41–50 of 93 posts
"""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?
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It 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.
I 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.
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It 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.
I 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.
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.
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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.
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…
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.
Have you seen how in-depth the translations on Facebook are? I used Facebook Pirate for three or four months because I was so delighted at how many variable phrases they introduced regarding every small item on the page. It was as thorough a translation as I've ever seen online. (As an unrelated aside, Facebook supports the Konami code, which makes it the most mainstream geek site on the planet, and their Konami code triggers something wholly unexpected and hilarious.)
I don't know Facebook's employee breakdown, but remember that Facebook offers multiple products, each of which is a fairly complex offering. I can see their Photo app being worthy of a large interesting team; ditto Events, Notes, Video, their link sharing, their search (and doing search for Facebook sounds much more interesting than doing search for Google, because you get to play with so many concrete variables), their public pages offering, their iPhone application, and who knows what else they're cooking up. They've also got a unique graphic style that I'm sure a handful of people work on, and there's the usual stuff of marketing and advertising that's fun no matter where it is.
It doesn't seem completely insane to me that working for Facebook might be really fun, even as a grunt. Unlike Google, which always sounds like working there is 90% backend, Facebook has a lot of stuff that's immediately noticed by its users. It's one of the few big companies that I'd actively like to work for after graduation.
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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.
With 20,000 engineers now, Google is as "cool" as HP or IBM.
This 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.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
A lot of places do/did this. IBM sales reps were subject to the 70-20-10 principle. 70% of people are average, 20% are above average and get bonuses and 10% are below average and are fired. It was brutal for morale and hurt productivity in a lot of ways.
The reality is a company the size of IBM is always going to have a turnover of 10% or more so the "lower 10% rule" is just a way of getting rid of those people who can't do the job. The 70% might feel a little demoralized but if they're good employees they'll use that to make themselves better. The upper 20% are the best of the best and deserve to be treated as such.
So to me the 70-20-10 principle just seems like IBM being honest with employees about where they stand and giving them a chance to recognize it and do better if they so choose (some people are happy with average).