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The word "efficiency" appears 20 times in this article. Yet not once does the author explain where all of the inefficiency - the layers, the fat, and the lethar
by Octokiddie 4y ago
The word "efficiency" appears 20 times in this article. Yet not once does the author explain where all of the inefficiency - the layers, the fat, and the lethargy - came from. Nor does he explain the logic of culling employees now.
These are not the words of someone who has learned lessons or who is interested in telling the truth.
So here's a hypothesis: Facebook is not a "technology company," it's an advertising company. And spending on advertising has cratered as businesses everywhere have pulled in their horns in response to their own falling revenues. Facebook lived large during the fake boom. It hired way too many people and a built a bloated, middle-heavy organization that is poorly-suited to the task ahead: taking back territory it's lost to smaller, nimbler competitors. Facebook management bought the economic lies being told hook, line, and sinker.
The party's now over and Facebook faces major headwinds, including savage competition, declining revenue, and the aftermath of a hiring orgy gone wrong.
- fatnoah 4y agoSome part of it was highlighted with the mention of an org chart that is both deep and sparse. Many managers had only 2-4 reports with the expectation that the org chart would fill out with hiring. Now that hiring has slowed dramatically, those levels won't fill out, so consolidation makes sense. There was also a lot of duplicative and overlapping work, which is mentioned as well.
- lapcat 4y ago> Yet not once does the author explain where all of the inefficiency "The author" is a bit of a strange way to refer to Mark Zuckerberg himself.
- world2vec 4y agoDo you really believe Zuckerberg wrote this by himself? He probably just signed it off.
- lapcat 4y agoBy himself? No. I don't think the precise authorship even matters. It is represented as coming from Zuckerberg, as an official company statement: "Mark Zuckerberg just shared the following with Meta employees". Zuck publicly endorsed it as his views on the matter, regardless of the pedantic details of who exactly wrote which sentences. I don't think it makes much sense to distinguish the author(s) from Mark. When the President of the United States gives a speech, you don't analyze the speech as if it were the views of the speechwriter(s). Of course the POTUS is just reading from a teleprompter, but the writers are hired by the POTUS to write for him, as is the case with Zuckerberg too.
- whalesalad 4y ago> So here's a hypothesis: Facebook is not a "technology company," it's an advertising company. Hypothesis? They've been an ad company for a long time.
- zmmmmm 4y ago> not once does the author explain where all of the inefficiency ... came from I think you need to RTFA ... it covers all those areas in great detail ... it's is one of the most detailed such posts I've ever seen like this.
- cbb330 4y agoDefinitely agree. I’be never read a post from CEO level explaining very specific reasons and goals for their actions. I’m betting on Zuck here, and wish I could get this same level of specificity at my company.
- barbariangrunge 4y agoLook at the section on being lean. He talks about that a lot
- rchaud 4y agoTo paraphrase Steve Ballmer: "investors, investors investors". The 'efficiency' here is slashing operational expenses to boost earnings per share. That is a temporary boost, but one that can be repeated a few times.