Bankman-Fried, Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos appear on The Guardian's worst IT companies bosses list

FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and new Twitter owner Elon Musk appeared on the list of the worst CEOs of technology companies in 2022 published by the British newspaper The Guardian. Moreover, Sam Bankman-Fried had the highest score.

Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried got 10 out of 10 because of the FTX debacle. He had previously been charged with eight felonies in the U.S. and was also sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November had a serious liquidity problem, after which it declared bankruptcy. On the eve of the bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried withdrew $10 billion of client funds from stock market accounts and transferred them to his trading firm Alameda Research. The entrepreneur was arrested in the Bahamas in mid-December and released on $250 million bail after being deported to the U.S. The company reportedly spent $121 million to buy real estate for Bankman-Fried's employees and family.

Elon Musk

The Guardian awarded seven out of 10 points to Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter. The newspaper notes that on October 28 the billionaire closed the deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, immediately after that he fired the company's management team and gave the employees an ultimatum: either work longer and harder or quit, as a result, many left voluntarily, including the best specialists.

In a general effort to reduce costs, he fired almost 2/3 of his staff, then dissolved the Board of Trust and Security, later fired the ethics team of artificial intelligence of the social network, introduced a new policy of content moderation, and made a number of other changes.

Mark Zuckerberg

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg received 6 out of 10. The newspaper notes that although the company has been investing in the meta-universe for over a year and Zuckerberg is talking about its future, Meta Platforms is losing money because of it.

The magazine also recalls that in February of this year, Meta Platforms' share price fell $230 billion in one day, a record high. Nine months later, Zuckerberg admitted he'd miscalculated and fired 11,000 employees.

“Visiting the company's Facebook-owned social network lately has become like visiting the ruins of Pompeii. Sometimes elements of a thriving community remain beautifully preserved but forgotten as time moves steadily forward,” the paper said.

Jeff Bezos

Mark Zuckerberg is not the only executive who has had his number of employees cut this year. Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos, has cut 10,000 jobs this year. In addition, the company's experts assure that the head's favorite project Alexa has completely failed. The magazine gave the Amazon CEO a score of four out of 10.

Parag Agrawal and Elizabeth Holmes

Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, the founder of the biotech company Theranos, and Elizabeth Holmes, who was sentenced to prison for fraud, also made the list.