4 ms·

Mostly that they confused being successful with being good. Once you think everything you do is good because you're making money, you end up in pretty ridiculou

Mostly that they confused being successful with being good. Once you think everything you do is good because you're making money, you end up in pretty ridiculous places before you open your eyes and realize there was little correlation between what you THOUGHT matters and what actually does.

pb7 6y ago
What I’m hearing you say is that you know better than millions of consumers? Millions of people find value in the services that these companies provide and voluntarily exchange their disposable income for them. And here you are saying they’re wrong and you know better. Who are you to say these things?
- blobbers 6y ago
  He has a point. Millions of people use facebook. Millions of people use meth. Neither of things are good for you.
  - pb7 6y ago
    How clever! Grandma seeing pics of her grandchildren on the other side of the world is totally the same as a meth tweaker in Appalachia. Color me convinced.
    - tjr225 6y ago
      That is a misrepresentation of what people use facebook for. I assume you are fully aware of its negative use cases.
      - pb7 6y ago
        No, it’s not. 2.6 billion people use Facebook every month. The vast majority is used for good. The rest falls on malicious people, not Facebook. Facebook, like a hammer, is a tool. You can use it to build a house or you can use it to bash someone’s head in. Most people consider hammers to be pretty useful.
        Apocryphon 6y ago
        And to mix metaphors, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
        blobbers 6y ago
        Have there been any real studies on this? "The vast majority if used for good." Good for who? Good for what? And what "vast majority" are you alluding to?
    - luckydata 6y ago
      my point is actually agnostic from the positive or negative impact. My point is more "Facebook is doing great, so EVERYTHING Facebook does is great by definition". So hiring practices, engineering practices etc... Then you take a step back and realize a good half of whatever they are doing is completely useless and doesn't add anything to the bottom line. An interesting experiment I've done at a company I used to work at (I'm a product manager) was to take a graph of revenues, and ask the team if they could identify what the fluctuations or changes in slope were due to. Turns out almost nothing we had done in about a couple years changed a damn thing about our trajectory. We were doing well, not great, and nothing we did made a damn difference (actually something, but not as much as we thought). Long story short, if you work at Facebook you might think the secret sauce is how good you are at hiring, but considering the cost involved and the outcomes you would be better off just extracting resumes at random from a jar.
    - blobbers 6y ago
      I actually specifically believe this is a major problem with FB. Maybe if grandma seeing pics on the other side of the world wasn't a thing, people would be more in tune with keeping grandma living within driving distance. FB gives you the ability to live half lives. You think you have a connection to the people but the real connection is missing.
- asdff 6y ago
  What would you say to a consumer buying a pack of cigarettes? Not every business is benevolent. Tobacco knows 50% of its consumers will die from its product.
Nasrudith 6y ago
What good can be done by that which isn't successful in some way? And I including learning new from failure as a type of success. The goals may be noble but proverbially adding body number N+1 to the casualty pile by running into the poision gas leak doesn't do anybody good. Success is at least a precondition for effectual good.

pb7 6y ago

What I’m hearing you say is that you know better than millions of consumers? Millions of people find value in the services that these companies provide and voluntarily exchange their disposable income for them. And here you are saying they’re wrong and you know better. Who are you to say these things?

blobbers 6y ago
He has a point. Millions of people use facebook. Millions of people use meth. Neither of things are good for you.
- pb7 6y ago
  How clever! Grandma seeing pics of her grandchildren on the other side of the world is totally the same as a meth tweaker in Appalachia. Color me convinced.
  - tjr225 6y ago
    That is a misrepresentation of what people use facebook for. I assume you are fully aware of its negative use cases.
    - pb7 6y ago
      No, it’s not. 2.6 billion people use Facebook every month. The vast majority is used for good. The rest falls on malicious people, not Facebook. Facebook, like a hammer, is a tool. You can use it to build a house or you can use it to bash someone’s head in. Most people consider hammers to be pretty useful.
      - Apocryphon 6y ago
        And to mix metaphors, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
      - blobbers 6y ago
        Have there been any real studies on this? "The vast majority if used for good." Good for who? Good for what? And what "vast majority" are you alluding to?
  - luckydata 6y ago
    my point is actually agnostic from the positive or negative impact. My point is more "Facebook is doing great, so EVERYTHING Facebook does is great by definition". So hiring practices, engineering practices etc... Then you take a step back and realize a good half of whatever they are doing is completely useless and doesn't add anything to the bottom line. An interesting experiment I've done at a company I used to work at (I'm a product manager) was to take a graph of revenues, and ask the team if they could identify what the fluctuations or changes in slope were due to. Turns out almost nothing we had done in about a couple years changed a damn thing about our trajectory. We were doing well, not great, and nothing we did made a damn difference (actually something, but not as much as we thought). Long story short, if you work at Facebook you might think the secret sauce is how good you are at hiring, but considering the cost involved and the outcomes you would be better off just extracting resumes at random from a jar.
  - blobbers 6y ago
    I actually specifically believe this is a major problem with FB. Maybe if grandma seeing pics on the other side of the world wasn't a thing, people would be more in tune with keeping grandma living within driving distance. FB gives you the ability to live half lives. You think you have a connection to the people but the real connection is missing.
asdff 6y ago
What would you say to a consumer buying a pack of cigarettes? Not every business is benevolent. Tobacco knows 50% of its consumers will die from its product.

Nasrudith 6y ago

What good can be done by that which isn't successful in some way? And I including learning new from failure as a type of success. The goals may be noble but proverbially adding body number N+1 to the casualty pile by running into the poision gas leak doesn't do anybody good. Success is at least a precondition for effectual good.