The Myth of the Tech God Is Crumbling

Tech is full of smart people who build, run and invest in successful companies that have produced a tremendous amount of innovation. But the industry’s recent spate of failures and reversals has made one thing clear: Many of its leaders aren’t as smart as they thought they were.

Just this month, a pair of the world’s mightiest tech names, Amazon.com and Facebook parent Meta Platforms, announced broad layoffs after years of breakneck hiring. Another giant, Google parent Alphabet, came under pressure from an activist investor to slash its costs. Some of the biggest names in venture investing, including Sequoia Capital and SoftBank Group, were left trying to figure out what went wrong after FTX, the $32 billion golden child of the crypto boom, imploded. And Elon Musk, who perhaps more than anyone embodies the idea of the polymath tech genius, has made a mess of Twitter after paying $44 billion to buy it.