twelvemonth-former Musk is currently dating 30-twelvemonth-old musician Grimes, making him one of the coolest CEOs in the world. He also took a hit from a fat edgeless with Joe Rogan. Hard to imagine anyone else on this listing doing the aforementioned thing -- well, apart from John McAfee, apparently. And despite appearing to not inhale a substance that's legal in the state where the podcast took identify, information technology led to NASA investigating SpaceX. Musk should have just thrown caution to the wind and snorted a line of environmentally friendly cocaine.

Likes: Electric vehicles, the Offset Amendment, working oneself into a land of delirium, Twitter, hair transplants, flamethrowers, tunnels, 4:20, Grimes, infinite.

Dislikes: The SEC, fossil fuels, artificial intelligence, criticism, sleeping, people checking his tweets.

Peter Thiel

Titles: Chairman of Palantir, President of Clarium Capital

If 'bourgeois' is a dirty word in the tech world, then Peter Thiel is filthy. While the entire industry gave most $8 1000000 to Hillary Clinton's entrada, he solitary donated $1.25 one thousand thousand to Trump's. He was vilified for information technology, just, as is oft the case with Thiel, he got the last laugh, which probably sounded like Sideshow Bob's when The Simpsons' character won the election.

There take been several things written about Thiel that we now know are definitely non true. He does non, for case, harvest the blood of the young to transfuse it into his own veins in guild to live forever. Other completely untrue stories about Thiel include: he slithers into our dimension every morning through a haunted mirror; he is the concrete embodiment of Mictlāntēcutli, the Aztec god of death; he puts pocket-size insects into plastic bottles and throws them into the sea "and then they can have an hazard."

Thiel is also chairman of data-mining company Palantir. His business firm's often defendant of being evil, but that's never been proved. Notable clients include Lord Voldemort, Darth Vader, and Satan.

Say what you desire about Thiel, but the guy'south got it going on upstairs. He co-founded PayPal, which somewhen became a rather big company. Thiel also recognized how much anybody loves seeing photos of other people'due south children, food, and vacations, so decided to get Facebook's kickoff outside investor. And, equally Gawker establish out, yous don't want to piss him off.

Likes: Donald Trump, the US legal organization, living forever, New Zealand, Hulk Hogan, backer Star Wars, Lord of the Rings.

Dislikes: Gawker, Hillary Clinton, Meryl Streep, saccharide (manifestly), communist Star Trek.

Name: Marker Zuckerberg

Titles: CEO, Chairman of Facebook

During his college years, Zuckerberg created a program called Facemash that allow users pick which person from a choice of photos was hotter. Some complained that this violated their privacy – a concept Zuck still seems unable to comprehend. Or perhaps he just doesn't intendance.

Almost fifteen years after he launched thefacebook.com, he's at present one of the 5 richest people on Earth, all thanks to Zuck'south ingenuity and his power to 'find inspiration' from the Winklevoss twins and Divya Narenda.

While near of united states of america use Facebook to discover merely how awful people tin can exist, Zuckerberg has always said the aim of the platform is to bring everyone together. It's also helpful for scooping upwards petabytes of personal data, which the CEO greedily consumes like a hog ramming its snout into an information-rich trough.

2018 has certainly been Zuckerberg'due south annus horribilis. Cambridge Analytica was a watershed moment when it comes to how companies deal with users' privacy, and as soon as the grit settled on one information breach, another popped its head up. The 'Bergmeister,' as he'southward known to his friends, also appeared earlier Congress this year, where he said he'd either "follow upwards" or "get back" to a question 31 times. His unblinking eyes and pallid complexion at the fourth dimension fabricated him resemble an alien, an android, or both – like the offspring of Lieutenant Commander Data and the Borg queen.

Zuckerberg also has to deal with election interference, extremism, claims of bias, bots, and fake news – a term many now apply for something they either don't agree with or notice difficult to accept. But despite the outcry, the simply consequences for Facebook is a slowing user growth charge per unit, and that's partly because most of the earth is already on the platform.

In his spare fourth dimension, Zuckerberg likes to write down as many digits of Pi as he tin can remember.

Likes: Your personal information, advertisers, AI, people who don't care about privacy, China.

Dislikes: Russian bots, Tim Cook, ballot interference, The Social Network moving picture, lawsuits, Donald Trump.

Jack Ma

Titles: Executive Chairman of Alibaba

Being the co-founder and chairman of the Alibaba Group, aka People's republic of china'southward Amazon, tin put a lot of stress on a person. Thankfully, Jack Ma's love of theatrics helps him bargain with the pressure of running a visitor with a $40 billion per yr revenue.

With an estimated cyberspace worth of $37.half dozen billion, Ma is Asia's richest homo, but that doesn't make him a stuffed shirt. At his firm'due south 18th altogether celebrations final twelvemonth, he took to the stage on a motorbike before breaking into a Michael Jackson-inspired dance routine. But that was cipher compared to his moving rendition of Tin can You lot Feel The Love Tonight (skip to the 01:sixteen mark in the video below) while looking similar a character from Cyberpunk 2077. He ofttimes says that having so much money isn't a good thing – yeah, y'all can't assist but feel sorry for him.

Similar nearly curt guys, myself included, Ma is ambiguous about his height: it seems to vary between only nether five human foot to 5 foot, v inches. But even though he's no imposing giant, you lot don't want to mess with him. Ma'due south heavily into martial arts, particularly Chen-style Tai Chi Chuan. He fifty-fifty appeared in a brusque film that saw him boot the asses of Donnie Yen, Jet, Li, Tony Jaa, Sammo Hung, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, and many more famous Asian stars.

Ma has been equally cagey about revealing his political affiliations. He did in one case say of the Chinese government: "exist in love with them, but don't marry them," which is probably one of the nicest things e'er said about Xi Jinping and his pals. But concluding month, Ma, the confront of Chinese capitalism, was outed as a communist party fellow member.

Likes: Showtunes, Tai Chi, Disney, communism, Alibaba, China and its ruling party, Singles Day.

Dislikes: Being incredibly rich, stress, the trade war.

Tim Cook

Championship: CEO of Apple

Tim Cook often comes across as a friendly uncle, but you don't go boss of the world's nigh valuable company by being likewise nice. For a start, he makes all his Apple Park staff utilize continuing desks, which sounds like a pain in the donkey, or helps preclude it. Interestingly, Cook's cyberspace worth pales in comparison to some of the other CEOs; his fortune is estimated to be 'just' $625 million, which could be why he reportedly buys discounted underwear.

Cook likewise isn't afraid to stand up up to police force enforcement. He told the FBI where to shove it when the agency wanted Apple's help in unlocking the San Bernardino iPhone. The feds got someone else to do information technology the terminate. We don't know if it was Cellebrite or some grayness chapeau hackers, merely we do know it cost them $900,000, or around 1 percent of Cook's salary.

Cook says Apple values customers' privacy, and he's managed to piss Zuckerberg off and so much with his comments almost non selling information that the Facebook CEO told all his direction to utilise just Android phones. Merely while Cook does say some beauteous stuff, he also said the $999 iPhone X was "value price," and then…

Likes: Privacy, iPhones, China, private jets, tax reforms, deteriorating batteries.

Dislikes: Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Qualcomm, patent trolls, deteriorating batteries.

Jack Dorsey

Titles: CEO of Twitter, CEO of Foursquare

It'due south piece of cake to forget now, but when Jack Dorsey finally moved from interim chief executive officer to permanent CEO of Twitter in 2022, the microblogging site he co-founded was struggling. A year later, tech firms from Google to Apple were reportedly interested in buying the visitor, but when they confirmed this to be BS, Twitter's stock crashed, layoffs were appear, execs left, and user growth continued to flatline. Imagine dealing with all this while simultaneously being CEO of Square. If that wasn't bad enough, Dorsey was named the seventh worse CEO in America, though he was probably happy to run into Snapchat's Evan Spiegel was 1 spot ahead of him.

Things are looking a lot improve on Twitter these days, with daily average users and its stock price looking a lot healthier than when Dorsey took over. Though shares recently took a battering when an investor chosen it "the Harvey Weinstein of social media."

A lot of Twitter's reversal of fortunes are down to its almost famous user, Donald Trump, who seems to take a love/hate relationship with the platform. In another turnaround of fortunes, Dorsey was this year named one of the best CEOs in the earth. Spiegel, meanwhile, never fifty-fifty fabricated the peak 542. #suckitsnapchat

Dorsey comes from the Elon Musk schoolhouse of working over xviii hours a day, virtually of which is probably spent dealing with toxic Twitter users, Russian bots, hacks, accusations of liberal bias, accusations of kowtowing to right-wingers, and trimming his beard into a stylish new shape while listening to Kendrick Lamar.

The Twitter boss is besides a fan of yoga and recently tweeted about his 10-twenty-four hour period meditation retreat in Myanmar, urging his followers to visit the country. His failure to mention its homo rights atrocities didn't go down and so well.

Likes: Yoga, beards, Kendrick Lamar, Presidents using Twitter, nose rings, mobile payments, hashtags, memes (merely not when they're used for hacks).

Dislikes: Bots, being compared to Facebook, publicly tweeting nigh his vacations.

Sundar Pichai

Championship: CEO of Google

In 2022, Google announced the company was reorganizing and would become a subsidiary of umbrella corporation Alphabet, which in no way is similar Resident Evil's Umbrella corp. As role of the restructuring, Pichai Sundararajan, or Sundar Pichai, equally he's ameliorate known, moved from Google's head of Products and Engineering to the CEO position.

Similar Tim Cook, Pichai's more than of a softly spoken leader, rather than a Jeff Bezos-style shouter. When he took over the visitor, 1 Google employee said: "All the assholes accept left." It'southward worth remembering, though, that what most people consider asshole-similar beliefs is often the norm in Silicon Valley.

Pichai led the squad of engineers behind the original Chrome image, and then complain to him next fourth dimension the browser'due south annihilating your RAM. In 2022, he replaced creator Andy Rubin equally head of Android. Rubin left a year subsequently and eventually came upward with Essential Phone — a decision he may exist regretting.

Google has a lot in common in Apple: they both go in trouble with the EU for not paying plenty revenue enhancement. It'southward an effect Pichai has had to deal with, along with antitrust accusations, the Pentagon drone projection, a 20,000-person walkout over sexual harassment allegations, allowing 3rd-party apps to scrape data from Gmail accounts, and the controversial Projection Dragonfly search engine — a subject he danced effectually when appearing before Congress. Not surprising that Google buried its "don't be evil" motto long ago. Now, it'southward "Exercise the right thing," which sounds like information technology's been lifted from a commercial for trainers.

Likes: Android phones, China, the internet, Gmail.

Dislikes: The Eu Commission, Congress, antitrust charges, Apple, bugs in Google+.

John McAfee

Titles: CEO at Luxcore, founder of McAfee

It's amazing to think that despite his name being synonymous with one of the world's leading anti-virus products, that'southward one of the less interesting aspects of John McAfee's life. This is a human who settled in Belize in a dwelling house filled with drugs, weapons, guards, and prostitutes. It was here that he was subject to a raid and constitute himself the prime number suspect in a murder, escaping authorities by burying himself in sand with a paper-thin box over his head.

McAfee was later arrested for illegally entering Guatemala, where he had to fake two heart attacks so his attorney had more time to preclude his deportation dorsum to Belize. If anything, McAfee's living proof that nerds aren't boring.

Afterward an experience similar that, virtually people would probably want to simply have a nice lie down for the rest of their lives, only not McAfee - he decided to effort for a presidential run. Sadly, it wasn't to be, which is a shame as his cybersecurity background would have fabricated him a great POTUS, and his love of hookers, guns, and accident would accept given him plenty of entreatment across many demographics.

Dorsum during the San Bernardino iPhone incident, McAfee said he would put together a squad of super hackers who sounded similar they'd merely stepped out of the 90s ("24-inch regal mohawks!" Hack the planet!) to break the encryption, just he later admitted most of what he said was bullshit to "go a shitload of public attention."

In contempo times, McAfee's moved into the earth of crypto investment, which right now must be like being a Blockbuster employee in the mid-2000s. In 2022, he publicly tweeted that he would eat his own dick on national idiot box if Bitcoin did non reach $500,000 within the next three years. He'due south now deciding what side dish volition best compliment his Johnson.

Before this year, he backed an "unhackable" crypto wallet that a teenager managed to run the original Doom on, though he insists this doesn't count as a hack.

Whatever you call back of McAfee, he's led a life worthy of the all-time Hollywood movie. Long may he keep calculation color to an industry that isn't known for CEOs with rock and scroll lifestyles.

Likes: Crypto, guns/narcotics/booze/ladies of the night (probably not as much these days), offering an opinion on everything.

Dislikes: The law, Belize, vague definitions of the discussion "hacking," making rash promises.

Satya Nadella

Championship: CEO of Microsoft

When Satya Nadella took over equally Microsoft dominate in 2022, he replaced the mighty Steve Ballmer as the head of the company. Ballmer, of course, appears in many of the entries on our 'Most Awkward moments in tech' feature. It seems the Redmond firm decided to pick a CEO with an opposing personality in Nadella -- picturing him dancing manically across the stage, or repeatedly shouting the word "DEVELOPERS!" isn't easy. Nadella likewise tried to dissuade Ballmer from purchasing Nokia, and nosotros all know what a brilliant investment that turned out to exist.

Nadella doesn't oftentimes get involved in controversy - at least not since proverb women should trust the system and not ask for raises -- merely at that place was that whole Windows ten forced update debacle. Microsoft's ambitious tactics to get users to switch to its new OS included malware-like tricks and ramming popups down users' throats. Information technology also planned to send employees to the homes of Windows seven/eight users and repeatedly dial them in the face until they updated, but it concluded up costing besides much.

Lets not forget the employee revolt confronting Microsoft's involvement with United states Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), though Nadella said information technology was just helping agents with their electronic mail -- non sure what that has to do with the previously mentioned facial recognition and deep learning services, though.

There's i area where Nadella has everyone else on this list trounce: he'south been ranked every bit the best CEO (large companies) in the US. He's ahead of 6th-place Bezos, who only managed to achieve that high past forcing employees to vote for him.

Likes: The deject, cricket, Pecker Gates, Windows 10 users, forced updates, poetry.

Dislikes: Windows 7/8 users, Steve Ballmer, Nokia.

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