I'm from Michigan and lived in the Bay Area for a few years building an app and was just taking about the cultural differences today.
I think there's a tendency in SV startup culture to play up things whereas in Michigan there's almost a tendency to downplay things. So people there seemed to exaggerate how great something was that they did and I would tend to say something wasn't as great as it seemed to be. The stereotypically "I'm crushing it" "it was epic" etc.
I think there are challenges with both. With the overselling of how great something is, I think it can slip into just straight up lying when bad things happen. On the other side, underselling may also fall into lying but often about the good things that are happening.
So I read Zuckerberg's letter and much of his communication as so blatantly overselling that it bleeds into lies, which is illegal to do to some organizations. While many people oversell, I think as someone else mentioned, companies and CEOs are typically quite careful not to go too hard on overselling when in the court of law, and some either don't know how to turn it off or don't care or don't believe they should, or, as I've seen with some friends, don't seem to believe they are even doing it.
I think there's a tendency in SV startup culture to play up things whereas in Michigan there's almost a tendency to downplay things. So people there seemed to exaggerate how great something was that they did and I would tend to say something wasn't as great as it seemed to be. The stereotypically "I'm crushing it" "it was epic" etc.
I think there are challenges with both. With the overselling of how great something is, I think it can slip into just straight up lying when bad things happen. On the other side, underselling may also fall into lying but often about the good things that are happening.
So I read Zuckerberg's letter and much of his communication as so blatantly overselling that it bleeds into lies, which is illegal to do to some organizations. While many people oversell, I think as someone else mentioned, companies and CEOs are typically quite careful not to go too hard on overselling when in the court of law, and some either don't know how to turn it off or don't care or don't believe they should, or, as I've seen with some friends, don't seem to believe they are even doing it.