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How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

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Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#21
There's always a hierarchy. We're pack animals, establishing social hierarchy is at the core of our being.

Office politics are more rampant in places without externally defined hierarchies because people have to figure out the hierarchy on their own.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#22
post #6
post #2

"Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order"...right there you are creating a selection bias for exactly the kind of people you claim not to want. No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way. You are filtering for liars who know which lies to tell. I consider myself very not into office politics and I'm confident a would fail massive…

> No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way Except, for example, the ACM Software Engineer's code of ethics where this is the explicitly stated order. [1] http://www.acm.org/about/se-code

Could you point to the part of the ACM code that stack ranks priorities? I must be missing it. It's a code to act ethically in conducting job functions, not how to set personal priorities around a career.

In fact the code says it's all in service of the public, if there is any sense of priorities to derive, the employer is not on top. And besides, "The Code is not a simple ethical algorithm that generates ethical decisions."

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#23
post #2

"Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order"...right there you are creating a selection bias for exactly the kind of people you claim not to want. No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way. You are filtering for liars who know which lies to tell. I consider myself very not into office politics and I'm confident a would fail massive…

So many of you are so ready for your Facebook interview. And I believe none of you. Unless you have ever quit a job without having another one to jump to, because you concluded that your current employer couldn't possibly ever get value out of you greater than what they are paying for you. Then I would believe you and consider you out of your mind with misplaced loyalty.

Some of you claim the question is about putting your personal glory above the success of the team. If so the author states it horribly

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#24
post #8

"At Facebook, moving into management is not a promotion. It’s a lateral move, a parallel track. " This is nice in theory. But when your "peers" with Manager in their title have access to more information and more decision-making power, it is not in fact a parallel track. Just saying people are equal doesn't make it so, and it doesn't change the underlying organizational structures.

If you set up the culture right, this isn't as big of a problem as you might think. On our team, it doesn't matter if you're the manager or not, the decisions for the product are made by consensus of the team. Sure management will still do approvals for time off and deal with the skinned knees and runny noses. But for day to day operations, it's peers working for a common cause.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#25
post #15
post #2

"Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order"...right there you are creating a selection bias for exactly the kind of people you claim not to want. No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way. You are filtering for liars who know which lies to tell. I consider myself very not into office politics and I'm confident a would fail massive…

Depends what set of priorities and how far you draw the line, in my mind. Project/work priorities? Should be company first, then team, then self. I think that goes without saying, and I think thats what they're trying to get across. Going for self glory in projects isn't good for a company. Going to team glory isn't good for a company, but its better than self glory. Financial priorities? Everyone has to take care of…

>Going for self glory in projects isn't good for a company. Going to team glory isn't good for a company, but its better than self glory.

you and FB missed the most important - going for the glory of your boss. It is good for the both - for the company (as the company did make sure that the glory of the boss is aligned with the glory of the company) as well as for the team (as the company did make sure that glory of the boss is aligned with the glory of the team). And it is obviously also good for yourself as bosses value the ones who bring them glory.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#26
post #2

"Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order"...right there you are creating a selection bias for exactly the kind of people you claim not to want. No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way. You are filtering for liars who know which lies to tell. I consider myself very not into office politics and I'm confident a would fail massive…

Depends on how you interpret that.

One extreme: If I make more money than I need, I will not ask to be paid less.

Other end: I will work on whatever is most important for the team/product/company. Not what I find most fun.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#27

    "Take the incentive out of “climbing the ladder.”
Some of the organization structure setup is not unique to Facebook. My former boss was a long time Microsoft employee, from what I heard from her anecdotally, Microsoft has long been setup with dual tracks for technical employees. The management track and the engineer track. One moves from engineer track to management track is a true lateral move in that salary don't necessarily get raised even though responsibilities will vary and may expand.

Also, the rank on engineer track may also be converted to a lower rank in management track. On top of that, long tenured Distinguished Engineers might also get a much higher compensation than a mid-level manager.

Once the incentives are leveled up, personal interests and motivation really becomes the driver for employees to do their most appropriate job.

Obviously these were all anecdotal stories I heard. Microsoft now may also be different from the Microsoft then. I welcome someone who has first hand experience with similar organizational structure setup to clarify and elaborate on this.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#28
post #2

"Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order"...right there you are creating a selection bias for exactly the kind of people you claim not to want. No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way. You are filtering for liars who know which lies to tell. I consider myself very not into office politics and I'm confident a would fail massive…

Not sure why you're getting modded down, because your'e exactly right. They're stupid, psychological, trick questions to get people to lie.

Just walk out when you get questions like this.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#29
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way Except, for example, the ACM Software Engineer's code of ethics where this is the explicitly stated order. [1] http://www.acm.org/about/se-code

I see "team" three times and "company" zero times. Can you point to the specific portion?

"employer" is in there 20 times. Did you even glance at the document?

CLIENT AND EMPLOYER is #2 in the list, and SELF is #8. COLLEAGUES is #7.

Re: How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics

#30
post #2

"Successful candidates should clearly demonstrate that their priorities are company, team, and self — in that order"...right there you are creating a selection bias for exactly the kind of people you claim not to want. No-fucking-body in his right mind orders things that way. You are filtering for liars who know which lies to tell. I consider myself very not into office politics and I'm confident a would fail massive…

I think what you are pointing out is that those priorities shouldn't be misaligned in the first place. Asking someone to do professional suicide to help the company shouldn't be a thing.

I mean, if you are are part of a team and identify something that goes against you and the team but in favor of the conpany, your team's goal should be revised and realigned, and you should get credit for that. In the end pointing out the problem and eventually offering a solution shouldn't go against your own professional interests (your "self" shouldn't get the short end of the stick for a correct behavior)

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