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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."
I really don't give a damn about Facebook (the firm). The survivors of event triggered churn (following milestone events) can be painful for the remaining staff.
Additionally this business phenomenon presents a new challenge for both inexperienced managers and leaders that have become intoxicated by constant build-grow success. Add in the additional inconvenience, ramp time, and dollar cost of finding and onboarding replacement staff, event related staff churn can have a damaging effect on the morale and productivity of the existing workforce (and impact their resumes).
The walking wounded; however, can choose to affect the situation or be affected by it. The survivors and thrivers will confront this challenge and exploit the opportunity for what it is... a chance to learn and grow.
I've often heard the term, "where there is smoke there is fire".
This makes me wonder if there was something strange going on with the IPO. A lot of pissed off people who lost a lot of money. One one hand I can't feel sorry for people that lost money since anybody with a brain could figure out Facebook was not worth that much. On the other hand, if there were any shenanigans, I don't think people at Facebook should get away with it.
It is pretty strange to see that much high level "talent" leave. Suspicious is another word.
And FB will have cash until the users stop showing up.
I'm curious about how the exodus will happen. I don't see it going to G+, really. I think Diaspora died along with one of the young founders. FB copycats are a dime a dozen, but haven't heard any word in the way of compelling alternatives. Perhaps individual services will eat away at them through mobile...
I think you are trolling.
I love facebook. It's an awesome idea. It'll survive and thrive.
I despise facebook. Its got potential as a concept. Social networks will survive and thrive -- but hopefully facebook will crash and burn to be replaced by something good.
Get some fresh minds working on more cool shit.
If your entire platform is the shit that is privacy invasion and advertising no matter what you build on it, it will eventually sink into that shit. Start over. Do it differently.
Facebook has changed all our lives whether you want to admit it or not.
It actually has had virtually zero impact on mine; but then I declined to get an account.
The sum total of its impact on me is that i see little blue "f" icons on a bunch of stuff that i ignore, and companies jibber about their facebook pages instead of their websites now. I don't visit their fb pages... and nothing of value was lost.
My sister tried that - once.
I don't have a facebook account and refused to get one.
The whole platform falls on its face as an event organization platform if even one key person refuses to sign up to having their personal lives data mined.
How much are MySpace and Digg worth now?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Do we really care?
What's this FaceBook thing anyway?
Does it compile into native code or P-code?
Fun fact: FaceBook uses HipHop, a tool they developed themselves to convert PHP code to C++, and then compile it to native code.
And the craziest thing is that they compile everything into a single 1.5 GB binary:
So, yeah, FaceBook compiles to native code! :-)
Facebook was never a "unique" idea. It was successful viral spam effort. Does anyone remember? It got its first viral thrust as a SPAM email sent out to a stolen database of students!
Real men don't need signitures!!!
If the design manager was the one who has made some of the UI decisions for Facebook over the last year or two maybe it's best he departs. Facebook is convenient for me for keeping in touch with a lot of people I know but I haven't heard anyone say anything good about their user interface design in a very long time. I don't really have any ill will towards anyone at Facebook (I have a number of friends who work there) but perhaps this is a good thing.
The departing leaders also take the best people with them over the following few weeks/months (esp. in California where signing something saying you won't work for a competitor for two years is laughed out of court in a summary judgement).
Smart folks at FB realize that hype didn't work and every step FB takes to monetize their users will alienate them. Their only ace in the hole is that there isn't yet a good FB replacement for the 2010's -- but that's why we have Stanford!
The exodus this early should be very alarming to FB.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I will assume that by nice you mean rational and the competent. Unlike the very top, mid high-level positions are ones filled with people who are actually good at what they do. And these are the guys who left. The ones stepping in, will quite likely be less competent by definition. And you are assuming that the new guy has exactly the same vision, idea and team-relationship. These are people, not cogs. You cannot just pick up the next guy in queue, and fill up the position and expect to have things go on same as before, normally. Normally organizations are designed to deal with occasional such hiccups. But several of these at once, would be the equivalent of multiple cardiac arrests at once. You might pretty much assume that the top management knew something we didn't and decided to cash in, while going was good, since they decided that after that point things would only go downhill. There is no other explanation for the entire IPO fiasco.
Your expectation that the regulators exist to actually root out and punish fraud in the market is touching but quite naive, especially in light that regulators have done absolutelly nothing at all to punish market-mispractices by large companies in the last 20 years (and when they do something, the miniscule fines they impose are usually less than the profits made by the companies breaking the law).
Given the size of Facebook and that the lead bank in their IPO was Morgan Stanley, expect the SEC to do absolutelly nothing at all.
On the other hand, given that Facebook stock still has a Price-Earnings per share above 50 (the typical PE for high growth Tech companies is about 25), expect a further fall in price. A better explanation for the exodus of several high-level managers with over-bloated but meaningless titles just as they become allowed to sell their stock is that they've been holding off from leaving a drifting ship until they could get their paws on hard cash.