9 ms·

Inside Facebook's 'cult-like' workplace

69 points by _wldu 8y ago

andrei_says_ 8y ago
May I recommend Dan Lyon’s Disrupted as a deep, touching, funny and horrifying portrayal of what startup culture can look like? It’s one of the best books I read last year.
- jiveturkey 8y ago
  ty! best tip of 2019! ... so far. ;)
- johan_larson 8y ago
  Facebook was started in 2004, so it's a good 15 years old now. It also has 30,000 employees. That's way to big and way too old to be a startup in any meaningful sense. It's a big and powerful, but young, company.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Its cultural roots go back to a startup, however.
    - munchbunny 8y ago
      By that standard, almost every company's cultural roots go back to a startup.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        So, such a period would be a sensible time and place to look in an examination of cultural factors. The fact that Facebook is still young means that those roots are closer in time than for other companies and would seem to make that more relevant.
strikelaserclaw 8y ago
Are there people who still believe the PR nonsense of big companies like Google and Facebook? At the end of the day by agreeing to work for these companies, you gain prestige, $$$, and maybe something interesting to work on, that is pretty much it and those are only offered to you because you bring in much more $$$ than you get in perks or $$$. If you are naive enough to think that these corporations are interested in anything but making money, you are sadly mistaken.
- thatoneuser 8y ago
  Well of course there are people that believe that. These multi billion dollar companies invest a lot of resources in promoting propaganda to make people believe it. Do you honestly think industries that rely on a keen ability to manipulate the masses can’t do that to potential employees too?
  - strikelaserclaw 8y ago
    hell yea, in this era where knowledge workers are more valuable than pretty much anything else, it completely makes sense to do whatever it takes to appeal to them, and of course utilizing propaganda is just good business. Propaganda, it works on the stupid and smart alike, does not discriminate.
    - somenomad 8y ago
      I always used to question how people I worked with who are demonstratably much more intelligent than average could fall for things like this but then I realized I seem to have a unique set of circumstances in my life that kind of led me to question everything and be maybe more aware of propaganda than an average person. The more I've observed, traveled, interacted with people, etc the more I have realized people who are book smart are often highly susceptible to propaganda as they often will build up a mental image of the world from 3rd party sources, rather than first-hand experience, because they are so proficient at reading, analyzing, etc.
      - 8y ago
m0zg 8y ago
All big companies I worked at so far suppress internal dissent. It's just the nature of the beast. Your boss doesn't want her boss look bad, and she also doesn't want to look bad herself come review/promo time. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake. So all communication upward gets massaged with that in mind. By the time it gets through 5,6,7 layers of management "shit's bad" becomes "everything is awesome" even if the initial message gets out at all.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  The classic (and hilarious) book The Systems Bible (https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-Large/dp/0961825170 https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-Large/d...) has some deliciously tart words on this subject: We present the Fundamental Law of Administrative Workings (F.L.A.W.): THINGS ARE WHAT THEY ARE REPORTED TO BE... The net effect of this Law is to ensure that people in Systems are never dealing with the real world that the rest of us have to live in, but instead with a filtered, distorted, and censored version which is all that can get past the sensory organisms of the System itself... This effect has been studied in detail by a small group of dedicated General Systemanticists. In an effort to introduce quantitative methodology into this important area of research they have paid particular attention to the amount of information that reaches, or fails to reach, the attention of the relevant administrative officer or corresponding Control Unit. The crucial variable, they have found, is the fraction Ro/Rs, where Ro represents the amount of Reality which fails to reach the Control Unit, and Rs equals the total amount of Reality presented to the System. The fraction Ro/Rs varies from zero (full awareness of outside reality) to unity (no reality getting through). It is known, naturally enough, as the COEFFICIENT OF FICTION.
nickelcitymario 8y ago
I'm always baffled when I see the stuff employees complain about in SF. Not that they're wrong, but my experience is that these things are 100% standard across the board. I've never worked somewhere that I could openly call out my chief executives in front of the whole team and not expect that to be a thoroughly career limiting move. I've definitely never worked anywhere that I could organize protests and still expect to have a job by the end of the day. (I'm aware of unionized workplaces that do this on a semi-regular basis, but that's about it and you can bet that participation guarantees you won't be considered for joining management any time soon.) I hesitate to say y'all are entitled, because maybe you're right to be doing this. Maybe I'm jealous. I dunno. But I feel like at a minimum the people at these companies don't recognize how uncommonly privileged they are to even be able to voice their concerns like this. By all means, fight the good fight, but if you ever leave the valley... good luck to you.
- Latteland 8y ago
  Google works that way, with their TGIF discussion (moved to Thursday a few years ago so people in other time zones could watch it on Friday :-)).
- fipple 8y ago
  The fact is that the big tech companies are feeding at a trough of money that seems to be infinitely deep, but only a million or so people worldwide have the skills to build and implement Internet services at the billion-user scale. Until the money trough runs dry or the skills pool deepens, employees will still have the tech companies by the balls.
  - mathattack 8y ago
    This article contradicts that.
KKKKkkkk1 8y ago
A large part of the article is about the review/promotion system at Facebook, and it highlights that: -Facebook has twice-a-year performance reviews. -The reviews involve peer feedback, some of it blind to the reviewee. -Managers have quotas for performance categories. I believe those features are standard at most big US companies, with some exceptions like Microsoft. The consequences are (a) twice-a-year crunch time, (b) pressure to deliver bullshit results, (c) pressure to be popular, and (d) employees are incentivized to sabotage their peers.
JDiculous 8y ago
This is every job I've ever worked at, nothing about this is unique to Facebook. I'm glad this is actually getting attention though. At least it's a step towards getting this problem fixed. It's downright degrading that we have to (especially in the tech industry) pretend like we love everything about our jobs and being cogs in top-down authoritarian organizations.
gamechangr 8y ago
>The message was clear in August 2016 when the company laid off the editorial staff of its trending news team, shortly after some workers on that team leaked to the press that they were suppressing conservative-leaning stories. So - All the claims of censorship for conservative views. it's true then? I previously thought it was an excuse. How can we have a dialogue as a nation, if we don't allow opposite positions to speak?

69 points by _wldu 8y ago

May I recommend Dan Lyon’s Disrupted as a deep, touching, funny and horrifying portrayal of what startup culture can look like? It’s one of the best books I read last year.

jiveturkey 8y ago
ty! best tip of 2019! ... so far. ;)
johan_larson 8y ago
Facebook was started in 2004, so it's a good 15 years old now. It also has 30,000 employees. That's way to big and way too old to be a startup in any meaningful sense. It's a big and powerful, but young, company.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Its cultural roots go back to a startup, however.
  - munchbunny 8y ago
    By that standard, almost every company's cultural roots go back to a startup.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      So, such a period would be a sensible time and place to look in an examination of cultural factors. The fact that Facebook is still young means that those roots are closer in time than for other companies and would seem to make that more relevant.

strikelaserclaw 8y ago

Are there people who still believe the PR nonsense of big companies like Google and Facebook? At the end of the day by agreeing to work for these companies, you gain prestige, $$$, and maybe something interesting to work on, that is pretty much it and those are only offered to you because you bring in much more $$$ than you get in perks or $$$. If you are naive enough to think that these corporations are interested in anything but making money, you are sadly mistaken.

thatoneuser 8y ago
Well of course there are people that believe that. These multi billion dollar companies invest a lot of resources in promoting propaganda to make people believe it. Do you honestly think industries that rely on a keen ability to manipulate the masses can’t do that to potential employees too?
- strikelaserclaw 8y ago
  hell yea, in this era where knowledge workers are more valuable than pretty much anything else, it completely makes sense to do whatever it takes to appeal to them, and of course utilizing propaganda is just good business. Propaganda, it works on the stupid and smart alike, does not discriminate.
  - somenomad 8y ago
    I always used to question how people I worked with who are demonstratably much more intelligent than average could fall for things like this but then I realized I seem to have a unique set of circumstances in my life that kind of led me to question everything and be maybe more aware of propaganda than an average person. The more I've observed, traveled, interacted with people, etc the more I have realized people who are book smart are often highly susceptible to propaganda as they often will build up a mental image of the world from 3rd party sources, rather than first-hand experience, because they are so proficient at reading, analyzing, etc.
    - 8y ago

m0zg 8y ago

All big companies I worked at so far suppress internal dissent. It's just the nature of the beast. Your boss doesn't want her boss look bad, and she also doesn't want to look bad herself come review/promo time. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake. So all communication upward gets massaged with that in mind. By the time it gets through 5,6,7 layers of management "shit's bad" becomes "everything is awesome" even if the initial message gets out at all.

smacktoward 8y ago
The classic (and hilarious) book The Systems Bible (https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-Large/dp/0961825170 https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-Large/d...) has some deliciously tart words on this subject: We present the Fundamental Law of Administrative Workings (F.L.A.W.): THINGS ARE WHAT THEY ARE REPORTED TO BE... The net effect of this Law is to ensure that people in Systems are never dealing with the real world that the rest of us have to live in, but instead with a filtered, distorted, and censored version which is all that can get past the sensory organisms of the System itself... This effect has been studied in detail by a small group of dedicated General Systemanticists. In an effort to introduce quantitative methodology into this important area of research they have paid particular attention to the amount of information that reaches, or fails to reach, the attention of the relevant administrative officer or corresponding Control Unit. The crucial variable, they have found, is the fraction Ro/Rs, where Ro represents the amount of Reality which fails to reach the Control Unit, and Rs equals the total amount of Reality presented to the System. The fraction Ro/Rs varies from zero (full awareness of outside reality) to unity (no reality getting through). It is known, naturally enough, as the COEFFICIENT OF FICTION.

nickelcitymario 8y ago

I'm always baffled when I see the stuff employees complain about in SF. Not that they're wrong, but my experience is that these things are 100% standard across the board. I've never worked somewhere that I could openly call out my chief executives in front of the whole team and not expect that to be a thoroughly career limiting move. I've definitely never worked anywhere that I could organize protests and still expect to have a job by the end of the day. (I'm aware of unionized workplaces that do this on a semi-regular basis, but that's about it and you can bet that participation guarantees you won't be considered for joining management any time soon.) I hesitate to say y'all are entitled, because maybe you're right to be doing this. Maybe I'm jealous. I dunno. But I feel like at a minimum the people at these companies don't recognize how uncommonly privileged they are to even be able to voice their concerns like this. By all means, fight the good fight, but if you ever leave the valley... good luck to you.

Latteland 8y ago
Google works that way, with their TGIF discussion (moved to Thursday a few years ago so people in other time zones could watch it on Friday :-)).
fipple 8y ago
The fact is that the big tech companies are feeding at a trough of money that seems to be infinitely deep, but only a million or so people worldwide have the skills to build and implement Internet services at the billion-user scale. Until the money trough runs dry or the skills pool deepens, employees will still have the tech companies by the balls.
- mathattack 8y ago
  This article contradicts that.

KKKKkkkk1 8y ago

A large part of the article is about the review/promotion system at Facebook, and it highlights that: -Facebook has twice-a-year performance reviews. -The reviews involve peer feedback, some of it blind to the reviewee. -Managers have quotas for performance categories. I believe those features are standard at most big US companies, with some exceptions like Microsoft. The consequences are (a) twice-a-year crunch time, (b) pressure to deliver bullshit results, (c) pressure to be popular, and (d) employees are incentivized to sabotage their peers.

JDiculous 8y ago

This is every job I've ever worked at, nothing about this is unique to Facebook. I'm glad this is actually getting attention though. At least it's a step towards getting this problem fixed. It's downright degrading that we have to (especially in the tech industry) pretend like we love everything about our jobs and being cogs in top-down authoritarian organizations.

gamechangr 8y ago

>The message was clear in August 2016 when the company laid off the editorial staff of its trending news team, shortly after some workers on that team leaked to the press that they were suppressing conservative-leaning stories. So - All the claims of censorship for conservative views. it's true then? I previously thought it was an excuse. How can we have a dialogue as a nation, if we don't allow opposite positions to speak?