6 ms·

Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain

85 points by gamache 18y ago

jskopek 18y ago
Acting as devil's advocate here, there isn't much evidence behind these 'explanations'. It's quite possible that Zuckerberg is loosing his edge, but this article paints him in a way that's damn close to slander.
- Alex3917 18y ago
  Sounds plausible given Zuck's talk at startup school.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Is there a video/notes of that talk? What did he talk about?
    - plusbryan 18y ago
      Alex may be referring to Zuck's talk two years ago where he spent 99% of his time on stage telling people in the audience how young people are better hires than 'old' people. It was bizarre to say the least.
      - banned_man 18y ago
        To be fair, I would imagine the average quality in the pool of 30+ year olds willing to work for Mark Zuckerberg is probably not representative of the age group as a whole, unless they're paid really well.
    - banned_man 18y ago
      His 2007 talk was awful. He basically said: hire young people only.
      - icefox 18y ago
        Who will mentor them?
      - bigboote 18y ago
        It was a little more nuanced than that. The point was that young people were willing to take risks because they had little to lose and no responsibilities. He mentioned that (at the time) he slept on a mattress on the floor, so he wouldn't be trapped by possessions and paralyzed by fear of losing everything. People with mortgages and retirement plans are (rationally) conservative, and they won't take big gambles with the company. You have to admire his commitment.
        palish 18y ago
        I was there for Zuck's talk in 2006. It was pretty terrible. He came off sounding like an arrogant jerk. What you are saying is true. But it is unrelated to what is being said. What we're saying is, Zuck needs to drink less of his own kool-aid and start caring about people other than himself. I admire his commitment, but it's a shame that he doesn't recognize, or isn't thankful for, the large amount of luck that played a role in Facebook's success. If he had attacked the problem of "MySpace, but better" at a different school, or in a different way, or any number of things, then Facebook wouldn't be what it is today. If he's acting like Jobs, he's premature. At least Jobs' company was very profitable in the early days. Also, I just left a company run by a Jobs/Zuckerberg type; good sense of design, but very controlling, and needlessly so. I don't envy Facebook employees. There is more to life than working for the arrogant.
        unalone 18y ago
        At least Jobs' company was very profitable in the early days. Brush up on your Apple history. Jobs was fired because he was running his company into a financial mire thanks to his over-the-top idealism. I don't envy Facebook employees. There is more to life than working for the arrogant. They chose where to work. Just like Apple employees chose. If you're not the sort of person who works well under a very brilliant, very arrogant man, you're allowed to find other places to work.
dtap 18y ago
To me, this seems like the start of the decline of facebook. Gideon Yu's work has been stellar with Youtube and getting that $15B valuation. The reason may be the board and not Mark. That being said he doesn't have the it factor I see in a lot of successful CEOs.
- unalone 18y ago
  The "It" factor? Have you read anything about his past? Or read what he's written? He started a company in high school that Microsoft offered to buy just to land him as an employee. That's pretty impressive. It doesn't matter, because we'll criticize anybody who isn't Steve Jobs for thinking they're Steve Jobs, but Zuckerberg is largely responsible for Facebook's formation, from what I've read, and for all his criticism he's managed to get a hell of a lot done for his company. So I'm willing to give him a chance and see if he's as good as he thinks he is - and failing that, if he falls I'll hope he pulls an SJ and comes back in 10 years with something even better.
  - dtap 18y ago
    Most of his writings are him trying to assuage his users after making them very upset (redesigns, terms, newsfeed). He just doesn't impress me on a personal level. And he still hasn't effectively monetized. Having just heard about Sam Altman a few days ago I am already much more impressed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m43t44WL8-w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m43t44WL8-w
    - unalone 18y ago
      You can't judge Zuckerberg by his Facebook blog. The guy is a complete recluse. Yeah, all he writes is apologies, because he can delegate everything else. But try to find some of the leaked letters he wrote people that he tries to suppress for privacy. Reading them you get the image of an extraordinarily focused mind. He's arrogant, but if you can judge people on the confidence of their writing alone the guy is pretty brilliant. I saw Altman's speech and was pretty impressed. He doesn't dick around. He's also a more confident speaker than Zuckerberg. But with respect to him, Facebook is better designed (Loopt is horrendously generic), and it's done more to change the web than most web sites. The Facebook Platform changed a lot. Making money isn't the only part of design.
wolfish 18y ago
I'm not an avid reader of businessinsider.com. Anyone have any insight into whether that title is meant to be a joke?
- tigerthink 18y ago
  No. The story is about how Mark Zuckerberg suppresses dissent.
banned_man 18y ago
This, uhh, has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but does anyone know if there's a way (synthetically, perhaps) to short an IPO? I repeat this has, umm, nothing to do with any particular company. Yeah. Just so you don't try to copy my trading strategy. I repeat: nothing to do with, um, any particular stock. I'm just asking a technical question about shorting IPOs, now or in the future. Yeah...
- zandorg 18y ago
  It depends on volatility. I'd guess Facebook stock would shoot high and take months to come down. Google's hasn't come down. Your downside is unlimited. Just a warning!
  - banned_man 18y ago
    Shorting an IPO is actually stupid regardless of volatility. Investment banks tend to underprice IPOs by about 10-15% on average, and intentionally so. This makes allocation a favor, because of the obvious expectancy in being in on one. However, the company ends up being undercapitalized for the amount of equity given up. It's utterly sleazy, but it's business as usual on Wall Street. This also means that if you're not on a bank's favorite clients list, you don't want to be involved with IPOs, because you're only going to be able to get in on the crappy ones. The concept of shorting Facebook is somewhat of a joke, because of that. I'm no fan of Mark Zuckerberg, but I wouldn't actually claim to know better than the market what the company's worth. That said, if there were a way to have shorted some share of the company at $15B when Microsoft bought in, that would have been awesome.
- patio11 18y ago
  short an IPO Buy put options on the underlying stock. This gives you the right, but not the obligation, to force a sale of stock at the strike price. Say you have a hot Internet IPO which debuts at $10. People assume it will follow the Google trajectory and be worth hundreds within a few years. You can buy puts at $10 for a year from now -- this would entitle you to sell any shares you held at $10, regardless of what the price is. If a hypothetical counterparty believes that the price is going to increase, writing this option (promising to buy X shares from you at the price of $10 from you a year from now if you ask for it, in return for cash money today) is like printing free money: you'll probably let the option expire without acting on it, and otherwise they get the stock they want anyhow. Now examine what happens if the stock tanks to, say, $2 over the year: your options entitled you to sell X shares at $10 apiece, regardless of the market price of the stock. You can thus buy the stock on the open market ($2 per share) and exercise the option (selling at $10 per share), netting $8 a share minus commissions minus the premium you paid for the option in the first place. (In actual practice, since you can SELL the put option and it has high "intrinsic value" near expiration in that scenario, you don't actually have to ever become an owner of the underlying stock.) But what if the price balloons to $20? Clearly, you don't want to buy at $20 and then sell the same day at $10. That's the beauty of puts, though: you don't have to. You just walk away from your options, which expire worthless. You are never at risk, in this strategy, of losing more money than you spent on acquiring the puts in the first place. This contrasts favorably to the standard short sale, which has unlimited downside risk.
zandorg 18y ago
I saw a Zuckerberg video from Dec 2007, and contrasted that with his recent Oprah interview. He's gone from cool tech head to some kind of semi-comedian (to whom owning a credit card is big news) in just over a year.
scottdw2 18y ago
I can't comment specifically about Facebook, because I don't know much about its internals. But, there is one thing I can comment on. The role of any Software Company CEO is to create a system that translates brain waves into dollars. That's what software companies do. Creating software isn't like creating a car. It's about generating "abstract ideas" that can be understood by a computer and are useful to humans. You take smart people, give them the environment they need to do great work, and say "ok, now think me up some software". Discouraging dissent, in general, is equivalent to turning off brain waves. The thing about smart people is that they have ideas. A lot of them. By definition, thinking is what smart people do best. In a software company those are the kind of people you want, because that's what you are selling: re-packaged thoughts. When you say "this is the way we are going to do things, because I'm the boss and I know best, so please don't come to me with reasons why this might not be good, instead just shut up and do what I so, or else go away" you are explicitly encouraging people to not think. Encouraging people in your software company not to think is stupid. It's encouraging them not to produce the one thing you need them to produce in order to make money. I'm not saying you want a democracy. The CEO, at the end of the day, is responsible for the company's performance. He's the one who makes the decisions. But, being responsible for the company's performance means the "burden of greatness" is on you. If you hear a voice of dissent, it's not the dissenter's responsibility to prove her case. It's your responsibility to listen to what she has to say, and figure out if there's any hidden merit to it. The goal is to build a profitable business, not to be a powerful executive. Leave your ego at the door. If the person who is suggesting "maybe there is a better way" had a perfect, well crafted message, that seemed obvious and completely brilliant, why on earth would she bring it to you. She could just take her perfectly formed product to the market and wipe the floor with you. You are the boss precisely for one reason: because you can take other people's brain waves and convert them into money. Because of this, your goal should be to get the people who work with you to generate as much brain wave activity as possible. That means encouraging dissent. If you aren't doing that, then you are not leading. So, if this is happening at Facebook, then it's a shame.
bbuffone 18y ago
Contention brings integrity to the design process. It's not the positive or critical things that are said in meetings that will harm a company. It's the things that aren't said that will eat away the core of a company. When things that should be said aren't; there are typically a few reasons. 1.) the person isn't capable of leading 2.) the person is passive aggressive and will use there dissenting opinion in a private and undermine way. 3.) they already said the same thing many times and have had no luck in getting their opinion across.

85 points by gamache 18y ago

Acting as devil's advocate here, there isn't much evidence behind these 'explanations'. It's quite possible that Zuckerberg is loosing his edge, but this article paints him in a way that's damn close to slander.

Alex3917 18y ago
Sounds plausible given Zuck's talk at startup school.
- unalone 18y ago
  Is there a video/notes of that talk? What did he talk about?
  - plusbryan 18y ago
    Alex may be referring to Zuck's talk two years ago where he spent 99% of his time on stage telling people in the audience how young people are better hires than 'old' people. It was bizarre to say the least.
    - banned_man 18y ago
      To be fair, I would imagine the average quality in the pool of 30+ year olds willing to work for Mark Zuckerberg is probably not representative of the age group as a whole, unless they're paid really well.
  - banned_man 18y ago
    His 2007 talk was awful. He basically said: hire young people only.
    - icefox 18y ago
      Who will mentor them?
    - bigboote 18y ago
      It was a little more nuanced than that. The point was that young people were willing to take risks because they had little to lose and no responsibilities. He mentioned that (at the time) he slept on a mattress on the floor, so he wouldn't be trapped by possessions and paralyzed by fear of losing everything. People with mortgages and retirement plans are (rationally) conservative, and they won't take big gambles with the company. You have to admire his commitment.
      - palish 18y ago
        I was there for Zuck's talk in 2006. It was pretty terrible. He came off sounding like an arrogant jerk. What you are saying is true. But it is unrelated to what is being said. What we're saying is, Zuck needs to drink less of his own kool-aid and start caring about people other than himself. I admire his commitment, but it's a shame that he doesn't recognize, or isn't thankful for, the large amount of luck that played a role in Facebook's success. If he had attacked the problem of "MySpace, but better" at a different school, or in a different way, or any number of things, then Facebook wouldn't be what it is today. If he's acting like Jobs, he's premature. At least Jobs' company was very profitable in the early days. Also, I just left a company run by a Jobs/Zuckerberg type; good sense of design, but very controlling, and needlessly so. I don't envy Facebook employees. There is more to life than working for the arrogant.
        unalone 18y ago
        At least Jobs' company was very profitable in the early days. Brush up on your Apple history. Jobs was fired because he was running his company into a financial mire thanks to his over-the-top idealism. I don't envy Facebook employees. There is more to life than working for the arrogant. They chose where to work. Just like Apple employees chose. If you're not the sort of person who works well under a very brilliant, very arrogant man, you're allowed to find other places to work.

dtap 18y ago

To me, this seems like the start of the decline of facebook. Gideon Yu's work has been stellar with Youtube and getting that $15B valuation. The reason may be the board and not Mark. That being said he doesn't have the it factor I see in a lot of successful CEOs.

unalone 18y ago
The "It" factor? Have you read anything about his past? Or read what he's written? He started a company in high school that Microsoft offered to buy just to land him as an employee. That's pretty impressive. It doesn't matter, because we'll criticize anybody who isn't Steve Jobs for thinking they're Steve Jobs, but Zuckerberg is largely responsible for Facebook's formation, from what I've read, and for all his criticism he's managed to get a hell of a lot done for his company. So I'm willing to give him a chance and see if he's as good as he thinks he is - and failing that, if he falls I'll hope he pulls an SJ and comes back in 10 years with something even better.
- dtap 18y ago
  Most of his writings are him trying to assuage his users after making them very upset (redesigns, terms, newsfeed). He just doesn't impress me on a personal level. And he still hasn't effectively monetized. Having just heard about Sam Altman a few days ago I am already much more impressed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m43t44WL8-w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m43t44WL8-w
  - unalone 18y ago
    You can't judge Zuckerberg by his Facebook blog. The guy is a complete recluse. Yeah, all he writes is apologies, because he can delegate everything else. But try to find some of the leaked letters he wrote people that he tries to suppress for privacy. Reading them you get the image of an extraordinarily focused mind. He's arrogant, but if you can judge people on the confidence of their writing alone the guy is pretty brilliant. I saw Altman's speech and was pretty impressed. He doesn't dick around. He's also a more confident speaker than Zuckerberg. But with respect to him, Facebook is better designed (Loopt is horrendously generic), and it's done more to change the web than most web sites. The Facebook Platform changed a lot. Making money isn't the only part of design.

wolfish 18y ago

I'm not an avid reader of businessinsider.com. Anyone have any insight into whether that title is meant to be a joke?

tigerthink 18y ago
No. The story is about how Mark Zuckerberg suppresses dissent.

banned_man 18y ago

This, uhh, has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but does anyone know if there's a way (synthetically, perhaps) to short an IPO? I repeat this has, umm, nothing to do with any particular company. Yeah. Just so you don't try to copy my trading strategy. I repeat: nothing to do with, um, any particular stock. I'm just asking a technical question about shorting IPOs, now or in the future. Yeah...

zandorg 18y ago
It depends on volatility. I'd guess Facebook stock would shoot high and take months to come down. Google's hasn't come down. Your downside is unlimited. Just a warning!
- banned_man 18y ago
  Shorting an IPO is actually stupid regardless of volatility. Investment banks tend to underprice IPOs by about 10-15% on average, and intentionally so. This makes allocation a favor, because of the obvious expectancy in being in on one. However, the company ends up being undercapitalized for the amount of equity given up. It's utterly sleazy, but it's business as usual on Wall Street. This also means that if you're not on a bank's favorite clients list, you don't want to be involved with IPOs, because you're only going to be able to get in on the crappy ones. The concept of shorting Facebook is somewhat of a joke, because of that. I'm no fan of Mark Zuckerberg, but I wouldn't actually claim to know better than the market what the company's worth. That said, if there were a way to have shorted some share of the company at $15B when Microsoft bought in, that would have been awesome.
patio11 18y ago
short an IPO Buy put options on the underlying stock. This gives you the right, but not the obligation, to force a sale of stock at the strike price. Say you have a hot Internet IPO which debuts at $10. People assume it will follow the Google trajectory and be worth hundreds within a few years. You can buy puts at $10 for a year from now -- this would entitle you to sell any shares you held at $10, regardless of what the price is. If a hypothetical counterparty believes that the price is going to increase, writing this option (promising to buy X shares from you at the price of $10 from you a year from now if you ask for it, in return for cash money today) is like printing free money: you'll probably let the option expire without acting on it, and otherwise they get the stock they want anyhow. Now examine what happens if the stock tanks to, say, $2 over the year: your options entitled you to sell X shares at $10 apiece, regardless of the market price of the stock. You can thus buy the stock on the open market ($2 per share) and exercise the option (selling at $10 per share), netting $8 a share minus commissions minus the premium you paid for the option in the first place. (In actual practice, since you can SELL the put option and it has high "intrinsic value" near expiration in that scenario, you don't actually have to ever become an owner of the underlying stock.) But what if the price balloons to $20? Clearly, you don't want to buy at $20 and then sell the same day at $10. That's the beauty of puts, though: you don't have to. You just walk away from your options, which expire worthless. You are never at risk, in this strategy, of losing more money than you spent on acquiring the puts in the first place. This contrasts favorably to the standard short sale, which has unlimited downside risk.

zandorg 18y ago

I saw a Zuckerberg video from Dec 2007, and contrasted that with his recent Oprah interview. He's gone from cool tech head to some kind of semi-comedian (to whom owning a credit card is big news) in just over a year.

scottdw2 18y ago

I can't comment specifically about Facebook, because I don't know much about its internals. But, there is one thing I can comment on. The role of any Software Company CEO is to create a system that translates brain waves into dollars. That's what software companies do. Creating software isn't like creating a car. It's about generating "abstract ideas" that can be understood by a computer and are useful to humans. You take smart people, give them the environment they need to do great work, and say "ok, now think me up some software". Discouraging dissent, in general, is equivalent to turning off brain waves. The thing about smart people is that they have ideas. A lot of them. By definition, thinking is what smart people do best. In a software company those are the kind of people you want, because that's what you are selling: re-packaged thoughts. When you say "this is the way we are going to do things, because I'm the boss and I know best, so please don't come to me with reasons why this might not be good, instead just shut up and do what I so, or else go away" you are explicitly encouraging people to not think. Encouraging people in your software company not to think is stupid. It's encouraging them not to produce the one thing you need them to produce in order to make money. I'm not saying you want a democracy. The CEO, at the end of the day, is responsible for the company's performance. He's the one who makes the decisions. But, being responsible for the company's performance means the "burden of greatness" is on you. If you hear a voice of dissent, it's not the dissenter's responsibility to prove her case. It's your responsibility to listen to what she has to say, and figure out if there's any hidden merit to it. The goal is to build a profitable business, not to be a powerful executive. Leave your ego at the door. If the person who is suggesting "maybe there is a better way" had a perfect, well crafted message, that seemed obvious and completely brilliant, why on earth would she bring it to you. She could just take her perfectly formed product to the market and wipe the floor with you. You are the boss precisely for one reason: because you can take other people's brain waves and convert them into money. Because of this, your goal should be to get the people who work with you to generate as much brain wave activity as possible. That means encouraging dissent. If you aren't doing that, then you are not leading. So, if this is happening at Facebook, then it's a shame.

bbuffone 18y ago

Contention brings integrity to the design process. It's not the positive or critical things that are said in meetings that will harm a company. It's the things that aren't said that will eat away the core of a company. When things that should be said aren't; there are typically a few reasons. 1.) the person isn't capable of leading 2.) the person is passive aggressive and will use there dissenting opinion in a private and undermine way. 3.) they already said the same thing many times and have had no luck in getting their opinion across.