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The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#41

Post by doktrin »

nikhildaga wrote: post #32

" Zuckerberg all but stopped writing code for Facebook in the summer of 2005." Did he really stop coding? How can one give up coding and focus on managing? I really find it difficult.

I don't see how he couldn't. Managing and coding are both full time jobs. How could he possibly run one of the fastest growing and most influential companies in the world while still remain an effective member of the Engineering team?

On an anecdotal note, I recall reading a story recently about how the FB Engineers gave Zuck a canned 5-minute bugfix which ended up taking him close to an hour. He's clearly rusty, and with good cause.

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#42

Post by thespin »

AVTizzle wrote: post #22
rationalbeats wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the author of the story is permanently banned from Wall Street for fraud, it does not surprise me he is loose with the numbers. I would also question the rest of the analysis as well.

Interesting. Context via Wikipedia: >>Henry Blodget (born 1966) is an American former equity research analyst, currently banned from the securities industry, who was senior Internet analyst for CIBC Oppenheimer during the dot-com bubble and the head of the global Internet research team at Merrill Lynch. Blodget is now the editor and CEO of The Business Insider, a business news and analysis site, and a host of Yahoo D…

You should read this guy's story. Read his settlement. You might observe that the companies he was reporting on were far more deceptive than he was. He was but a pawn in their game. You might even conclude he was more or less the fall guy for some of the fraudulent individuals running those companies, who, if I'm not mistaken are still active in the industry and probably still taking on investments. Or you might not. It's worth reading anyways, as we make our way through another bubble.

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#43

Post by vintagius »

chime wrote: post #12
peterwwillis wrote: post #11

The crazy thing to me is how well suited people of Zuck's age group are to running companies suited to web technology. A more "mature" CEO would not have the right mindset to steer something as pliable as a web app into a product that keeps up with the non-stop competition for users' attention. If something cooler comes around the corner and enough people latch onto it, you're fucked. Zuck gets this because he probab…

> So the question then becomes: What happens when Zuck is too mature to see what's coming next? He can buy/hire people who are good at that.

Problem with this is that you wont know who is good at that. And if they do emerge and aren't willing to sell (Think...Zuckberg) you're screwed.

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#44

Post by ryguytilidie »

AVTizzle wrote: post #22
rationalbeats wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the author of the story is permanently banned from Wall Street for fraud, it does not surprise me he is loose with the numbers. I would also question the rest of the analysis as well.

Interesting. Context via Wikipedia: >>Henry Blodget (born 1966) is an American former equity research analyst, currently banned from the securities industry, who was senior Internet analyst for CIBC Oppenheimer during the dot-com bubble and the head of the global Internet research team at Merrill Lynch. Blodget is now the editor and CEO of The Business Insider, a business news and analysis site, and a host of Yahoo D…

Woah that guy replied to one of my tweets a few weeks ago and I had no idea who he was. Apparently that was a pretty awesome tweet reply, was wondering why my followers went up.

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#45

Post by nikhildaga »

doktrin wrote: post #41
nikhildaga wrote: post #32

" Zuckerberg all but stopped writing code for Facebook in the summer of 2005." Did he really stop coding? How can one give up coding and focus on managing? I really find it difficult.

I don't see how he couldn't . Managing and coding are both full time jobs. How could he possibly run one of the fastest growing and most influential companies in the world while still remain an effective member of the Engineering team? On an anecdotal note, I recall reading a story recently about how the FB Engineers gave Zuck a canned 5-minute bugfix which ended up taking him close to an hour. He's clearly rusty, an…

I know he can. but, I feel that it's not easy. I myself find it extremely difficult. One does not simply give up coding.

I think there must be many others here who must have faced difficulty in making a transition from developer to manager.

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#47

Post by alxv »

nikhildaga wrote: post #39
alxv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managing a company is not that different from coding: instead of instructing machines what to do, you instruct people.

But machines are rational and logical, people are not. :|

Well, they are probabilistic machines then! ;-)

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#48

Post by buu700 »

nikhildaga wrote: post #39
alxv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managing a company is not that different from coding: instead of instructing machines what to do, you instruct people.

But machines are rational and logical, people are not. :|

Actually, Zuck made a statement exactly like that last fall. He basically described his model of running a company as just another engineering problem, comparing delegating tasks to writing subroutines.

Re: The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg

#50

Post by brado86 »

Of late, I'm seeing a lot of articles about Facebook doing this great thing or that. Agreed what they do is technically challenging and they are extremely interesting, but these also seem to be a sequence of puff-pieces meant to whip up the public with feel-good sentiments about the company before the IPO? The HN readership might want to keep that in mind while reading these articles - indeed, we did have another post a couple of days ago about exactly this - http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

/2cents

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