Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds plausible given Zuck's talk at startup school.
Is there a video/notes of that talk? What did he talk about?
His 2007 talk was awful. He basically said: hire young people only.
Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain
21–30 of 52 posts
Re: Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a video/notes of that talk? What did he talk about?
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.
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.
Re: Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook/Google comparisons always strike me as way off base. It's like comparing a Central Park (busy, no money) with Disneyland (busy, big money).
Central park isn't a business. If it were a for-profit venture, it would be fairly easy to monetize, purely because it's so popular.
"Central park isn't a business."
A lot of people don't think Facebook is a business either.
Re: Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain
#24I 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.
Re: Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain
#25This, 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...
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!
Re: Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain
#26To 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.
I would strongly disagree with this. I used to feel this way about Mark Zuckerberg, but not anymore. Just consider these observations about facebook: 1) When it started, there were already many social networks 2) Because it positioned itself as a social network for college students, it got the early growth and adoption any "social" website needs to survive 3) They've grown REALLY fast since then, and have started to…
> For someone who has consolidated power in a company that could rival Google
You're out of your mind.
Re: Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain
#27I 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.
Re: Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would strongly disagree with this. I used to feel this way about Mark Zuckerberg, but not anymore. Just consider these observations about facebook: 1) When it started, there were already many social networks 2) Because it positioned itself as a social network for college students, it got the early growth and adoption any "social" website needs to survive 3) They've grown REALLY fast since then, and have started to…
It's still trivially easy and often very enticing to bail out of Facebook entirely. I still don't see anything that Facebook is doing that successfully locks in customers, not even in the way that Amazon locks in book-buyers and certainly not in the way that Google becomes most people's default approach to Web search. Moreover, if every user loses money for Facebook, what's the financial model of the company? Even if…
It is not as easy as it seems. I use facebook because it easily allows me to see what is going on in a lot of people's lives. There are no huge technical or design hurdles to beating Facebook. The problems are social.
Only sites with a lot of users, like Myspace, could quickly become a threat to Myspace. Facebook has surpassed a critical mass of users, so they probably would have time to respond to any technical challenges.And Myspace seems to have a different and less successful focus than Facebook that would need to be changed. I don't really care about telling everyone who my top friends are, designing my page, or using Myspace as a blog. Basically, I just want to quickly and easily find out the major events in my friend's lives. It does not matter how brilliantly designed a site is, I cannot adequately meet my needs with a site until it has a good portion of my friends as users.
So to go against Facebook successfully, a company would need to start in an extremely small niche and grow, or provide value unrelated to social networking. It is a lot easier to reach critical mass in a very small niche. And if you aren't solely in social networking, people are going to be using your network before it provides decent social value.
Re: Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Central park isn't a business. If it were a for-profit venture, it would be fairly easy to monetize, purely because it's so popular.
> it would be fairly easy to monetize, purely because it's so popular. Why? Popularity as a free service doesn't necessarily imply that said popularity will be retained upon introduction of a monetary fee.
The monetization need not be direct (i.e. charging people to use the site). It could be better ad placement, a search engine that knows more about you than google does, monetary transactions (auctions, payments), as well as other stuff...
Like it or not, facebook has real utility (just like central park), and people are willing to pay for real utility in one way or another.
Re: Dissent Is Dead At Facebook, Employees Complain
#30To 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.
I would strongly disagree with this. I used to feel this way about Mark Zuckerberg, but not anymore. Just consider these observations about facebook: 1) When it started, there were already many social networks 2) Because it positioned itself as a social network for college students, it got the early growth and adoption any "social" website needs to survive 3) They've grown REALLY fast since then, and have started to…
What's the point of #6 if you don't do anything with that talent?