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"I think the comparison here to Enron is a bit of a stretch." Could you clarify why this is? I'm not trying to imply anything, certainly not that Facebook is E
by patrickk 16y ago
"I think the comparison here to Enron is a bit of a stretch."
Could you clarify why this is? I'm not trying to imply anything, certainly not that Facebook is Enron, just that (to me) they have similar attitudes to assigning staff to work duties. When I read the Facebook quote, I immediately thought of Skilling's quote.
It seems to me and many others here on HN that I've read over the last few months have problems with the way Facebook operate e.g. those who need to use their API to integrate with their own service, privacy concerns, spam, etc; and Facebook doesn't seem to address these issues at all. That was my ultimate point - how they address with these issues, and could the fact they are not dealt with in a timely manner actually be a symptom of letting engineers pick their own work?
- lbrandy 16y ago> Could you clarify why this is? I'm not trying to imply anything, certainly not that Facebook is Enron, just that (to me) they have similar attitudes to assigning staff to work duties. When I read the Facebook quote, I immediately thought of Skilling's quote. Let's see how I can put this. What you've just done is the business equivalent of Godwin's law. It would be like comparing US customs to the Nazis because, you know, both want to look at your papers. What makes Enron Enron isn't how they did staffing, it's how they cooked their books and defrauded people. Their name is synonymous with fraud and corruption, and so invoking them in conversation about similar staffing practices seems... misleading.
- Supermighty 16y agoCooking the books was the end result of an over-arching corporate culture. Part of which started with how they did staffing. If facebook is starting to go down this same road they might arrive at the same end.