Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO • Hacker News Board

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

#51

Post by TomOfTTB » Fri, Oct 02, 2009, 9:13 PM UTC

darklighter3 wrote: post #46

csallen wrote: post #3

After 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 i…

Maybe. These policies can be a double-edged sword. It really depends upon how they are implemented. Most of the ranking systems - and it sounds like Facebook's - rely on the immediate manager to do the ranking and the manager has a lot of leverage. It can become arbitrary. It can often come down to how much your manager likes you (outside of your productivity) or managers protecting turf. Enron had a system like this…

I agree with you for the most part but really any business innovation, no matter how smart it is, will be screwed up if you have bad managers. Managers implement business strategy just like construction workers implement home architectural designs. If you have a crappy contractor it doesn't matter how good the blue prints are it's going to screw up your house. Same with bad managers.

So you can't really blame a policy when it gets screwed up by bad management.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

#52

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 02, 2009, 9:17 PM UTC

ivankirigin wrote: post #32

vaksel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh please, it's facebook, not Google, their "cool" projects involve translating the site into pirate and latin languages. + with ~1000 employees, chances are you as a programmer are most likely doing mundane crap. The "extremely smart and focused" people don't take well to having to do bullshit projects.

you have no idea what you're talking about

[deleted]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

#53

Post by numair » Fri, Oct 02, 2009, 9:32 PM UTC

Every 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.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

#54

Post by dschobel » Fri, Oct 02, 2009, 9:35 PM UTC

vaksel wrote: post #28

ivankirigin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is nothing like a "slave driver" environment. People are extremely smart and focused on building cool things fast - top to bottom.

oh please, it's facebook, not Google, their "cool" projects involve translating the site into pirate and latin languages. + with ~1000 employees, chances are you as a programmer are most likely doing mundane crap. The "extremely smart and focused" people don't take well to having to do bullshit projects.

I can imagine infrastructure alone would be a lifetime of awesome projects at FB.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

#55

Post by dschobel » Fri, Oct 02, 2009, 9:39 PM UTC

brewski wrote: post #18

csallen wrote: post #3

After 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 i…

I once heard Enron used a similar strategy, although I can't recall the source. They would annually cut their most "unproductive" employees. It turned out that those who remained knew how to work the system and to win at any cost. Hopefully Facebook will fare better.

Jack Welsh was doing this during his time at GE. The bottom 10% of the workforce would be let go every year.

It's simply an alternative employment strategy to Google's attempts at early optimization (making it hard as hell to get in) which they even concede produces a lot of false negatives.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

#56

Post by ashu » Fri, Oct 02, 2009, 9:55 PM UTC

numair wrote: post #53

Every 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…

Seconded for the first paragraph of this comment. No comment on the second one.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

#57

Post by darklighter3 » Fri, Oct 02, 2009, 9:58 PM UTC

TomOfTTB wrote: post #51

darklighter3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. These policies can be a double-edged sword. It really depends upon how they are implemented. Most of the ranking systems - and it sounds like Facebook's - rely on the immediate manager to do the ranking and the manager has a lot of leverage. It can become arbitrary. It can often come down to how much your manager likes you (outside of your productivity) or managers protecting turf. Enron had a system like this…

I agree with you for the most part but really any business innovation, no matter how smart it is, will be screwed up if you have bad managers. Managers implement business strategy just like construction workers implement home architectural designs. If you have a crappy contractor it doesn't matter how good the blue prints are it's going to screw up your house. Same with bad managers. So you can't really blame a polic…

Well yes but I think it has more to do with the incentives that are placed before people. As an organization gets larger it gets harder to tell who really contributes what. It also gets harder to socially police people who are attempting to game the system. If some people are successful gaming the system others are incentivized to do so as well. It can be easy to label a sub-optimal outcome as bad management but those managers usually aren't dumb. They usually have perfectly rational reasons for the things they do - it's just not what the policy designers had in mind.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

#58

Post by physcab » Fri, Oct 02, 2009, 9:58 PM UTC

vaksel wrote: post #28

ivankirigin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is nothing like a "slave driver" environment. People are extremely smart and focused on building cool things fast - top to bottom.

oh please, it's facebook, not Google, their "cool" projects involve translating the site into pirate and latin languages. + with ~1000 employees, chances are you as a programmer are most likely doing mundane crap. The "extremely smart and focused" people don't take well to having to do bullshit projects.

Hive is a pretty sweet project and also super useful.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

#59

Post by agripa » Fri, Oct 02, 2009, 10:10 PM UTC

brewski wrote: post #18

csallen wrote: post #3

After 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 i…

I once heard Enron used a similar strategy, although I can't recall the source. They would annually cut their most "unproductive" employees. It turned out that those who remained knew how to work the system and to win at any cost. Hopefully Facebook will fare better.

You're correct. I think they described this process in the documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in The Room" . I remember in interviewers with traders there that this was one pretty motivating factor for a lot of the corners that were cut at the company.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

#60

Post by dataman85 » Fri, Oct 02, 2009, 10:21 PM UTC

numair wrote: post #53

Every 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…

Funnily 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.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.