6 ms·

Josef Desimone, Facebook's executive chef, has died

58 points by paradiseall 13y ago

freehunter 13y ago
I just think about projects I benefit from and team members I've worked with and how this can happen at any moment. How differently the world seems when you take just one person out of it. Suddenly, everyone around you becomes the most important person to ever exist. My deepest condolences to the Desimone family and to everyone at Facebook.
sdfjkl 13y ago
Mark's grinning face right above this announcement bothers me for some reason: http://cl.ly/image/2k0p2v2A1U3t http://cl.ly/image/2k0p2v2A1U3t
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  it might be a decent (though seldom used) feature for these communication mediums to have (FB, G+, etc) to be able to hotswap your icon for just one message when the message is grave. many gmail users now have icons (gee thanks, G+), and I can imagine that this awkwardness happens frequently in death notice emails sent to family and friends. Swapping it with even a generic frown face icon might do.
  - chronomex 13y ago
    LiveJournal has that ... you can have several avatars and choose for every post and comment.
  - samstave 13y ago
    The ability to have a "tone profile picture" -- where you can have several pics and then pick the tone of a post....
  - samstave 13y ago
    I recall when a colleague I had worked with passed away suddenly and we were not yet connected on linkedin, and linkedin was sending me reminders to connect with her for months after she passed. I emailed support at linkedin and told them of the passing - never got a response - but the alerts eventually stopped... though I do not attribute their stopping to my email to them.
- Andys 13y ago
  Or how about the fact that thousands of people are "liking" the sad news.
  - Flowsion 13y ago
    They are not liking the sad news, they're liking Mark's words said about the sad news.
  - BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
    Just an unfortunate effect of Facebook's terminology (compared to, say, a Google +1, or an upvote). The intent is to promote and share the message, regardless of how it actually makes you feel.
soupboy 13y ago
According to http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/04/business/fi-chef4 http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/04/business/fi-chef4, Desimone worked for Google before Facebook. "As Google's first executive chef, Ayers hired Desimone in 2003 when Google was growing so fast that they cooked in the back of an 18-wheeler and served meals under tents." Quite an amazing journey. RIP.
godgod 13y ago
One good thing about his passing, at least Josef Desimone doesn't have to worry about Zuckerberg helping the NSA spy on him anymore.
67726e 13y ago
Perhaps I am just lacking some perspective here and someone could better inform me, and I don't mean to be "that guy" right now, but how does this really relate to the guideline of: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." I can understand when someone like Douglas Engelbart dies and HN is filled with stories about him, but what exactly has this chef done that makes him noteworthy on HN?
- cpncrunch 13y ago
  I agree with you. While it's sad that this person has died, it doesn't really seem newsworthy.
- CoachRufus87 13y ago
  Perhaps he's fed (or knew), at one point, many of the folks here on HN.
- untog 13y ago
  He worked at both Facebook and Google, so aside from anything else I have to assume that a good number of HN readers have benefitted from his cooking. Are developers now the only employees worth celebrating at tech companies?
  - 67726e 13y ago
    Maybe I'm just coming from a different perspective having only ever worked for a small company, but I don't exactly find a chef to be noteworthy, at least not in any technical sense. Let me put it another way, aside from the employees of Google or Facebook, what has this man done that would make him interesting to the rest of the people on this site? What did he do that makes him noteworthy? I'm sure he was a good man and all, but what does he matter to me? By all means, if there is something noteworthy, please let me know, otherwise why was this posted?
    - CoachRufus87 13y ago
nostromo 13y ago
I've always admired Google for elevating the role of chef to such unprecedented heights. But it also makes me wonder what other roles in these big companies could be elevated. (Random example, perhaps the cleaning staff.) When I was at Amazon circa 1999 rumor had it that the van driver we saw once a day (he delivered intra-office mail -- is that still a thing?) had at minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock options and maybe much more. Beyond being a tad jealous, it also made me happy that the company would think enough of the "support" staff to make sure they were given the same perks as everyone else, even if they were of a different magnitude.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  Compare to good old Zynga: "One Journal source said that Zynga executives were especially concerned with not creating a "Google chef" scenario." http://m.cnet.com/news/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-stock-or-youll-be-fired/57322150 http://m.cnet.com/news/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-stoc...

58 points by paradiseall 13y ago

I just think about projects I benefit from and team members I've worked with and how this can happen at any moment. How differently the world seems when you take just one person out of it. Suddenly, everyone around you becomes the most important person to ever exist. My deepest condolences to the Desimone family and to everyone at Facebook.

sdfjkl 13y ago

Mark's grinning face right above this announcement bothers me for some reason: http://cl.ly/image/2k0p2v2A1U3t http://cl.ly/image/2k0p2v2A1U3t

hkmurakami 13y ago
it might be a decent (though seldom used) feature for these communication mediums to have (FB, G+, etc) to be able to hotswap your icon for just one message when the message is grave. many gmail users now have icons (gee thanks, G+), and I can imagine that this awkwardness happens frequently in death notice emails sent to family and friends. Swapping it with even a generic frown face icon might do.
- chronomex 13y ago
  LiveJournal has that ... you can have several avatars and choose for every post and comment.
- samstave 13y ago
  The ability to have a "tone profile picture" -- where you can have several pics and then pick the tone of a post....
- samstave 13y ago
  I recall when a colleague I had worked with passed away suddenly and we were not yet connected on linkedin, and linkedin was sending me reminders to connect with her for months after she passed. I emailed support at linkedin and told them of the passing - never got a response - but the alerts eventually stopped... though I do not attribute their stopping to my email to them.
Andys 13y ago
Or how about the fact that thousands of people are "liking" the sad news.
- Flowsion 13y ago
  They are not liking the sad news, they're liking Mark's words said about the sad news.
- BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
  Just an unfortunate effect of Facebook's terminology (compared to, say, a Google +1, or an upvote). The intent is to promote and share the message, regardless of how it actually makes you feel.

soupboy 13y ago

According to http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/04/business/fi-chef4 http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/04/business/fi-chef4, Desimone worked for Google before Facebook. "As Google's first executive chef, Ayers hired Desimone in 2003 when Google was growing so fast that they cooked in the back of an 18-wheeler and served meals under tents." Quite an amazing journey. RIP.

godgod 13y ago

One good thing about his passing, at least Josef Desimone doesn't have to worry about Zuckerberg helping the NSA spy on him anymore.

67726e 13y ago

Perhaps I am just lacking some perspective here and someone could better inform me, and I don't mean to be "that guy" right now, but how does this really relate to the guideline of: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." I can understand when someone like Douglas Engelbart dies and HN is filled with stories about him, but what exactly has this chef done that makes him noteworthy on HN?

cpncrunch 13y ago
I agree with you. While it's sad that this person has died, it doesn't really seem newsworthy.
CoachRufus87 13y ago
Perhaps he's fed (or knew), at one point, many of the folks here on HN.
untog 13y ago
He worked at both Facebook and Google, so aside from anything else I have to assume that a good number of HN readers have benefitted from his cooking. Are developers now the only employees worth celebrating at tech companies?
- 67726e 13y ago
  Maybe I'm just coming from a different perspective having only ever worked for a small company, but I don't exactly find a chef to be noteworthy, at least not in any technical sense. Let me put it another way, aside from the employees of Google or Facebook, what has this man done that would make him interesting to the rest of the people on this site? What did he do that makes him noteworthy? I'm sure he was a good man and all, but what does he matter to me? By all means, if there is something noteworthy, please let me know, otherwise why was this posted?
  - CoachRufus87 13y ago

nostromo 13y ago

I've always admired Google for elevating the role of chef to such unprecedented heights. But it also makes me wonder what other roles in these big companies could be elevated. (Random example, perhaps the cleaning staff.) When I was at Amazon circa 1999 rumor had it that the van driver we saw once a day (he delivered intra-office mail -- is that still a thing?) had at minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock options and maybe much more. Beyond being a tad jealous, it also made me happy that the company would think enough of the "support" staff to make sure they were given the same perks as everyone else, even if they were of a different magnitude.

tlrobinson 13y ago
Compare to good old Zynga: "One Journal source said that Zynga executives were especially concerned with not creating a "Google chef" scenario." http://m.cnet.com/news/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-stock-or-youll-be-fired/57322150 http://m.cnet.com/news/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-stoc...