Facebook Faces High-Level Staff Exodus

angry tapir writes "It has been troubled times for Facebook since the social network's IPO in May. There has been speculation that Facebook could suffer a talent drain in the wake of the IPO, and now the organization has lost four of its high-level managers the space of a week: Ethan Beard, director of platform partnerships; Kate Mitic, platform marketing director; Jonathan Matus, mobile platform marketing manager; and Ben Blumenfeld, design manager, have all resigned from the company."

Comments

And this is surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd bail too from a ship that just went over a cliff.

Re:And this is surprising?

[MightyMartian]

I especially want to bail out of the ship when the SEC is going to start sniffing around.

And?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the plan all along. Cash out and move on. It's a shallow company with no real long term potential. People are fickle, color me surprised.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

One last thing I just thought of. They may be contractually limited to short sell the shares while working for the company. So if they quit, they can make more money as the stock falls from a short sale.

This. It's called being short against the box, and while it cannot be (easily) used to defer or reduce taxes, it's a perfectly legal hedge against long stock.

The lockup period prevents you from selling the stock the day the company goes public. Company policy prevents you from going short. (I suppose you could argue that being short against the box is a market-neutral position, but your company's policy may prohibit you from doing so as a condition of employment).

So you have a stock in which you want to preserve your IPO-day gains, but you can't sell it, and you can't go short against the box and still keep your job. If the stock's high enough (and with the $FB IPO, we could be talking "Fuck You Money" here), a valid strategy to preserve those gains is to quit your job, go short against the box for 3-6 months until the lockup expires, and liquidate both sides of the trade.

It won't kill FB

[Taco Cowboy]

The exodus of the 14 execs won't kill FB

How many execs have left Yahoo ?

Is Yahoo still around ?

FB won't die until it runs out of cash. As long as it has cash left, it will go on, just like Yahoo

Re:It won't kill FB

[zero.kalvin]

Yes, but Yahoo is not going to improve , unless something extraordinary happens Yahoo will die.

Re:It won't kill FB

[blind biker]

If AOL is still around and kicking today, it's pretty hard to believe that Yahoo will just up and die. It's important to note that Yahoo still has 10s of millions of active email users, the best fantasy sports platform on the internet, a pretty solid website in Flickr, and a bunch of other random shit. AOL has much less, yet somehow stays alive.

Agreed. Compare, however, with FB who is essentially a one-trick pony. It's a pretty amazing trick, I'll grant you that, but still...

Re:It won't kill FB

[Taco Cowboy]

Your analogy is flawed

In a real life military scenario, an exodus of several general will create mass confusion and drastic drop of morale amongst the soldiers

On the other hand, in the case of fb, even if 90% of the exec decide to leave, you think that will do anything to the fb users?

Nope, zilth, nothing

Them users will still use fb to tell the world when they go to toilet, what they ate for breakfast and what they did with their gf/bf the night before, like usual
 

Re:It won't kill FB

[Darinbob]

And why do people call high level execs "talent" anyway?

Re:It won't kill FB

[Taco Cowboy]

And why do people call high level execs "talent" anyway?

Dear Sir,

You have asked a pertinent question

It's a social hierarchy thingy - When you're an exec of a company as famous as fb (or M$ or Google or Apple) ppl will automatically associate you with the successes of that company
 

Re:It won't kill FB

[Grayhand]

Might not kill Facebook but it isn't going to help their stock. If I was foolish enough to have bought FB stock I'd be pretty panicky around now. Feels like rats leaving a sinking ship. It's feeling like one of those stocks that will eventually hit a $1 or less. All that's keeping the stock out of the toilet is they have income but it's not enough to justify the stock price. If the income drops sharply there's nothing to keep it out of a death spiral. I'm not talking about tomorrow but in five or so years if they don't improve there outlook it's going to look bleak. If Facebook looses it's position, which it's likely to as cool and trendy, it's user base will drop and so will it's income. If my retirement depended on Facebook stock I think I'd consider playing the lottery. It's just looking more and more like a tech bubble.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[Sir_Sri]

As long as you can make about 75K from someone else you can do quite well for yourself. Manage your money. That's the key to pretty much the entirety of being successful.

My dad made 74k a year on a team of guys who all made 74k a year (this was about a decade ago). Some of them bought boats, some cottages, some had expensive wives etc. The ones who bought stuff with resale value (the cottages for example, or mutual funds and bonds) are all doing fine in retirement, they can afford holidays, etc. The ones who bought boats, and planes (and god help them, both), the ones who landed wives with expensive tastes in things that are worth nothing, they're struggling now.

Working for someone else does have significant advantages, pension plans, fixed hours that sort of thing. When you work for yourself you can very easily slide into working 12 hours a day and not having vacation time, and still not making very much money. And if you get sick, your whole business can fall apart, and you might not have customers to go back to as they've found someone else.

Ultimately, it's up to you to manage your money, if you can do that you can manage your business or you can manage your paycheque. Working for yourself is always better than a bad boss, and working for yourself *can* be better than a good boss, but not always.