Corporate America is certainly not a fan of FTC chair Lina Khan.
She's been subjected to a barrage of attacks from places like the Wall Street journal so she must be doing something right.
Jon Stewart revealed when interviewing her, that Apple executives had asked him not to have her on his podcast.
> she's running the FTC like a startup: hire exceptional people you trust to execute with autonomy
The exceptional people were there from the start. In the early days, their complaint was around being locked out of decision making. Khan and a small group ran the FTC like academics.
That failed both internally and in the courts. To her credit, she noticed the failure, regrouped and re-oriented. But the change wasn’t in star hiring but recognising the talent that was being ignored.
At this point Khan can block anything because she is fixated at the idea that big tech companies acquiring smaller companies is almost always bad for the market.
Unfortunately she has law degree not economics degree so she doesn't even understand what she's doing.
It is normal for someone so young to be put in a high position of power purely to address one issue? (Tech monopolies)
From what I understand, Ms. Khan wrote some influential papers against tech monopolies. Congress, wanting to address these monopolies, put her in charge of the FTC purely for this reason, as she has very little experience in anything I would assume to be necessary for running a massive government office.
It seems odd to me, but I don’t really follow the FTC. Am I just being cynical? I don’t get this move and it feels very one-dimensional to me.
> She seems wildly inexperienced.... Clearly smart and motivated, but wildly out of her depth. No wonder they failed to prevent the Microsoft + Activision Blizzard merger. Lawyers with decades of experience on her ran around her in circles
Or maybe because there wasn't actually a good case to block the merger? Neither Activision-Blizzard nor Microsoft are anywhere near monopolies in gaming. Believe it or not "big tech is bad" is not a sufficient case for blocking a merger, actual consumer harm or threat of it has to be demonstrated.
I'm less convinced this is an issue of Kahn and her team's inexperience, so much as that the FTC is being expected (or maybe directed by the executive) to take on cases that don't have any merit to placate public opinion. "Big tech bad" is a popular meme these days, and the FTC is pursuing cases accordingly even if those cases are on very shaky ground.
> I wonder if she's really so different from the average tech CEO/founder
She hired Steve Jobs’ right-hand man. He quit because she was too abusive and too delusional. It’s fair to say she’s fundamentally different from any competent CEO, ignoring the fact that she chose to deploy medical devices to the field.
> they are picking their fights based more on ideology
Khan is fighting the best fight she can. The problem is she's woefully inexperienced in so many domains critical to the job.
I'm increasingly convinced her hire was a deceitful compromise to placate the base, because she says the right things, as well as corporate interests, because she can't follow through on them. I've seen two big law firms tell companies to pursue risky mergers; while there is a higher chance they'll be challenged, there is a much higher chance those challenges will fail.
So, because she's successful, she should roll over and forgo one of her income steams? If she truly believes this Apple deal will hurt her bottom line, or the bottom line of other content creators, she has a legitimate complaint.
She certainly deserves lots of flack, but it seems reasonably likely (if not certain), that it was her investors pushing for the "sale" of the employees (ugh), and the lawsuit against Apple.
In that context, I don't think the comment I replied to (quoted below) is entirely fair.
>Now, I think she may have acquired a reputation as someone who ends up treating her employees like her personal property
Why don't we name and shame the investors involved here? They're just as culpable IMHO.
I have a feeling 0 more tech companies will hire her now that a quick Google of her name will attach her to this sort of activism. Even if you agree with some of her points regarding Apple, do you really want her coming into your company and looking for a story to tell?
This is the CEO that issued herself the Free Speech Award her own company sponsored (which got 99% downvoted due to the clear conflict of interest and the irony of the award). She's so far from reality it's likely she actually believes her own clear lies (small creators have been able to hide dislikes for years).
> What planet are you from that you think a company is run that way?
Well, not a planet where I try to persuade people of my views by sarcastically asking what planet they're from. That is not an argument and it's devoid of intellectual content.
> Ellen
So you are on a first-name basis with her? Maybe you can tell us the inside story. Otherwise, calling someone by a first name alone is vulgar.
It's an interview with BusinessWeek. There is such a thing as playing to your audience. She's a techie, we know she is, BusinessWeek's average reader doesn't know or care.
Well then they should have titled it something like "Lina Khan, Amazon’s Antitrust Antagonist" and not "Amazon’s Antitrust Antagonist Has a Breakthrough Idea". I expected to actually read and learn about her ideas.
Expect investor lawsuits against her personally. This goes way beyond business failure. It's unusual for a regulatory agency to bar the CEO from an industry, unless they're a crook.
https://youtu.be/CnC9JV5YtBY?feature=shared
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