I went to this movie yesterday. There of lots of people with more expertise than I in the movie review business. What I would like to do is make some observations from a long time "computer nerd" perspective.
The movie is primarily about Mark Zuckerberg and the early years of Facebook. I don't do social networking so I have never been on Facebook. And the computer business is in a continuous state of evolution so I am not familiar with the details of the technical wizardry Mr. Zuckerberg pulled off. But I view that as an asset. It gives me a little distance but some professional perspective. So here goes.
The movie is a piece of fiction designed for consumption by a general audience. Aaron Sorkin deserves tremendous credit for coming up with a great script. The director, etc. and especially Jesse Eisenberg, the actor who played Zuckerberg deserve tremendous credit. And the movie is grounded in a great deal of truth as Mr. Sorkin lifted a lot of dialog from transcripts of depositions and other proceedings of the several law suits involved. What I know about this comes completely from the movie.
With the preliminaries out of the way, the first thing I want to remark on is the character of Mr. Zuckerberg. In the movie he is portrayed as someone who has tremendous computer skills and very weak people skills. I am sure this is an oversimplification of the real Mr. Zuckerberg. But it is something I can relate to from personal experience. I am similar. My computer skills, while substantial, are not at the level of the movie Mr. Zuckerberg's and my people skills are somewhat better. Another feature he has is an unbelievable amount of drive. I was never that driven. I share the low priority he attached to money. But he is much more conflicted than I am. Money is how score is kept. Money was very important to Zuckerberg, seen from that perspective. He wanted to score big. I never wanted to score that big. My "enough" threshold is much more modest.
For people like myself and Mr. Zuckerberg computers are much easier to understand and deal with than people. Computers have rules that they follow literally robotically. The trick for dealing with computers is to understand these rules and use them to trick (or force) the computer to do what you want. If you ask the right way the computer will do what you want. If you ask the wrong way the computer will not get mad or hold a grudge. Fix how you ask (the details of the code) and the computer will go and do what you want without complaint. People don't work that way. The "rule set" for people is much more complicated. People are inconsistent, illogical, break the rules, hold grudges, etc. So, setting sided the distortions and simplifications, I understand Mr. Zuckerberg.
So with an understanding of Mr. Zuckerberg, what are we to make of his relations with the Winklevoss twins and their associates? Not much good! They meet with Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg figures out quickly what they are looking for and agrees to collaborate. Then, without making a contribution to their enterprise, Zuckerberg terminates the relationship after seeing their code and getting some kind of idea what their web site is supposed to do. Viewed from the perspective of a socially maladroit nerd do his actions make sense and are they proper? I can't see any justification for his actions.
First the code. Zuckerberg characterizes it as of poor quality and says he didn't use any of it. So what. First I am going to talk about the code quality. Ultimately code exists to implement a function. Even if it is "poor" the real question is whether it is sufficient to the task. "Poor" code may be sufficient to the task. It doesn't mean good code wouldn't work better but it doesn't need to work better, it only needs to work. And one of the tasks Mr. Zuckerberg was hired to do was to improve the code. I find no reason to believe he didn't understand this.
Next to the functionality. Zuckerberg characterizes what the Winklevoss twins had was not well thought out and different from Facebook. Without comparing what they had with the initial version of Facebook I can't render a useful opinion on that. But it is obvious that the two things were at least vaguely related. Even if the Winklevoss twins' product was poorly conceived and Facebook was brilliant it still matters that they were related.
In science there is an apparently weird quotation about some theory being "not even wrong". Scientists work with theories that are wrong all the time. But sometimes a theory, while known to e completely wrong, can directly or indirectly give a scientist some insight about a "right" theory. If a theory is so poor that not only is it wrong but it is so wrong it can not be used as a basis for finding an insight that moves the inquiry ahead it is said to be so bad it is "not even wrong". In the same sense, if the Winklevoss twins' ideas were poorly developed and implemented they might still have provided some insight to Zuckerberg that ended up in Facebook. So even if we assume that Zuckerberg's characterization of the Winklevoss twins effort is correct it still does not mean that Zuckerberg did not derive something of value from the association.
But beyond all this Zuckerberg voluntarily accepted certain responsibilities. he was the one that decided on an incredibly simple verbal contract. That contract bound him to make a good faith effort to provide value to the Winklevoss twins. He did not do that. He did do a quick review of the code and the concept. If he had problems he should immediately made an effort to bring these issues to the Winklevoss twins' attention. He did not. Instead he started working on Facebook, knowing that would interfere with his ability to meet his obligations to the Winklevoss twins. There is no reason to believe that he was not aware of this. So I am in complete agreement that the Winklevoss twins had a right to sue him and had a right to substantial compensation.
In a similar vein he misbehaved and it was appropriate that his friend Edwardo had a right to substantial compensation. With that out of the way, let me move on to a more general issue.
Very few people are able to pull off what Zuckerberg pulled off. There is a reason for this. First, he was an incredibly gifted coder. People who have the coding talent he has are extremely rare. But they do exist and most of them do not have the kind of success Zuckerberg had. That's because Zuckerberg had a second quality, drive. Now I may lack this but others, especially if they are rewarded early in life, do. So, while important, this is not that critical a component. Zuckerberg has an additional skill. He was able to visualize what Facebook should look like and how it should operate. He might have gotten ideas form his friends, enemies, etc. but he was the one who figured out which were the important ideas and how to integrate them so they worked together. This is something I am not good at. I am good at writing code but not coming up with a "big picture" idea of what code should do. The only ideas I had for code were system utilities of one sort or another.
Zuckerberg was like Bill Gates in this respect. Gates had other abilities beyond just being able to write a lot of good code quickly. Gates had a good business sense and trained himself to become a good salesman, something I think Zuckerberg never did. What is necessary for success at the level of Gates and Zuckerberg is a lot of luck, a lot of drive, and multiple skills. This combination is extremely rare. It is a good thing that our society rewards people that have this very rare and valuable combination. But I think we can encourage these people sufficiently for them to do what they do and for society to reap the benefit without compensating them at the multi-billion dollar level.
Enjoy the movie.
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