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Facebook felt culturally incapable of building good enterprise software products. Which is weird for a company that makes 90%+ of its revenue B2B. I’m not sure

Facebook felt culturally incapable of building good enterprise software products. Which is weird for a company that makes 90%+ of its revenue B2B. I’m not sure it’s a bad thing, though. I’ve never seen an engineering-first enterprise software group. The business is just so sales-and-relationship driven. Look at Amazon: you can plot the enshittification of their retail business with the rise of AWS. That’s not coincidence, it’s culture.

gleenn 3y ago
I think people immediately cringe commingling their work and social lives. Personally I think it's a huge over-reach that Meta requires their employees use their personal account as their work one too, but maybe that's not true anymore?
- chihuahua 3y ago
  As far as I can recall, I did not use my personal FB account while working at Meta last year. Some tiny detail of it may have been imported somewhere, but I definitely had a totally different account for Workplace.
  - 1letterunixname 3y ago
    Contingent workers, that's possible. FTEs generally require an FB account to start the tech device provisioning process.
    - akawry 3y ago
      i don't think that's true anymore after project meiosis
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  There was recently a big memo about that. I have completely separate work and personal devices. (This was written on a personal device.) The only thing that goes in from personal -> work is music or random home office photos. The only things that go out from work -> personal are public résumé-level performance reviews, tax, and benefits information. Exceptions on work devices include Github and streaming services, but otherwise not much else should be co-mingled. Everything else stays in its own domain. (I don't use personal social media accounts so I'm the wrong target audience. Personal FB and Insta accounts are linked to work, and Github if you have one.)
  - gleenn 3y ago
    Are the accounts tied together though? Facebook still knows behind the scenes those are related accounts and that bothers me.
    - loeg 3y ago
      They don't have to be anymore (as of fairly recently).
  - brendank310 3y ago
    I'm always a little shocked when I see someone who isn't keeping personal and work devices (and accounts) very intentionally separate.
- loeg 3y ago
  They used to require linking a "personal" FB account as your employee account but recently (as in, like, 2021 or later) have a system that no longer requires this (including FTEs). Note that you could always create a throwaway personal FB account to be your employee account (and this is what I did).
morkalork 3y ago
Having been on the other end of that B2B relationship, it's not surprising at all. FB treats their paying clients (advertisers) like dog shit and so far they've only gotten away with it because of their dominant position in the social media advertising market. Trying to break into an established market with their current attitude is not gonna work.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  Oh really? Damn. Like an independent retailer or megacorp? Are there any specifics to DM me worth running up the flag pole?
  - morkalork 3y ago
    Ha haaaa. I'm sure mega-corps get a much better treatment.
  - zztop44 3y ago
    Once your spend is high enough to get an account rep things get ooookaay. But in general the ad tools are bloated, buggy and loaded with dark patterns. And have been from the beginning. Most serious advertisers and agencies use expensive third party tools that manage your ads using the advertising APIs. I don’t think it’s worth “running up the flagpole”.
    - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
      Agencies yes, most serious advertisers probably not. But even the b2b parts of Facebook are run like a b2ç business, because that's the culture.
1letterunixname 3y ago
There's 3 parts to the problem: 0. Lack of an enterprise sales org (think how VMware started or EDS or Perot Systems). I know an ex-Oracle sales guy who's itching to be an enterprise sales manager at Meta. 1. Lack of thoroughness in solving bugs and polish. Workplace video conferencing is damn good. Workplace the web and mobile apps have inconsistent and troublesome comment formatting bugs. I've sent task after task but they never get fixed. Basic things that should work don't. 2. Impact creates a cult that rewards new features while punishing better engineering and fixing things. (My neighbor works for AWS high up. They treat most of their employees with borderline abuse.)
riku_iki 3y ago
ads is totally enterprise product
mFixman 3y ago
They had Workplace, which was a fantastic product that got shelved externally when they couldn't get a big payout early in the project. It was the perfect Slack replacement for companies with over ~1000 employees, and I wish my current company was using it.
- VulgarExigency 3y ago
  I worked for a company that had both Slack and Workplace and... Workplace wasn't a Slack replacement at all? It felt like a separate instance of Facebook for our company. How would it act like a Slack replacement?
  - loeg 3y ago
    WP Chats could be vaguely similar to Slack -- there can be chats associated with a group, which is sort of like Slack named channels. But I agree it's not a perfect replacement.

gleenn 3y ago

I think people immediately cringe commingling their work and social lives. Personally I think it's a huge over-reach that Meta requires their employees use their personal account as their work one too, but maybe that's not true anymore?

chihuahua 3y ago
As far as I can recall, I did not use my personal FB account while working at Meta last year. Some tiny detail of it may have been imported somewhere, but I definitely had a totally different account for Workplace.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  Contingent workers, that's possible. FTEs generally require an FB account to start the tech device provisioning process.
  - akawry 3y ago
    i don't think that's true anymore after project meiosis
1letterunixname 3y ago
There was recently a big memo about that. I have completely separate work and personal devices. (This was written on a personal device.) The only thing that goes in from personal -> work is music or random home office photos. The only things that go out from work -> personal are public résumé-level performance reviews, tax, and benefits information. Exceptions on work devices include Github and streaming services, but otherwise not much else should be co-mingled. Everything else stays in its own domain. (I don't use personal social media accounts so I'm the wrong target audience. Personal FB and Insta accounts are linked to work, and Github if you have one.)
- gleenn 3y ago
  Are the accounts tied together though? Facebook still knows behind the scenes those are related accounts and that bothers me.
  - loeg 3y ago
    They don't have to be anymore (as of fairly recently).
- brendank310 3y ago
  I'm always a little shocked when I see someone who isn't keeping personal and work devices (and accounts) very intentionally separate.
loeg 3y ago
They used to require linking a "personal" FB account as your employee account but recently (as in, like, 2021 or later) have a system that no longer requires this (including FTEs). Note that you could always create a throwaway personal FB account to be your employee account (and this is what I did).

morkalork 3y ago

Having been on the other end of that B2B relationship, it's not surprising at all. FB treats their paying clients (advertisers) like dog shit and so far they've only gotten away with it because of their dominant position in the social media advertising market. Trying to break into an established market with their current attitude is not gonna work.

1letterunixname 3y ago
Oh really? Damn. Like an independent retailer or megacorp? Are there any specifics to DM me worth running up the flag pole?
- morkalork 3y ago
  Ha haaaa. I'm sure mega-corps get a much better treatment.
- zztop44 3y ago
  Once your spend is high enough to get an account rep things get ooookaay. But in general the ad tools are bloated, buggy and loaded with dark patterns. And have been from the beginning. Most serious advertisers and agencies use expensive third party tools that manage your ads using the advertising APIs. I don’t think it’s worth “running up the flagpole”.
  - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    Agencies yes, most serious advertisers probably not. But even the b2b parts of Facebook are run like a b2ç business, because that's the culture.

1letterunixname 3y ago

There's 3 parts to the problem: 0. Lack of an enterprise sales org (think how VMware started or EDS or Perot Systems). I know an ex-Oracle sales guy who's itching to be an enterprise sales manager at Meta. 1. Lack of thoroughness in solving bugs and polish. Workplace video conferencing is damn good. Workplace the web and mobile apps have inconsistent and troublesome comment formatting bugs. I've sent task after task but they never get fixed. Basic things that should work don't. 2. Impact creates a cult that rewards new features while punishing better engineering and fixing things. (My neighbor works for AWS high up. They treat most of their employees with borderline abuse.)

riku_iki 3y ago

ads is totally enterprise product

mFixman 3y ago

They had Workplace, which was a fantastic product that got shelved externally when they couldn't get a big payout early in the project. It was the perfect Slack replacement for companies with over ~1000 employees, and I wish my current company was using it.

VulgarExigency 3y ago
I worked for a company that had both Slack and Workplace and... Workplace wasn't a Slack replacement at all? It felt like a separate instance of Facebook for our company. How would it act like a Slack replacement?
- loeg 3y ago
  WP Chats could be vaguely similar to Slack -- there can be chats associated with a group, which is sort of like Slack named channels. But I agree it's not a perfect replacement.