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Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO
- heyadayo 17y ago"That’s reflected by Zuckerberg’s efforts to motivate each person according to what gets them excited: For engineers, that means giving them the best product to build, but for business executives, it means big financial incentives." Do engineers just need interesting technical problems to remain happy? If the engineers were motivated by big financial incentives, would they get them?
- icey 17y agoThat's a pretty good question. Speaking as an engineer, I would like to have FU money. But the reason I want FU money is so that I can always work on interesting technical problems instead of all the little crap that is also necessary in day-to-day work.
- gcheong 17y agoWhich is why most engineers are not CEO material. A CEO is someone who wants to provide vision, direction and leadership to a company long after the FU money is in the bank.
- icey 17y agoArguably as a CEO, you get a new set of interesting problems the moment you solve your last set of interesting problems.
- byrneseyeview 17y agoGiven that Zuck is their first engineer and largest shareholder, I'd say yes. The point wasn't that you don't have to pay engineers well -- just that technical challenges are a good way to inspire the right people. (Business people might be inspired by the chance to make big deals, but not so much by the chance to make difficult deals). It's also harder to measure the positive financial effects of smart engineering. If somebody saves a million dollars worth of hardware through some clever optimization, that's easy to calculate; if they reduce the time it takes to display a photo by 10%, that's important, but harder to calculate.
- redorb 17y agoI'm starting to feel like I won't make what I want, until I'm paying myself. If the owner of the company paid you 100% of the value (which is hard to measure) then he wouldn't have a interest in hiring you... (nothing left for him)
- rabidgnat 17y ago"Do engineers just need interesting technical problems to remain happy?" I landed a programming gig working on robotics projects, and working on interesting problems makes up for a world of sins :)
- csallen 17y agoAfter all the negative press constantly surrounding Zuckerberg, it's refreshing to hear something positive for once. And, as always, it's inspiring to see evidence that tech founders can potentially be great CEOs. I think the real value of this article is the info on Facebook's internal policies, though. Ranking people based on relative performance? Relentlessly replacing lack-luster employees? A focus on providing individual incentives? Sounds like a really good (though scary) environment for ensuring that people do their best work. It's well-known that big companies are much less efficient than their smaller counterparts, but this seems like a step in the right direction for closing that gap.
- vaksel 17y agosounds like a slave driver environment, if you ask me. It can't be good for morale, having people rotate through the company every month.
- unalone 17y agoIt depends on whose morale. I would love to work at a place that made an effort to place only brilliant people around me and that didn't tolerate less. Netflix works in the same way.
- ardit33 17y agoI agree. But if the guy next to you, working the same stuff as you, is paper worth 5mill more just b.c he started there 6 months earlier than you, then the equation changes.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- rokhayakebe 17y agoWell, you did not have to say yes to the job offer in the first place. Or next time join early.
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- ardit33 17y agoI saw Mark at the FB kitchen, when I was interviewing there back in 2007. I was being given a tour of the place, and was going to get some water. He was talking to some people, and I guess he noticed I recognized him, and just rolled his eyes. WTF, I didn't even talk to the guy or say anything. What a prick. Maybe he has matured some.
- MarkPNeyer 17y agoMaybe you misunderstood something; I wouldn't judge someone to be a prick based upon a such a brief nonverbal exchange.
- ardit33 17y agoI agree. But that was really dismissive. The only other billionaire I have met, was a lot nicer in public, even to people that he didn't know. But he also is alot older though.
- unalone 17y agoMark has a reputation for superb arrogance. Have you read the leaked emails he sent to the ConnectU people? They basically read, "It doesn't matter what you wanted, I have a better idea than you, and I won't waste my time trying to make you feel good about yourself." I actually recently interviewed a bestselling author in the middle of promoting his new movie, and he acted the same way. Perhaps I'm in the minority of people who really enjoy people like that. It takes courage to call somebody out on their shit, and when you do it makes life more pleasant for everybody else involved. However, as was said above: How do you know he wasn't rolling his eyes at what somebody said, and just happened to be looking around at the same time?
- sriramk 17y agoI used to think exactly like you but I've changed my mind now. I think there's a world of difference between being a jerk and being rude and telling people the truth. Or rather, one doesn't have to be a jerk to call people out on their BS. For example, Don Box (of SOAP, XML, etc fame) is the nicest guy you can meet. And he is super nice even when he is shredding people's arguments and seeing through their BS. I have no idea how Zuckerberg is in person though and wouldn't judge him from articles. But in general, there is no reason to be unpleasant just to be brutally honest.
- startingup 17y agoI attended a presentation he made some time ago, and came away really impressed. He has a remarkably clear vision, understands what not to do as much as what to do, and seems to know his own strengths and weaknesses. I agree - he is a remarkable CEO.
- Periodic 17y agoI attended a presentation by him I think two years ago at Startup Camp. I was rather unimpressed. He arrived and confessed he really hadn't given it much though, he hadn't prepared at all, and so launched into 45 minutes of rambling. Basically all his advice could be summed with, "Just do what I did." Obviously, the company has come a long way since then, and I doubt someone as smart as him wouldn't have learned a lot during that time. I hope that sometime soon I can see him again so I can change my impression.
- mrshoe 17y agoI would even sum up his advice as, "Do exactly the opposite of what these other smart people like Mitch Kapor have been telling you to do today." Of course, as you mentioned, he arrived just in time for his talk, so he didn't even know that he was directly contradicting the advice of previous speakers. He also scoffed at any form of testing when an audience member asked. I was beyond unimpressed. Hopefully he redeems himself this year.
- ujjwalg 17y agoIn short: If you are successful, you are remarkable!!! and I agree with vaksel completely: it sounds like a slave driven environment.
- Periodic 17y agoSlave labor can accomplish some amazing things. Almost every ancient wonder was created by slaves, and they stand out as colossal (pun intended) compared to other structures of the time. Some people are slaves by force, others by addiction, others by ambition. Some people thrive under that sort of pressure, others break down. I'm not sure where I'd stand. Also, there does tend to be a huge survivor bias in talking about startups. I suppose it's much easier to talk about the few successes than the many many failures.
- unalone 17y agoDid you read the article? It mentions how many different things he's tried and how much he's been criticized for his many failings. He's remarkable because he was willing to change his company and himself again and again till it worked.
- ujjwalg 17y agoI am definitely not trying to undermine what he has done. However, the article gist IMO is that when things were not going well, everyone was blaming him and finally when things are falling in place, everyone is giving credit to him. If facebook wont have grown the way it has in the last six months, the same people, who are identifying what he did as remarkable leadership qualities probably would be saying the exact opposite. So, in short, remarkable is proportional to how successful you have been.
- mlLK 17y agoAre there any Facebook employees/ex-employees here on HN? I've often wondered how many PHP developers they have on staff and how they manage deploying/integrating stuff in PHP for production.
- leftnode 17y agoI do not work for Facebook, nor have I ever, but they do have some pretty neat things PHP-wise on their open source section of the site. http://developers.facebook.com/opensource.php http://developers.facebook.com/opensource.php Particularly, Thrift is what they use to use PHP on the front end of the site to communicate to servers running C++ and Erlang environments. At least, thats what I've heard.
- ccheever 17y agohi. when i left in march, facebook had about 100 engineers writing primarily PHP code. the engineering team has continued to grow rapidly over the past few months so the number is probably close to 200 now.
- n-named 17y ago"""Zuckerberg insisted the goal was easily attainable. He took regular breaks throughout the day to do 10-15 pushups, even if he was in the middle of a meeting with visitors. He completed the 5,000.""" 5000 push-ups, one week = 715/day assuming 7 day week. That means 48 breaks per day of 15 push-ups. So assuming 12 hour days, 4 breaks per hour. So every 15 minutes he did 15 push-ups for a week?
- oakmac 17y agoThis goal is definitely attainable; it depends on your fitness level. I would have no problem doing 100 pushups every hour 8 times a day.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- georgekv 17y ago(Some napkin math...) If we assume he's awake 16 hours of the day, at 48 breaks a day, that's only 3 breaks an hour. With 10-15 pushups taking a minute or less to do, that's only 5 minutes or so an hour. For someone who possesses a great deal of drive in the rest of his life, this does not seem impossible.
- johnnybgoode 17y agoSo people had come to visit Facebook, and Zuckerberg would make them wait while he did pushups?
- CamperBob 17y agoCocaine, hell of a drug, etc.
- elblanco 17y agoThis was a great article. Zuckerberg has the reputation for being a first class prima donna douche-nozzle, with his hired execs stepping in to do damage control and actually run the company. But what impressed me in the article was that it showed he wasn't the simple tyrant who accidentally hit a gold mine his reputation makes him out to be, but is thoughtfully (though ruthlessly) trying to adapt and run his company. I came away colored impressed. I wouldn't want to work there, but I was still impressed.
- kburn 17y agoI don't know about all that. But it appears he's trying to use the same logic on his own ideas that he uses on his people.
- elblanco 17y agoExcept that if his people don't perform they loose their jobs and livelihoods. If he doesn't perform, he'll just stay on. And if he does get booted out somehow, he can just retire to a permanent life in a jacuzzi (my personal dream).
- bonsaitree 17y agoExcept that different yardsticks of measurement are required for "owners", "investors", and "employees" since they, by definition, have different areas of responsibility, and economic alignments based on nearly dichotomous ROI models. Total "compensation" should be based on salary relative to their areas of expertise cross-industry & the current strike price of any option grants relative to current valuations & vesting schedules. Based on the article, it not at all clear that Facebook is doing any of this. FWIW, those maxims apply to compensation strategies irregardless of company size, business model, or public/private status. I refer you to Warren Buffett's many communications on such matters over the years. Additionally, if anyone had similar access to the wealth, privilege, and social contacts as Mr. Zukerberg did during their childhood & adolescence, they'd better damn well be changing the world.
- preview 17y ago> Managers have to force-rank their employees. The more > Machiavellian managers make a point of telling their > employees where they stand. Haven't other articles (and other research) shown that force ranking is not an effective strategy? And if my manager regaled me with daily "ranking updates," I'd go insane. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html [Edit: added link to Dan Pink's TED Talk]
- csallen 17y agoInteresting talk. Usually when people are challenging conventional wisdom, it's not difficult for me to see where they're coming from. In this case, however, I find myself struggling to agree. Yes, there are benefits to autonomy, mastery, and purpose... but c'mon, isn't that blatantly obvious? Is anyone actually surprised that employees are more engaged when they're working on their own projects? Regarding the "candle problem" that Pink brings up, I'm not sure if easy-candle-problem vs hard-candle-problem is analogous to mundane-career vs challenging-career. The candle problem takes minutes or even seconds to solve: It's not difficult to see why those under pressure may jump into action prematurely, before considering multiple possibilities. The correct solution is non-obvious, so those who act the fastest actually perform the worst. In other words, the people with the higher incentives are actually working harder, but it's backfiring because this is a special case. I doubt employees at big companies run into this issue when offered incentives, as their projects take months/years to complete, not seconds. I haven't seen anything to suggest that incentives are ineffective. The "old" wisdom isn't wrong: people are willing to work harder for higher returns. If anything, incentives work too well. When poorly designed, they can actually go against the best interests of a company. If you tell ProgrammerJoe he'll get a raise for working quickly, then he's going to write craptastic code as fast as possible. If you tell him he'll get a raise for every new feature, then he's going to create a barrage of unnecessary and poorly-designed featured. By all means, dangle carrots in front of your rabbits. Just make sure you're leading them in the right direction.
- numair 17y agoEvery employee is rated on a scale from 1 to 5, with five being the highest. No one gets a five. If you get a 1 or a 2, you’re quickly shown the door. Related to that are the steady departures of early founders and executives. Two of them, Adam D’Angelo and Dustin Moskovitz, were Zuckerberg’s high-school and college friends, respectively. They weren’t forced out, but they burned out or realized they weren’t right for their jobs. Wow, what complete horseshit. Adam and Dustin were two of the most talented people Facebook had - they were the key to the engineering culture that made Facebook work in the first place. Half of Facebook's infrastructure and featureset either wouldn't exist or scale if it weren't for Adam's efforts, and Dustin was the guy who always rallied the troops... I really hope people don't take this article at face value. This reporter/blogger/whatever he calls himself is obviously trying to prime the pump for scoops and leaks, or to get someone to show up at his shitty conference, or something like that.
- ashu 17y agoSeconded for the first paragraph of this comment. No comment on the second one.
- dataman85 17y agoFunnily enough, Enron had the same system where if you scored towards the bottom you were quickly shown the door. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,129988,00.html http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,129988,00.h... Of course, most big companies have a employing rating system, but Enron was different because 10-15 % people were asked to leave every year.
- billjings 17y agoI'm pretty skeptical of the idea that harshly competitive environments have their value systems straight, but it bears mentioning that at Enron traders and deal makers were on the evaluation boards for the risk assessment group.
- mediaman 17y agoAbsolutely correct. Much of their demise can be traced back to their refusal to provide their risk control group any teeth.
- dasil003 17y agoGotta love the quote from the VC: “When I invested, I thought Mark was one in a million. Now I think Mark is maybe one in a trillion.” In other words, he thinks Mark may be the most extraordinary person ever to have lived.
- etherael 17y agoAnyone want to place odds on the chances of the speaker actually intending the sentence to mean precisely that? I'll start them at one in a trillion. :)
- sscheper 17y agoVenturebeat really is a shitty site. They regurgitate Mashable and TC's news
- rocken7 17y agoI love how he figured out business people require financial incentives to work hard, while engineers just want interesting projects? Man sick of this "engineers don't want money" meme, we always get ripped off.
- hackthisthing 17y agoDouble my salary and I will become an administrative management VB coder.
- quizzical 17y agoI'm sorry this article is silly hype. I think someone from Venture Beat would like a job at Facebook.