> As Khannah flashed it on a screen with a projector, the five members of his team stole furtive glances at one another, nervous that Balwani might become wise to the prank. But he didn’t bat an eye and the meeting proceeded without incident. After he left the room, they burst out laughing.
Not proud of it, but I admit that a younger, less grownup version of me once played a similar “what can we get the non-technical senior exec to believe/repeat” game. I guess when you encounter an obvious phony who is likely making 10-100x what you are, you can rationalize these kinds of immature activities to yourself :)
What is the upside of this test? If they say nothing it may be that they don't know you're wrong or silently concluded you're wrong. If they do say something you say...what? "Just testing you"?
You say that it was a joke. It was a similar situation where a new VP was commenting on code he didn't know anything about but just repeated falsehoods with total conviction. So I put some stuff into a presentation that was clearly funny to people who knew how things worked but the VP took it at face value.
This tension and trick lies at the crux of Salman Rushdie's book "The Satanic Verses" - a global bestseller and one of my all-time favorites; the situation must not be all that uncommon. I think you'd enjoy reading it if this is the way you think.
The way Balwani made fortune was by selling startup called CommerceBid.com for $200ish million to a sucker called CommerceOne.com during dot com boom. He painted vision of B2B auctions of suppliers. At the time of sale he had 3 ”test” clients. After 5 months, dot com bubble bursted but luckily he had cashed out by selling his stock. CommerceOne.com went bankrupt after that.
Not proud of it, but I admit that a younger, less grownup version of me once played a similar “what can we get the non-technical senior exec to believe/repeat” game. I guess when you encounter an obvious phony who is likely making 10-100x what you are, you can rationalize these kinds of immature activities to yourself :)
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