后乔布斯时代的硅谷领袖：平淡无奇是一种新时尚The Metamorphosis of Silicon Valley C.E.O.s: From Big to Boring

When Joe Barton, a Republican congressman from Texas, greeted Jack Dorsey at a congressional hearing last week, he sounded flummoxed.

当德克萨斯州共和党众议员乔·巴顿(Joe Barton)在上周的国会听证会上开始向杰克·多尔西(Jack Dorsey)提问时，这位议员听起来有点困惑。

“I don’t know what a Twitter C.E.O. should look like,” Mr. Barton said. “But you don’t look like what a C.E.O. of Twitter should look like.”

“我不知道Twitter的首席执行官该是什么样子，”巴顿说。“但你看上去不像是Twitter首席执行官应该有的样子。”

The congressman had a point. Mr. Dorsey — who sported a nose ring, a popped-collar shirt and a craggy Moses beard — looked more like a hipster version of a Civil War officer than a tech icon. Yet more striking than his look was his manner before skeptical lawmakers.

这位国会议员说的有道理。戴着一枚鼻环、穿着一件翻领衬衫、留着一把摩西式大胡子的多尔西，看上去更像是美国内战时代军官的潮人翻版，而不是科技偶像。然而，比他的外表更异乎寻常的，是他在持怀疑态度的立法者们面前表现的举止。

Faced with tough questions, Mr. Dorsey did not mount an aggressive defense of his company and his technology, as an earlier generation of tech leader might have. Instead, he demurred, conceded mistakes and generally engaged in a nuanced and seemingly heartfelt colloquy on the difficulties of managing tech in a complex world. Even in response to Mr. Barton’s comment about his look, Mr. Dorsey was solicitous. “My mom agrees with you,” he said.

面对严厉质问时，多尔西没有像上一代科技领袖们可能做的那样，为自己的公司和自己的科技大力辩护，而是表达怀疑，承认错误，并就在一个复杂世界中管理科技的困难与议员们展开了一场细致入微、似乎发自内心的对话。就连回应巴顿对自己外貌的评论时，多尔西也表现出一种对他人的关切。“我妈妈同意你的看法，”他说。

Mr. Dorsey’s testimony prompted questions about what we expect from tech leaders today — and how thoroughly what we expect has been upturned in the last few years. Since the 1980s, a common leadership archetype has loomed over the tech business: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Sometimes unconsciously and often deliberately, a generation of tech leaders attempted to ape the Apple and Microsoft founders’ charisma, their quirks, their style and above all their irrepressible, hard-charging confidence, to say nothing of arrogance.

多尔西的听证会表现，引发了有关我们如今对科技行业领袖做何期待的问题，以及我们的期待在过去几年里发生了怎样彻底的转变。自20世纪80年代起，科技行业赫然耸现的常见领袖典型是史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)和比尔·盖茨(Bill Gates)。一代科技领导们曾试图模仿苹果和微软创始人的魅力，模仿他们的怪癖、他们的风格，尤其是他们十足的、全力进取的信心，更不用说他们的傲慢。这种模仿有时是无意识的，但通常是故意的。

Mr. Dorsey — who like the late Mr. Jobs returned to a company he co-founded in order to save it — has long drawn comparisons to Mr. Jobs. Yet the congressional testimony marked a surprising rhetorical shift. Instead of the black-turtlenecked Mr. Jobs, Mr. Dorsey sounded more like Tim Cook, the understated operations manager who replaced him (and who is holding his umpteenth iPhone event on Wednesday).

人们长久以来一直把多尔西与乔布斯相比，与已故的乔布斯一样，多尔西为了挽救自己参与创建的公司，重返公司工作。然而，他在国会听证会上的言辞标志着一个令人惊讶的转变。多尔西听起来不像是穿着黑色高领套头衫的乔布斯，而更像是蒂姆·库克(Tim Cook)，也就是接替了乔布斯的那位行事低调的运营经理人。（周三，他将举行自己的第无数次iPhone发布会）。

That is, Mr. Dorsey sounded less like a quotable visionary who can see beyond the horizon and more like what he actually is and ought to be — a thoughtful, accessible, transparent and, despite the beard and nose ring, kind of boring manager of a serious company whose decisions have world-changing consequences.

也就是说，多尔西听起来不大像一位视野超越地平线的、时有名言警句的预言家，而更像他实际上的本人和他应该成为的人——一个关心别人、易于接近的、透明的人，而且，尽管他留着胡子、带着鼻环，多尔西更像一个重要公司的无聊经理人，做出改变世界的决策。

When it comes to tech C.E.O.s, boring is the new black. Under the glare of global scrutiny, the daring, win-at-all-costs ethos that defined so much of the tech industry in the last couple of decades has been undergoing a thorough metamorphosis.

当涉及科技行业首席执行官时，平淡无奇是一种新时髦。在全球的密切关注之下，过去几十年里定义了科技行业大部分的那种大胆、不惜一切代价取胜的信念，正在经历一个彻底的质变。

Twitter首席执行官杰克·多尔西上周在国会听证会上作证，并讨论了在一个复杂世界中管理科技的困难。 DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief who was once the poster boy of breaking things and moving fast, is now sitting with magazine writers for lengthy, nuanced disquisitions on his failings. Last year, Uber replaced its controversy-magnet founder, Travis Kalanick, with Dara Khosrowshahi, whom almost nobody outside the tech industry had heard of before — a fact that the company regarded as an asset, not a liability.

Facebook首席执行官马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)曾是打破陈规、勇往直前的典型代表，现在他正在与杂志作家们坐下来，对自己的失误进行冗长、细致入微的专题讨论。去年，优步(Uber)撤了经常引发争议的创始人特拉维斯·卡兰尼克(Travis Kalanick)首席执行官职务，用科技行业以外几乎没人听说过的达拉·霍斯劳沙希(Dara Khosrowshahi)取代之，公司把后者的不知名视为一种优点，而非负面的东西。

Google once played up the nerdy antics of its founders, but now the company’s leaders are almost unidentifiable ciphers. Larry Page, who runs Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has become a recluse, and even Sundar Pichai, Google’s achingly pleasant chief, declined to appear at last week’s hearings.

谷歌(Google)曾大肆渲染其创始人的古怪行为，但公司如今的领导者几乎都是毫无特征、无足轻重的人。管理谷歌母公司Alphabet的拉里·佩奇(Larry Page)已变得深居简出，就连很有亲和力的谷歌首席执行官桑达尔·皮查伊(Sundar Pichai)也婉言拒绝了出席上周的听证会。

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief and the world’s wealthiest man, has been experimenting with a more daring fashion sense, but his leadership style has always been marked by patience and deliberate expansion — just the sort of boring, operator’s sensibility now in vogue.

虽然亚马逊(Amazon)首席执行官、全球首富杰夫·贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)一直在尝试一种更大胆的时尚品味，但他的领导作风一直带有耐心和谨慎扩张的特征——这正是如今流行的那种平淡无奇的、营运者的敏感性。

Oh, and I almost forgot about Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s C.E.O. In my defense, everyone forgets about Mr. Nadella.

哦，我差点忘记了微软的首席执行官萨蒂亚·纳德拉(Satya Nadella)。但这是情有可原的，没有人想得起来纳德拉。

It’s no mystery why tech leaders are turning inward. “Tech is now such a huge and dominant industry,” said Joshua Reeves, the proudly boring founder and chief executive of Gusto, a start-up that makes human resources software. “The fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mind-set is just not viable when you have a trillion-dollar market capitalization or if you have more influence than many governments around the world.”

科技行业的领导者们为什么都转为内向，这一点也不神秘。“科技现在是一个如此巨大、如此占主导地位的行业，当你拥有万亿美元市值，或当你比世界上许多国家的ZF都更有影响力时，凭直觉行事的思维模式就行不通了，”约书亚·里夫斯(Joshua Reeves)说，他是制造人力资源软件的初创企业Gusto的创始人兼首席执行官，对自己的平淡无奇颇感自豪。

Mr. Reeves pointed out that it’s not just the big companies whose chief executives are going beige. Some of the most successful start-ups — from Lyft to Airbnb to Stripe to Slack to Pinterest — are run by understated un-visionaries, people who aim for functional competence over hypey salesmanship. (What hasn’t changed is gender; boring or no, just about everyone who runs a tech company is still a man.)

里夫斯指出，不仅是大公司的首席执行官们正在变得平淡无奇。一些最成功的初创企业——从Lyft到爱彼迎(Airbnb)，从Stripe到Slack、再到Pinterest——也都由低调的非幻想家运营，这些人关注的是实用性的能力，而不是夸张的推销术。（没有多大改变的是性别；不管是否平淡无奇，几乎所有科技公司的运营者都是男性。）

“A start-up that has five million people using it — that’s small for Silicon Valley, but it’s a tremendous number of people, and so even they have a large amount of responsibility in the world,” Mr. Reeves said.

“一家初创公司有500万人使用其产品——这个规模对硅谷来说很小，但这也是很多人，所以即使是它们，对这个世界也负有很大的责任，”里夫斯说。

The tech press has also gotten tougher. Once, novelty alone would merit coverage, but in the social media age, even the tiniest misstep can be ruinous. It has become crucial to get a leader who doesn’t speak out of turn.

科技媒体也变得更加强硬。曾经，只是新奇的体验就值得报道，但在社交媒体时代，即使是最微小的失误也可能是毁灭性的。让领导者不多话就变得至关重要。

There is one obvious exception to my boring-is-in thesis: Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, whose string of unconsidered tweets, taunts and other recent scandals have been anything but eye-glazing.

我这个“无聊等于时尚”的论点中也有明显的例外：特斯拉(Tesla)和SpaceX的首席执行官埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)，他的一连串未经考虑的推文、嘲讽和其他近期的丑闻都绝不乏味。

埃隆·马斯克，特斯拉和SpaceX的首席执行官，依然毫不乏味。 BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS