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My first thought: is this the most effective way that the CEO of one of the web's biggest companies should be spending his time? Hacking is fun, sure, but I'm n

by bprater 17y ago

My first thought: is this the most effective way that the CEO of one of the web's biggest companies should be spending his time? Hacking is fun, sure, but I'm not sure I want the captain of my ship down greasing the engine. Everything sends a signal and I suspect his maturity isn't quite there when posting to Twitter (er, or does he use Facebook?) about a check-in. If this were a public company and I were a shareholder, I would wonder. A secret of success: do only the things that only you are capable of doing, like shaking hands and making deals. Let everyone else handle the rest.

edj 17y ago
> do only the things that you are capable of doing ..if you want to never challenge yourself, learn anything new, or push the boundaries of the possible.
cookiecaper 17y ago
The captain of the ship does whatever he has to do to keep his ship running. Part of management is picking up the slack. While it may not be wise if Zuckerberg wanted to pretend he was just another production coder, there's no evidence that that's what's happened here. Why shouldn't a CEO be able to express some ideas in code? If that code is production quality there's no reason it couldn't go into production. A lot of managers get this idea that they shouldn't consort with the little people anymore. That is a horrible idea that leads to horrible abuses and problems; for some hard-to-understand reason involving ego and job security, the reality of things tends to warp a bit as it travels up the chains of management, even if the organization has a relatively flat hierarchy. The real way to make sure everything is going well is to interview and trust the people who are set out to do the job. imo every CEO should cut through the managers and interview a random selection of "low-level" people, i.e., people who actually build the thing your company is selling, or whatever, very often. They are the ones which are most passionate, best informed, and best equipped to help. I understand that sometimes organizations get to a size where managers are required to oversee the day-to-day, but it's vital that the highest levels at a company are concerned and informed more with front-line opinions than the warped reports passed up through five levels of managers.
naz 17y ago
While I agree that he could be doing better things with his time, his job is also to convey an image that attracts engineers. The idea of working on code alongside Zuck might be a big pull to some people.
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  hmmm. my first thought, as an engineer, was "thank goodness i'm not the one who has to review that code". is the guy really keeping track of recent changes? can you really criticise his work just like anyone else? seems like he might be making life harder for others...
arijo 17y ago
If you don't code you become a pointy hairy boss :)
- koenigdavidmj 17y ago
  If you do, then you become a bald-headed boss. :)
res0nat0r 17y ago
I'd cut him a bit of slack as facebook just took over google as the most trafficked in the world.
- axod 17y ago
  Can you point to some data for that? All the ranking sites I see still have Google at the top.
pgbovine 17y ago
A secret of success: do only the things that you are capable of doing, like shaking hands and making deals. I hardly think that this is all that zuckerberg is capable of doing, since he was the one who initially hacked on facebook (as well as some music sharing program in high school, iirc)
- wallflower 17y ago
  "With a classmate, Adam D’Angelo (now a student at CalTech and still a close friend) Zuckerberg designed a program that learned a listener’s musical tastes, and then designed a playlist to match. “It learned your listening patterns by figuring out how much you like each song at a given point and time, and which songs you tend to listen to around each other,” Zuckerberg says. The friends created a plug-in for the popular MP3 player WinAmp and posted it up for free on the Internet." "When Zuckerberg starts a programming project, all else takes a backseat. He doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t talk to friends." http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/6/10/mark-e-zuckerberg-06-the-whiz/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/6/10/mark-e-zuckerber...
  - fuzzmeister 17y ago
    Further: "Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and recruit Zuckerberg, but he decided to attend Harvard University instead." The guy was almost recruited out of high school by Microsoft and AOL. If that isn't impressive, I don't know what is.
- huangm 17y ago
  I think he meant: 'do the things that only you are capable of doing.'
  - bprater 17y ago
    I did, thank you. Updated.
- waterlesscloud 17y ago
  It seems likely to me that the code of the Facebook of today is probably of a pretty different sort than that initial hacking. The problems are very different. But it's also likely that Mr. Z. has kept up with those changes, on some level at least.
chegra84 17y ago
Coding is therapeutic especially when you don't have to do it. Besides, its an easy way to enter flow. "The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29
- niekmaas 17y ago
  For me coding is definately therapeutic. I'm getting my MD and doing gene therapy research at the same time. Doing some coding during the weekends make me relax (and angry if I cant fix stupid bugs :P). It makes me totally forget the other stuff so that I can start freshly again on monday.
jim-greer 17y ago
Dude, that's not Twitter.
qq66 17y ago
If you're offering Zuckerberg "secrets of success" I really hope you are a Steve Jobs sockpuppet account.
- rabidgnat 17y ago
  "I really hope you are a Steve Jobs sockpuppet account" Probably not. The Jobs-o-grams that I've seen are terse. Jobs probably would have written something like: "Mark should not be hacking. We wouldn't want a Captain greasing a ship's engine."
robryan 17y ago
This goes back to the idea that once someone gets to a certain level they can't write code any more. It can be argued that writing the code is just as important as some of the other CEO tasks.
- ojbyrne 17y ago
  I think a better argument is that once you get to a certain level you don't have the time to write code anymore. More importantly you probably don't have the time to read code anymore, and presumably at facebook, there's a lot of code to read every week just to keep up.
rossover 17y ago
The fact that he is the "CEO of one of the web's biggest companies" means he earned the right to decide to write code if he wants to. Successful businesses aren't created by following every principle in the latest business books.
dfj225 17y ago
I might disagree that it's a poor use of Mark's time. The only product that Facebook has is software and a large portion, I'm guessing, comprises of internal APIs. So, what better way to test their quality than by writing some code against them? I don't know if this is what he's doing or not, but it seems like a logical guess. I would expect the captain of a ship to make sure the engine is running correctly, even if that means a personal inspection. Plus, from what I've read, a lot of internal discussions at Facebook are settled by writing demo code/applications showing a concrete implementation of an idea.

by bprater 17y ago

edj 17y ago

> do only the things that you are capable of doing ..if you want to never challenge yourself, learn anything new, or push the boundaries of the possible.

cookiecaper 17y ago

The captain of the ship does whatever he has to do to keep his ship running. Part of management is picking up the slack. While it may not be wise if Zuckerberg wanted to pretend he was just another production coder, there's no evidence that that's what's happened here. Why shouldn't a CEO be able to express some ideas in code? If that code is production quality there's no reason it couldn't go into production. A lot of managers get this idea that they shouldn't consort with the little people anymore. That is a horrible idea that leads to horrible abuses and problems; for some hard-to-understand reason involving ego and job security, the reality of things tends to warp a bit as it travels up the chains of management, even if the organization has a relatively flat hierarchy. The real way to make sure everything is going well is to interview and trust the people who are set out to do the job. imo every CEO should cut through the managers and interview a random selection of "low-level" people, i.e., people who actually build the thing your company is selling, or whatever, very often. They are the ones which are most passionate, best informed, and best equipped to help. I understand that sometimes organizations get to a size where managers are required to oversee the day-to-day, but it's vital that the highest levels at a company are concerned and informed more with front-line opinions than the warped reports passed up through five levels of managers.

naz 17y ago

While I agree that he could be doing better things with his time, his job is also to convey an image that attracts engineers. The idea of working on code alongside Zuck might be a big pull to some people.

andrewcooke 17y ago
hmmm. my first thought, as an engineer, was "thank goodness i'm not the one who has to review that code". is the guy really keeping track of recent changes? can you really criticise his work just like anyone else? seems like he might be making life harder for others...

arijo 17y ago

If you don't code you become a pointy hairy boss :)

koenigdavidmj 17y ago
If you do, then you become a bald-headed boss. :)

res0nat0r 17y ago

I'd cut him a bit of slack as facebook just took over google as the most trafficked in the world.

axod 17y ago
Can you point to some data for that? All the ranking sites I see still have Google at the top.

pgbovine 17y ago

A secret of success: do only the things that you are capable of doing, like shaking hands and making deals. I hardly think that this is all that zuckerberg is capable of doing, since he was the one who initially hacked on facebook (as well as some music sharing program in high school, iirc)

wallflower 17y ago
"With a classmate, Adam D’Angelo (now a student at CalTech and still a close friend) Zuckerberg designed a program that learned a listener’s musical tastes, and then designed a playlist to match. “It learned your listening patterns by figuring out how much you like each song at a given point and time, and which songs you tend to listen to around each other,” Zuckerberg says. The friends created a plug-in for the popular MP3 player WinAmp and posted it up for free on the Internet." "When Zuckerberg starts a programming project, all else takes a backseat. He doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t talk to friends." http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/6/10/mark-e-zuckerberg-06-the-whiz/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/6/10/mark-e-zuckerber...
- fuzzmeister 17y ago
  Further: "Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and recruit Zuckerberg, but he decided to attend Harvard University instead." The guy was almost recruited out of high school by Microsoft and AOL. If that isn't impressive, I don't know what is.
huangm 17y ago
I think he meant: 'do the things that only you are capable of doing.'
- bprater 17y ago
  I did, thank you. Updated.
waterlesscloud 17y ago
It seems likely to me that the code of the Facebook of today is probably of a pretty different sort than that initial hacking. The problems are very different. But it's also likely that Mr. Z. has kept up with those changes, on some level at least.

chegra84 17y ago

Coding is therapeutic especially when you don't have to do it. Besides, its an easy way to enter flow. "The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29

niekmaas 17y ago
For me coding is definately therapeutic. I'm getting my MD and doing gene therapy research at the same time. Doing some coding during the weekends make me relax (and angry if I cant fix stupid bugs :P). It makes me totally forget the other stuff so that I can start freshly again on monday.

jim-greer 17y ago

Dude, that's not Twitter.

qq66 17y ago

If you're offering Zuckerberg "secrets of success" I really hope you are a Steve Jobs sockpuppet account.

rabidgnat 17y ago
"I really hope you are a Steve Jobs sockpuppet account" Probably not. The Jobs-o-grams that I've seen are terse. Jobs probably would have written something like: "Mark should not be hacking. We wouldn't want a Captain greasing a ship's engine."

robryan 17y ago

This goes back to the idea that once someone gets to a certain level they can't write code any more. It can be argued that writing the code is just as important as some of the other CEO tasks.

ojbyrne 17y ago
I think a better argument is that once you get to a certain level you don't have the time to write code anymore. More importantly you probably don't have the time to read code anymore, and presumably at facebook, there's a lot of code to read every week just to keep up.

rossover 17y ago

The fact that he is the "CEO of one of the web's biggest companies" means he earned the right to decide to write code if he wants to. Successful businesses aren't created by following every principle in the latest business books.

dfj225 17y ago

I might disagree that it's a poor use of Mark's time. The only product that Facebook has is software and a large portion, I'm guessing, comprises of internal APIs. So, what better way to test their quality than by writing some code against them? I don't know if this is what he's doing or not, but it seems like a logical guess. I would expect the captain of a ship to make sure the engine is running correctly, even if that means a personal inspection. Plus, from what I've read, a lot of internal discussions at Facebook are settled by writing demo code/applications showing a concrete implementation of an idea.