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I've been at places where I would love to hear the CEO say that. Being forced to work with poor performers, lazy people, and people who deliver poor quality res

I've been at places where I would love to hear the CEO say that. Being forced to work with poor performers, lazy people, and people who deliver poor quality results is frustrating and demoralizing. Those kinds of people can stick around for years, especially in good times when the company is making so much money that leadership doesn't need to care. Netflix is one of the few large companies that has a culture of culling the herd even in good times, and I wish more large companies would take that approach.

tomuli38 4y ago
From what I understand, Netflix doesn't cull the herd — they get rid of good (but not excellent) performers too. The article is talking about actually cullung the herd and getting rid of the mediocre performers who previously could skate by.
- deeptote 4y ago
  Yeah true, but this coming from the likes of Facebook and Google, two companies well known for warehousing talent... it mostly just comes across as tone deaf and naive. For years they've literally hired very smart and capable people, and then shoehorned them into working on some ad-tech engine that an intern could do, just so they didn't work for a competitor. And now they're angry that their employees "don't work hard?" Holy fuck, for being Google, they sure have some idiots in leadership.
  - TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
    This sounds plausible, but I'd love to hear if others agree with this claim. Isn't this a failure of the free market? This leads to the obvious question, which is: what could be done to improve optimal talent distribution? It seems bad to society if rich companies can monopolize talent to control development and output in order to ensure greater political power and control.
    - paganel 4y ago
      > but I'd love to hear if others agree with this claim. I'm one of those that agree with that claim, I've said something similar a couple of times during the last few years on this forum (I remember that once I even used the term "golden handcuffs" in order to describe the whole situation). As to why and how this came to happen in relation to the free market? The short answer is that both Google and FB are de-facto monopolies. In a way that can also be extended to Apple and MS. Of course that these companies will make tons and tons of a money during a period when software is eating the world (I know it sounds marketing-ish, but it's the reality). As such, they can use that money to "park" the best developers available among their ranks, so that no real competitor can emerge.
      - chii 4y ago
        > they can use that money to "park" the best developers available among their ranks, so that no real competitor can emerge. i highly doubt they are really parking developers, because innovation that endangers those companies don't come from individual developers.
  - fathrowaway12 4y ago
    In addition to a surplus of great people, they have lots of mediocre people too, just like everywhere else. There may have been a time where this wasn't true, but now anyone who passes a day of tricky tech interviews is in, and that doesn't always correlate with good performance. At least that's my take having worked at Google.
    - deeptote 4y ago
      It's nice to hear someone admit that Google hires a lot of mediocre people. I'm also not shocked, their interview process invites people to gamify.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    The idea these firms hire people just to stop them going to competitors is popular on HN but I never saw any evidence of it when I was there. Trophy hires? Sure, occasionally, but they were all doing stuff for the company. And the idea there was some sort of policy is wrong. It may look like that from the outside though, because there was never a strong connection between hiring and need.
gofreddygo 4y ago
I do not want to be in a place where this kinda signaling goes top down from the CEO and is not abhorred by the ones doing the work. As a dev, being forced to first plan and then PROVE that I am NOT lazy, NOT a poor performer and my code is NOT the reason the product sucks is just breeding a CYA culture full of conflicts, closeness, suspicion and politics. The only one's who will survive this environment are not the ones whom you want to retain anyway. The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
intrestingstuff 4y ago
Yes, a very powerful move of Zuckerberg. Many people get offended by an aggressive CEO, but these CEO's end up with many more applications of ambitious candidates than they can employ.
austinjp 4y ago
It depresses me no end that someone can see poor performance, laziness etc only as a trait others possess, and not as a reaction to circumstance that they themselves might experience one day. I guarantee that anyone -- anyone -- can find themselves viewed as substandard. It's truly disturbing when Zuckerberg says something so dystopian, and people 'in the trenches' call for more.
- seizethecheese 4y ago
  Okay, so you think it’s all circumstantial? What’s the mix? Are there no people that just like to skate by?
  - austinjp 4y ago
    Nope. Don't know. Nope.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  Even if it is due to circumstances, I've never seen a lazy person become unlazy after intervention from management. Sample size .. perhaps 20? The best solution is to terminate them quickly. Zuck's attitude here is what I look for in leaders when considering whether to join a company. There is little that's more demoralizing than pulling someone's weight for years while management is too disorganized to fire them, or worse yet when management thinks that half of your output is actually the output of the person you've been carrying.
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    I've seen many turnarounds. I've seen others that just don't understand what's expected and will never turn around. I've seen folks sit on a team they hate for 3+ year cause they love the people but hated the work. I found that one a new team and they're very productive again, but they would have stayed unhappy and unproductive for years without intervention.
    - hackerlight 4y ago
lowbloodsugar 4y ago
Oh sweet summer child, they aren't saying that they are going to get rid of the poor performers. They've said they are going to turn up the heat. That means that the people, like yourself, who actually do the work, are going to face the heat. The poor performers have a skill: and that skill is keeping their jobs without doing any work. So you're the one that is going to have to do more work, and it is people like you who are going to get a clue and go work somewhere else. If you stay, you'll have an even bigger portion of the work to do.
- beowulfey 4y ago
  100% this. The only people who will leave when things get harder are those who respect themselves enough to not want to waste their time anymore (as they should)
titzer 4y ago
Poor performers are demotivating, yep. The challenge of a manager, and really, the whole management system, is making reasonable efforts to get employees back on track, if that's possible. I mentioned the life events thing because it's real. Sometimes a PIP (performance improvement plan) gives people a jolt and gets them back on track, sometimes not. It's the job of management to separate true under-performers from temporary ones and to find the best roles for members of the team. What Zuck wrote had none of the nuance or understanding that one would expect of someone with even a moderate amount of experience managing people. It's true that firing people is hard, which is probably why these companies should not have focused on eating the world so voraciously for the past N years.
- twblalock 4y ago
  Facebook has regular, systematic performance reviews and a PIP process like most large companies. Nobody is talking about firing people for temporary performance lapses.
  - titzer 4y ago
    Zuckerberg could have said some stuff like "I have confidence our existing performance evaluation processes will be able to handle productivity issues, with some adjustments", or some other bland but reassuring words, but he chose what he said.
    - twblalock 4y ago
      Yeah and he didn't say anything about firing people. He said people should choose to leave if they don't fit.
vsareto 4y ago
Biggest issue here are workaholics, over-achievers, and extremely talented people setting unhealthy standards for everyone else.

tomuli38 4y ago

From what I understand, Netflix doesn't cull the herd — they get rid of good (but not excellent) performers too. The article is talking about actually cullung the herd and getting rid of the mediocre performers who previously could skate by.

deeptote 4y ago
Yeah true, but this coming from the likes of Facebook and Google, two companies well known for warehousing talent... it mostly just comes across as tone deaf and naive. For years they've literally hired very smart and capable people, and then shoehorned them into working on some ad-tech engine that an intern could do, just so they didn't work for a competitor. And now they're angry that their employees "don't work hard?" Holy fuck, for being Google, they sure have some idiots in leadership.
- TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
  This sounds plausible, but I'd love to hear if others agree with this claim. Isn't this a failure of the free market? This leads to the obvious question, which is: what could be done to improve optimal talent distribution? It seems bad to society if rich companies can monopolize talent to control development and output in order to ensure greater political power and control.
  - paganel 4y ago
    > but I'd love to hear if others agree with this claim. I'm one of those that agree with that claim, I've said something similar a couple of times during the last few years on this forum (I remember that once I even used the term "golden handcuffs" in order to describe the whole situation). As to why and how this came to happen in relation to the free market? The short answer is that both Google and FB are de-facto monopolies. In a way that can also be extended to Apple and MS. Of course that these companies will make tons and tons of a money during a period when software is eating the world (I know it sounds marketing-ish, but it's the reality). As such, they can use that money to "park" the best developers available among their ranks, so that no real competitor can emerge.
    - chii 4y ago
      > they can use that money to "park" the best developers available among their ranks, so that no real competitor can emerge. i highly doubt they are really parking developers, because innovation that endangers those companies don't come from individual developers.
- fathrowaway12 4y ago
  In addition to a surplus of great people, they have lots of mediocre people too, just like everywhere else. There may have been a time where this wasn't true, but now anyone who passes a day of tricky tech interviews is in, and that doesn't always correlate with good performance. At least that's my take having worked at Google.
  - deeptote 4y ago
    It's nice to hear someone admit that Google hires a lot of mediocre people. I'm also not shocked, their interview process invites people to gamify.
- origin_path 4y ago
  The idea these firms hire people just to stop them going to competitors is popular on HN but I never saw any evidence of it when I was there. Trophy hires? Sure, occasionally, but they were all doing stuff for the company. And the idea there was some sort of policy is wrong. It may look like that from the outside though, because there was never a strong connection between hiring and need.

gofreddygo 4y ago

I do not want to be in a place where this kinda signaling goes top down from the CEO and is not abhorred by the ones doing the work. As a dev, being forced to first plan and then PROVE that I am NOT lazy, NOT a poor performer and my code is NOT the reason the product sucks is just breeding a CYA culture full of conflicts, closeness, suspicion and politics. The only one's who will survive this environment are not the ones whom you want to retain anyway. The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

intrestingstuff 4y ago

Yes, a very powerful move of Zuckerberg. Many people get offended by an aggressive CEO, but these CEO's end up with many more applications of ambitious candidates than they can employ.

austinjp 4y ago

It depresses me no end that someone can see poor performance, laziness etc only as a trait others possess, and not as a reaction to circumstance that they themselves might experience one day. I guarantee that anyone -- anyone -- can find themselves viewed as substandard. It's truly disturbing when Zuckerberg says something so dystopian, and people 'in the trenches' call for more.

seizethecheese 4y ago
Okay, so you think it’s all circumstantial? What’s the mix? Are there no people that just like to skate by?
- austinjp 4y ago
  Nope. Don't know. Nope.
hackerlight 4y ago
Even if it is due to circumstances, I've never seen a lazy person become unlazy after intervention from management. Sample size .. perhaps 20? The best solution is to terminate them quickly. Zuck's attitude here is what I look for in leaders when considering whether to join a company. There is little that's more demoralizing than pulling someone's weight for years while management is too disorganized to fire them, or worse yet when management thinks that half of your output is actually the output of the person you've been carrying.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  I've seen many turnarounds. I've seen others that just don't understand what's expected and will never turn around. I've seen folks sit on a team they hate for 3+ year cause they love the people but hated the work. I found that one a new team and they're very productive again, but they would have stayed unhappy and unproductive for years without intervention.
  - hackerlight 4y ago

lowbloodsugar 4y ago

Oh sweet summer child, they aren't saying that they are going to get rid of the poor performers. They've said they are going to turn up the heat. That means that the people, like yourself, who actually do the work, are going to face the heat. The poor performers have a skill: and that skill is keeping their jobs without doing any work. So you're the one that is going to have to do more work, and it is people like you who are going to get a clue and go work somewhere else. If you stay, you'll have an even bigger portion of the work to do.

beowulfey 4y ago
100% this. The only people who will leave when things get harder are those who respect themselves enough to not want to waste their time anymore (as they should)

titzer 4y ago

Poor performers are demotivating, yep. The challenge of a manager, and really, the whole management system, is making reasonable efforts to get employees back on track, if that's possible. I mentioned the life events thing because it's real. Sometimes a PIP (performance improvement plan) gives people a jolt and gets them back on track, sometimes not. It's the job of management to separate true under-performers from temporary ones and to find the best roles for members of the team. What Zuck wrote had none of the nuance or understanding that one would expect of someone with even a moderate amount of experience managing people. It's true that firing people is hard, which is probably why these companies should not have focused on eating the world so voraciously for the past N years.

twblalock 4y ago
Facebook has regular, systematic performance reviews and a PIP process like most large companies. Nobody is talking about firing people for temporary performance lapses.
- titzer 4y ago
  Zuckerberg could have said some stuff like "I have confidence our existing performance evaluation processes will be able to handle productivity issues, with some adjustments", or some other bland but reassuring words, but he chose what he said.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    Yeah and he didn't say anything about firing people. He said people should choose to leave if they don't fit.

vsareto 4y ago

Biggest issue here are workaholics, over-achievers, and extremely talented people setting unhealthy standards for everyone else.