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

Walking wounded...

[wermske]

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.

Re:Walking wounded...

[flappinbooger]

The survivors and thrivers will confront this challenge and exploit the opportunity for what it is... a chance to learn and grow.

You're right, this is the most critical time for FB right now. What happens now will affect the company irreparably for good or bad. They can either become the next myspace and AOL or the next .... Pre-IPO Facebook? Erm...

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.

Re:And this is surprising?

[rwven]

By that logic, bailing isn't going to do you much good at that point. :-P

I think you meant to say a ship heading for a cliff... ;)

Re:And this is surprising?

[pushing-robot]

In fact, it's a derailed ship which has been driven into a ditch, is now stuck in a nosedive, and is about to go over a cliff.

Re:And this is surprising?

[DigiShaman]

Ya, no shit! I'd cash out too while the stock is still valuable all while laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:And this is surprising?

[DarkOx]

Sell you shares and securing the cash does not require you to leave your job. No reason not cash out AND keep working there if you are being well compensated and enjoy your job. The issue is probably more these folks don't need the money, and at least in my experiences its usually not fun working for a company with major problems, let alone those of Facebook.

Re:And this is surprising?

[Aceticon]

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.

Re:And this is surprising?

[V for Vendetta]

Sell you shares and securing the cash does not require you to leave your job.

We don't know their contracts, but it can very well be the case that there's a clause in there like "Not allowed to sell shares while employed here".

Re:And this is surprising?

[ceoyoyo]

I don't know... if it's a ship then chances are the cliff is actually a waterfall. I'd much rather land in the water on my own (which is survivable) than on the deck of a ship which is hard and has all sorts of sharp bits to break off and land on you.

Re:And this is surprising?

[fastgriz]

>In fact, it's a derailed ship which has been driven into a ditch, is now stuck in a nosedive, and is about to go over a cliff. With Grandma on board.

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?

[klingers48]

From a purely self-interest perspective, what these managers are doing by leaving now is actually the smartest decision they could make.

The stock price has probably got further down to go. Depending on their stock options they'd actually stand to lose money by staying don't they?

Re:And?

[rudy_wayne]

From a purely self-interest perspective, what these managers are doing by leaving now is actually the smartest decision they could make.

The stock price has probably got further down to go. Depending on their stock options they'd actually stand to lose money by staying don't they?

That makes no sense. How do they lose money by staying at Facebook? Why can't they cash in their stock options and still continue to work at Facebook?

The fact that people are leaving usually indicates that it's a shitty place to work and/or they see no future for themselves or for the company.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll do this with an analogy. There is a boat captain who sees that his boat needs a lot of maintenance. So he tells the higher ups, who don't respond high enough for him. So he says, fine get someone else to captain your boat. He goes off to captain another boat with a different company. So the first company gets a new captain and the boat pops rivets under his first watch. Now who would everybody blame for the failure of the boat? Even if he hadn't had the opportunity to discover the problem, most likely, the new captain will still get the blame. High level positions are similar; they all operate on a post hoc blame system.

Additionally, companies will sometimes say that you can only exercise the option when you leave or at an IPO, rather than at will. There are complicated reasons for this but the short version is, as long as the stock price is going up or going to increase, yours and the companies interest is aligned. However, if you assume that the stock price is going to keep falling, then you want to quit before it falls below your call and lapses.

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.

Re:And?

[reybo]

There are SEC rules on when executives can sell stock after an IPO. The magic date may have passed last week. Would you want to work for these creeps if you didn't need to work?

Re:And?

[khallow]

No. They would not lose money.

[...]

The old options will not be out of money for a while still.

So cash out now or wait while their options continue to lose value? They chose to leave now. And holding out until the options are underwater doesn't sound even remotely like a good move to me.

Re:And?

[Sir_Sri]

Stock options will have a vesting period to keep people attached, where if they leave before a certain point they won't get them and so on. Because of the way facebook managed to delay its IPO for so long I suspect a lot of people are starting to run out of their options vesting period, and more will in the next year or two.

The fact that people are leaving usually indicates that it's a shitty place to work and/or they see no future for themselves or for the company

Not true at all. Especially when you're talking about the facebook pay bracket. A lot of these people (especially top executives) will have been making a few hundred thousand a year, which is a lot, but suddenly they have millions in the bank, they can even buy boring government bonds and other relatively safe securities and live off the interest and retire. Why work if you don't have to? Or they'll have significantly more lucrative offers elsewhere.

Especially really top executives, who suddenly have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, they have a lot of opportunities to do their own things too. That might be owning a little league or making a facebook competitor, or anything in between. They don't even need to think about facebook.

Now admittedly, with a share price, and a share price that's going down the job will have changed and be significantly more stressful than it was. That's probably making a lot of people like their jobs a lot less.

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.

Re:And?

[rtfa-troll]

So cash out now or wait while their options continue to lose value?

I very much doubt that leaving now will make it easier to cash out. Most of their options should have already "vested" but they may even have some very low strike price options which they were awarded but haven't yet vested. I guess that some of them might be subject to insider trading restrictions but even then they can schedule sales during their trading window.

Anyone seen an article about the details of Facebook's employee options plan?

Re:And?

[DarkOx]

Another reason for mass executive exodus is so they CAN have more opportunities in the future. Its good not to be there at the end game. These guys want to go on to be C?Os or board members elsewhere, to do that they need to be able to maintain the fiction things were fine at Facebook when they left. The don't want to be on the list of people who ran it into the ground.

Naturally most normal people can see thru this, but star-y eye'd near do wells, in their desperate greed will toss tons of money at these people in hopes of getting their own Zukerburg like pay out. Of course it won't work out but that has never stopped anyone on either side of the equation.

Re:And?

[gutnor]

High level exec would have known of the coming IPO. Most of those who planned to leave have probably delayed their departure until after the IPO.

In other sectors it is common to have departure at all levels after the bonus, not really because they think that the bonus sucks, just because "you don't quit before bonus time". That is not really a proof of anything at all.

Re:And?

[khallow]

As a very new ex-employee they'll face trade restrictions. But not as a long term ex-employee. It's been pointed out that there are other reasons for them to bail, some which are unrelated to stock options. So we'll just have to see what happens.

Re:And?

[dkleinsc]

If I ever was holding as much in assets as those guys probably are, I'd cash out too. That's because that way, no matter what happens to Facebook, I still don't have to work a day in my life ever again. $5 million invested at about 4% return (definitely not unreasonable) leaves you with an income of $200K without working, so you could live quite comfortably on $100K, reinvest the other $100K to make sure you keep up with inflation, and enjoy doing whatever else you want to do with your time.

Re:And?

[Surt]

There are often contractual restrictions on the sale of stock for current employees that do not apply to former employees. These exist because of insider trading rules. So if you leave, you are no longer an insider, and you can trade your stock more freely. This is true at my current company where former employees will be able to sell 6 weeks before current employees. With a stock in freefall like FB, being able to sell 6 weeks before the flood of shares from current employees could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars to some of these people.

Re:And?

[ceoyoyo]

Today they're senior management at a company that just went public with a valuation of 100 billion dollars. Tomorrow they might be senior management of one of the biggest failures in history. That makes a difference in your salary at your next job, even for senior management.

Re:And?

[Sir_Sri]

Probably true. Though I think most of the executives at facebook have actually done a good job. Odd to say I know, but Facebook does pretty much what they they were asked to make it do, it performs reasonably well from everywhere in the world, it has systems to collect monies, backup, replication, deliveries etc. Most of the real work at facebook isn't much different than any other web business, and in that regard the people in charge seem to have more or less produced what Zuck told them to. So they can point to that as their successes.

The *design* of facebook, and the policies they have on privacy and so on they can always blame on Zuckerberg. I just had an interview myself where someone looked at the most recent project I worked on and basically said 'that was horrible what happened' and I said 'well my part was this this and this, the guy with the money made very clear it had to do this other stupid thing, so it does, which is hwy it's horrible', that's something anyone can do, and especially at facebook, so much of what is wrong is legal and design, it's not technology, their technology isn't anything spectacular but it gets the job done.

Re:And?

[SpinyNorman]

Sure it (shorting against the box) can be used to defer/reduce taxes. That's one common use of it.

Say you have a stock that you'd like to sell, but you don't want to pay taxes this year. What you do is instead short it ("against the box" since you still keep your original shares), thereby locking in the current price. Since neither your long or short position is closed, you currently pay no taxes. Then, whever you want to take your profit (e.h. next tax year, or when you have offsetting losses), you cover your short position and sell your shares, thereby becoming liable for any taxes owed.

That the way to defer taxes...but you can also reduce taxes to ZERO by simply NEVER closing the positions.... You buy a stock (or get in in an IPO), then rather that sell it short againt the box, thereby getting your cash, and NEVER close either long/short position, thereby never incurring a tax liability. People actually do this - it's not just a theoretical tax hole.

Do we really care?

[NewtonsLaw]

Do we really care?

What's this FaceBook thing anyway?

Does it compile into native code or P-code?

Re:Do we really care?

[jcr]

Exactly. This isn't a technology story at all.

-jcr

Re:Do we really care?

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

No, it compiles toa single 1.5GB C++ binary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HipHop_for_PHP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Technical_aspects

Re:Do we really care?

[suy]

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:

Because Facebook's entire code base is compiled down to a single binary executable, the company's deployment process is quite different from what you'd normally expect in a PHP environment. Rossi told me that the binary, which represents the entire Facebook application, is approximately 1.5GB in size. When Facebook updates its code and generates a new build, the new binary has to be pushed to all of the company's servers.

So, yeah, FaceBook compiles to native code! :-)

Re:Do we really care?

[Heretic2]

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:

Because Facebook's entire code base is compiled down to a single binary executable, the company's deployment process is quite different from what you'd normally expect in a PHP environment. Rossi told me that the binary, which represents the entire Facebook application, is approximately 1.5GB in size. When Facebook updates its code and generates a new build, the new binary has to be pushed to all of the company's servers.

So, yeah, FaceBook compiles to native code! :-)

That's just part of the front-end. They use a lot of Java too which is byte-code. Hadoop/Hive/HBase blah blah blah. IMO: Pig > Hive, node.js > PHP

Re:Do we really care?

[pinkushun]

A 1.5GB binary? That obviously includes the OS.

Seriously now:

I cannot fathom how, why or where-in-gods-green-earth such a large binary exists.

An average 50% CPU reduction is notable, yet the data encompassing that claim seems to be the exact same width, height and breadth of a White Elephant, a deployment nightmare, and a bandwidth raper, Frankensteined.

It is a grotesque salute to everything unjust, immoral and plainly fucked up in the coding world.

Re:Do we really care?

[jellomizer]

I can see it happening.

It isn't quite my style of coding to do it that way but I can see how a 1.5 GB binary can be made.
If you are trying to put more work on the CPU and less work on the Database, a lot of the configuration settings and master tables that don't get updated too often will probably be hard coded in the code.

Re:Do we really care?

[ceoyoyo]

Seems pretty big for the functionality it provides. Unless that includes the back end data harvesting code as well.

When the avalanche has started

[sandbagger]

It is too late for the pebbles to vote. The current management team may not be the people to monetize the company. Eventually the shareholders will hold the board's feet to the fire and they'll really start to sell every single fact about you to anyone who's willing to pay. Think Facebook has privacy problems now?

Re:When the avalanche has started

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually the shareholders will hold the board's feet to the fire

False.

Even though he owns a small number of shares, Zuckerberg owns a large majority of the voting shares. He has complete control of the company.

Many other companies have a dual-class share structure allowing a small minority to retain control with a small financial stake. Generally speaking, it sucks, and companies with this kind of share structure don't tend to do very well. Don't buy their stock.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[swillden]

Eventually the shareholders will hold the board's feet to the fire

How will they do that? Zuckerberg outvotes them all, thanks to the dual-class stock structure.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[Grishnakh]

Just curious, do you know many examples of other such companies, which we would have heard of?

Re:When the avalanche has started

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

The current management team may not be the people to monetize the company.

If anything's going to kill Facebook, it will be decisions made by people who were only hired to make money. People who have no interest in what it's for, never will have interest, and are only there to monetize.

Facebook will have to be very, very careful to make sure the user experience doesn't completely vaporize in the face of money-mongers. But I think if they were planning to be that careful, they probably would not have gone public.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[icebraining]

Murdoch's News Corp (he owns 12% of shares but controls 40% of voting), Google (the founds control more than 50% of voting thanks to owning shares that give them 10 votes each), LinkedIn, Zynga and Groupon.

http://www.economist.com/node/18988938

Re:When the avalanche has started

[rtfa-troll]

Can I just say "dear Mark; Class; you make Billy boy Gates look like a choir boy. Make sure you have some good lawyers".

How the hell does he get away with that.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[Heretic2]

Just curious, do you know many examples of other such companies, which we would have heard of?

Wal-mart and Google to name a couple.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[Hognoxious]

I posted here at the time it was an obvious scam. I can't believe people fell for it.

Must have been the "OMG phrea monnay!!!eleventyone!!" effect.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[Grishnakh]

Google's been doing pretty good, but those other companies are shit companies, I'll agree. Especially Groupon.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[dkf]

If anything's going to kill Facebook, it will be decisions made by people who were only hired to make money. People who have no interest in what it's for, never will have interest, and are only there to monetize.

Yes and no; if the company doesn't make money then it is still in trouble. The hard part is that you've got to have both passion to deliver a good product/service and monetization of that so that you can afford to keep doing it, and a lot of companies find that very difficult.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[fbobraga]

Not every company have shares with or without right to vote?

Re:When the avalanche has started

[swillden]

Can I just say "dear Mark; Class; you make Billy boy Gates look like a choir boy. Make sure you have some good lawyers".

How the hell does he get away with that.

It's an old, and fairly common, way of setting up the voting structure of media companies. By "old", I mean 100+ years. The theory, in the case of the newspaper companies where it started, is that the company needs "editorial freedom". You wouldn't want a newspaper to be told what news to print by its biggest shareholders, so a stock voting structure that leaves control of the paper in the hands of some people who are considered to be trustworthy is a good idea.

In the context of tech companies, Google pioneered the use of the dual-class structure, as far as I know. It's possible Google wasn't really the first, but they were the first to make a big splash doing it. Part of Google's argument was that it was important that search results also have editorial freedom, that Google not be in a position to be forced by big shareholders to remove or bury search results that they don't like, or promote results they do like. Even more, Google argued that being beholden to shareholders was bad for fast-moving companies, because it forced them to focus on short-term profitability to the exclusion of all else. Google's founders wanted the freedom to ignore short-term profitability where they thought it was more important to focus on the long term, or even to focus on other issues entirely. So, for those reasons Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt have a controlling interest in Google, able to collectively outvote the rest of the shareholders combined.

In fact, they recently recognized that employee stock grants and some future desire to raise more capital by offering more stock on the public markets might at some point dilute their ownership, so they have announced a plan to do a two-for-one split, essentially, with all of the newly-created shares being non-voting. This third class of stock, which has no votes at all, will be used rather than the common one-vote-per-share stock for employee bonuses and possibly for additional public offerings. There are also some provisions in the agreement that require the founders to sell their 10-vote shares rather than others if they want to sell any stock (though the shares convert to one-vote shares when sold), in order to motivate them to retain their ownership stake if they want to retain their control. I don't know if the SEC has signed off on the plan or not, yet, but it's unlikely to be denied. Of course, the change had to pass a shareholder vote, but Larry, Sergey and Eric outvote the rest of the shareholders combined, so that was no problem.

After Google did it, many other web-focused technology companies have adopted dual-class voting structures in their IPOs, and Facebook followed suit.

So, no lawyers will be necessary. Or not for very long, anyway. The legality of this structure has been firmly established for many decades. The bottom line is that shareholders knew all of this when they decided to buy in, so the shareholders have already signed off on the structure.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[rtfa-troll]

Thanks; that was an excellent essy from which I really learned much. BTW; I wasn't trying to suggest that the suggest he needs lawyers to make the structure legal. I'm suggesting he'll need them to let him know exactly how far he can go in completely screwing over the other classes of shareholders without getting too much SEC attention. Not that I think he needs me to tell him this.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[ceoyoyo]

Minority shareholders suit.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[ceoyoyo]

Facebook makes money. A few billion a year should be enough to keep it going. The problem is, Facebook now needs to make money to justify their 100 billion dollar valuation. THAT is probably going to end up being a problem.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[ThatsMyNick]

Sigh! The minority shareholders can sue only if the charter or constitution the company published during the IPO is not upheld. In the case of facebook, the charter specifically gives Zurkerberg the power to take decisions and basically promises nothing to the shareholders (other than what is legally required of course).
 
There is decades of case law to get this right. I am sure with the billions Facebook has, they got it right.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[Rich0]

So, no lawyers will be necessary. Or not for very long, anyway. The legality of this structure has been firmly established for many decades. The bottom line is that shareholders knew all of this when they decided to buy in, so the shareholders have already signed off on the structure.

Maybe. I suspect they'll get away with it for a while, but there are some kinds of financial deals that ordinary investors simply cannot choose to consent to. For example, if I offered you shares in a mutual fund but stated up-front that there would be no prospectus, then that would be illegal, even if you agreed to it. And so on...

I'm not convinced that publicly-traded companies that are so tightly controlled is a good thing. Granted, they're not much worse than the companies that don't have such arrangements.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[sjames]

Zuckerberg loses a LOT of money if there is a massive sell off.

Re:When the avalanche has started

[swillden]

Zuckerberg loses a LOT of money if there is a massive sell off.

True, but does he care? He's already pulled so much cash out that he has far more money than he can ever spend. He may care anyway, if he's the sort who's more interested in money as a way to keep score rather than for its own sake (and I suspect he is), but then again he may not. If he's more interested in having his company and running the way he wants, whatever that may be, then he's certainly in a financial position to shrug off the personal loss even if his stock gets de-listed.

Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[EdIII]

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.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked many jobs that have given me "stock options" and the company is public so you might as well burn them.

I've also worked for public companies that went from 4 dollars up to 35 and then back down over night.

The normal employee is screwed either way because you can't sell your stock when you want and only so much at a time.

There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The only way to get ahead is to stop bitch, show up to work and work hard every day till you die.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[phantomfive]

This makes me wonder if there was something strange going on with the IPO.

There was something strange, it IPO'd for much more than the company is worth. Managers see that their stock isn't going to appreciate, and go somewhere better. Now the company needs to pay its employees in cash, a lot of it, or lose them, like Yahoo did.

Is there something else 'strange' and illegal? Maybe, but why stoop to the illegal level when you can rip people off like that legally?

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[phantomfive]

I've worked many jobs that have given me "stock options" and the company is public so you might as well burn them.

If you think stock options are worthless because the company is public, uh, that might be your problem. Those can be the most valuable stock options, because they're almost guaranteed to be worth something. And sometimes companies give you a LOT of options to make up for the fact that they aren't growing anymore.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[Grishnakh]

I disagree. If you really want to get to the pot of gold, you have to start your own business. Working for someone else will never get you far. (Of course, starting your own company is also a giant gamble, as most companies fail, so there's no free lunch here either.)

Of course, there are those who supposedly work for someone else, but they really work for themselves, as they're independent contractors; they can also do quite well.

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.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[Hatta]

As long as you can make about 75K from someone else you can do quite well for yourself.

Meanwhile, median household income in the US is around $50K. Over half the people in this country cannot do well for themselves. This is despite the fact that US workers have the highest productivity of any country besides Norway.

Managing your money and working hard is important. But when the country you live in just doesn't give you a fair deal, it's not enough.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[Sir_Sri]

Sure, but keep in mind median household income includes 20 somethings who you don't really expect to make a lot and that sort of thing, and old retirees who are beyond saving, have fixed income pensions and so on. My dad's pension income is about 18k or something now (

Well that, and a LOT of people in the US have really shitty employers. That's the way it goes. Wages for the average working person haven't kept up with productivity since the 1970's, so they really are out to screw working people. Unfortunately a lot of those people, due to the education system, are basically not capable of managing their own business either. For them a steady paycheque might be better than a little bit more money, but more risk. I also figure that's not the /. crowd, if you're here, you can make 40k a year within a couple of years of school anywhere in the US or canada.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[Sir_Sri]

Yes and no, I picked 75k for a reason. The highest median income in the US is just under 70k, the lowest is about 35 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income) . Now you don't expect to start at 75k unless you have a particularly well chosen degree, but if you can get there at a reasonable point in your career you can do fine anywhere. Sure new york city isn't exactly the best place to be on only 75k, nor silicon valley, but even there with 75k you can afford to live in a cheap area and commute in and that sort of thing.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[Hatta]

Well that, and a LOT of people in the US have really shitty employers. That's the way it goes.

That's only the way it goes when plutocrats run the country.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[TheSync]

Meanwhile, median household income in the US is around $50K. Over half the people in this country cannot do well for themselves. This is despite the fact that US workers have the highest productivity of any country besides Norway.

The US workers with high productivity levels are the ones earning over the median income.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[Hatta]

Nice try, but wages haven't really correlated with productivity in decades. There is something terribly wrong with the US economy. It's not enough for us to pull our own weight, we have to pull the weight of the idle rich AND make them even richer.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[Sir_Sri]

I think they are two different things though. Just because your pay hasn't kept pace with productivity doesn't mean you aren't earning over the median household income. I suspect most 2 income working families in the US would be over the median income, they're still getting the shaft on hourly wages, but they are going to be over the median.

one runs the risk here of confusing nominal and PPP numbers. On a nominal basis US bottom 99% workers have seen constant wage increases since the 1970's, the real buying power of that money has been flat.

Median income in PPP and nominal for 40 odd years

The median income in the US has actually gone up by almost 20% on a PPP basis since 1970, it's clear a lot of that has been transfer to those at the top of the income curve (the top 0.1% and to a lesser degree the top 1%), which is what you are correctly getting at - and that's true. But what TheSync is getting at is that you can be on the top half of that curve by being very productive, that's harder to verify, it's certainly likely to be true, essentially an average worker gets a 2% raise, a good worker 3 a bad worker 1. Productivity increased by 5%, so you're actually falling behind your own productivity, but you're still doing better than the bad worker, which would then reasonably stratify into good being above the median income.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[wrook]

I know this sounds crazy, but quite a long time ago I realized that I was approaching my retirement planning the wrong way. I was trying to amass money in order to support a lavish lifestyle. This approach has a lot of drawbacks. The biggest of them is that you end up spending the majority of your life chasing after money.

Instead I decided to learn to be happy living on $10K a year. It means I have make hard decisions. I don't have a car and instead ride my bicycle or take public transit. I live in a small apartment in the middle of nowhere. I cook for myself every day. I watch over-the-air TV. I don't have kids. Instead of going to see a movie, for instance, I stay home and make beer. I don't work crazy overtime and instead focus my energies living well every day.

I'm much better off than I used to be. I'm happier, and healthier. I save more money, and since I increasingly have less use for it I have the feeling of being wealthy. The money I save is not to live a lavish lifestyle but rather to support me when my health fails and I can not support myself.

I know it's not for everyone, but less really is more for me.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[Sir_Sri]

The money I save is not to live a lavish lifestyle but rather to support me when my health fails and I can not support myself.

if you live in a civilized country, or make it to 65 in the US health care isn't an issue. But yes, you have the basic idea, don't waste money, save enough. Living on 10k doesn't mean much. Did you have to send kids to school? are you counting that? Do you own your home? How much did you have to pay to get there. You only live once unfortunately, and there are lots of things in the world worth doing if you have your health, and those can take money. We live in a wonderfully interesting world, and it's a pity if you never get to see much of it.

As you say, you make your own beer, if you don't have any more money then you pretty much have to, if you have money you can free up time spent making beer for other things and just buy your beer. For most people trying to balance kids, a home, getting to and from work, and retirement takes a pre tax income of 40 or 50k at a minimum if you want to have any time for the kids, any time for things that aren't directly related to work and so on.

Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship...

[TheSync]

wages haven't really correlated with productivity in decades.

What I meant is that the workers in the US who are productive are the ones whose wages are going up, the workers in the US that are not more productive have stagnant ones.

However real total compensation per hour has followed labor productivity.

we all tried to do it

[TheRealWheatley]

they're just going over to g+, until they realize that none of their friends are following them and head back to facebook

Re:we all tried to do it

[Tough Love]

How about this: they're getting a little older and coming to realize that having friends follow them translates into exactly zero career benefit, or any other benefit for that matter.

Wha?

[matt-fu]

Fewer managers. You say that like it's a bad thing.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:It won't kill FB

[bhcompy]

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.

Re:It won't kill FB

[thej1nx]

The exodus of high level leaders at same time, however can definitely kill a company. Think of it this way, if several generals or even majors of an army quit at the same time, it leads the army directionless for a fair bit. If the competition is shrewd, this will be the perfect time to throw in some innovative twists and come up with something new. And if that happens, cash, which essentially comes from advts. will dry up instantly. And that will lead to even more mass exodus. One way to beat vicious cycles is to not to get into one.

Re:It won't kill FB

[ozmanjusri]

How much are MySpace and Digg worth now?

Re:It won't kill FB

[a0me]

How much are MySpace and Digg worth now?

Digg was bought a month ago for $500,000. To put things in perspective, back in 2008 it was valued at $200 Million.

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

[Taco Cowboy]

Yes, but Yahoo is not going to improve

 
Look at it this way, fb is a one-trick-pony
 
It is not going to improve, with or without those 14 execs
 

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 FB will have cash until the users stop showing up.

True, and false

True - fb will see a big drop in their income if all their users stop showing up

But that will almost never happen - due to the fact of the sheer number of users fb has gathered

Once you achieved a critical mass, like what fb has gotten itself, it'll not be that easy to topple it --- Ask yourself if Microsoft going to close its door tomorrow, that Bill Gates is no longer on the helm, and Steve Ballmer still throwing chairs around

And false - Remember fb has garnered many billions of $$, and if they do not repeat stunts like what they did in the $1 Billion acquisition of Instagram - fb will still be around for quite some time to come
 

Re:It won't kill FB

[Taco Cowboy]

In a way, Digg was designed to fail

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

[rtfa-troll]

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?

I think you have misunderstood the analogy. In this scenario the "soldiers" are the developers and marketing people working at Facebook who will be directionless and end up running around in circles as the complete incompetent psycho from their team who hates everyone gets put in charge because he's the only one who steps up immediately to fill the gap.

The "users" are the local population and their cattle who the army will eat and rape. They will run in fear but it may do them no good.

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:It won't kill FB

[Taco Cowboy]

In this scenario the "soldiers" are the developers and marketing people working at Facebook who will be directionless and end up running around in circles as the complete incompetent psycho from their team who hates everyone gets put in charge because he's the only one who steps up immediately to fill the gap.

 
Notice the bolded part?
 
Why should that happen in the first place?
 
How come nice people can't be the first one to put is feet forward?
 
Of course, I'm assuming that there _are_ plenty of good people left in fb
 
Please tell me if I'm wrong
 

Re:It won't kill FB

[Heretic2]

$500K was only for a portion of the company, like the domain name. The patent portfolio was sold in the 8 figure range to someone else. Digg essentially got divvied up 3 different ways, and people only quote the smaller of the transactions... Anyway, it wasn't worth anywhere near 9 figures, but let's be honest: there's been an valuation bubble going on.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Taco Cowboy]

If I was foolish enough to have bought FB stock I'd be pretty panicky around now.

 
LOL !!
 
We were allotted a part of fb for something that we'd done for them
 
All the shares under my name (not that much, btw) got sold out the first day of the IPO
 
Based on my own experience (since the 1970's in the tech field) I do not see any bright future for fb
 

Re:It won't kill FB

[uncqual]

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.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Taco Cowboy]

The curious thing is why would you care so much? Are you an investor or prospective investor?

 
The term "used to be" suits the most, regarding investment on fb
 

Re:It won't kill FB

[stretch0611]

The exodus of high level leaders at same time, however can definitely kill a company. Think of it this way, if several generals or even majors of an army quit at the same time, it leads the army directionless for a fair bit.

However, in this analogy, Zuckerberg is a dictator. He has majority voting share and it is obvious he does what he wants. (Think Instagram, which was done by Zuckerberg before he told the board.)

When the voice at the top is the only one that gets heard, it really doesn't matter how many underlings leave, even if they are high-level.

Re:It won't kill FB

[tibit]

I've shorted the heck out of it and I can't say I'm unhappy. You can play it both hands. I'll finish the buying and close the short once I reach my targets, but it's on a very good track so far.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Johann Lau]

Who was talking about the death of FB? Nobody, that's who. So yeah, props for refuting your strawman, but otherwise, wtf.

Re:It won't kill FB

[David Gerard]

Diaspora is the Linux desktop of social networking, except not actually useful or secure.

Re:It won't kill FB

[David Gerard]

There is a small danger of a high-powered moron showing up, e.g. Stephen Elop.

Re:It won't kill FB

[thej1nx]

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.

Re:It won't kill FB

[dkf]

It's feeling like one of those stocks that will eventually hit a $1 or less.

What's with the US fixation with whether the unit price of some particular stock is less than $1, when it's something you wouldn't normally hold just one of? Surely the price of a single unit doesn't matter too much; what matters is how much that value is when you multiply it by the total number of stocks (either in your holding or in the overall company, depending on what you're talking about).

Or is there some regulation that I don't know about (not being a US citizen or based in the US)?

Re:It won't kill FB

[flappinbooger]

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

Yahoo won't die, they'll be absorbed by something and just be another redirected URL and email address. Probably google or microsoft or someone else who wants to pretend to be a search engine.

Re:It won't kill FB

[flappinbooger]

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.

AOL is only around because of all of the misinformed old folks who still can't set their VCR and also don't understand they don't need AOL to get on the internet anymore.

Re:It won't kill FB

[flappinbooger]

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...

I heard they're (fb) are going to get into online gambling. I think in the UK maybe?

Re:It won't kill FB

[flappinbooger]

True - fb will see a big drop in their income if all their users stop showing up

But that will almost never happen - due to the fact of the sheer number of users fb has gathered

Once you achieved a critical mass, like what fb has gotten itself, it'll not be that easy to topple it --- Ask yourself if Microsoft going to close its door tomorrow, that Bill Gates is no longer on the helm, and Steve Ballmer still throwing chairs around

This is true - all of my vague acquaintances and high school classmates who I didn't like then will always need a place to tell me what they're making for supper tonight and ... later ... tell me how it tasted and how much they love their spouse / kids / pet.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Ryan Hemage]

It means you get booted off certain stock markets, e.g., the NASDAQ. The company I used to work for kept doing reverse stock splits to raise their price above the dollar mark.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, they get their revenue from spying on everyone for governments and other corporations - that seems to be the business model fad today, like outsourcing was. Corporations who have no soul, no remorse and are immortal will always see the inferior species just as an exploitable resource that cazn be sold out.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Muad'Dave]

The "users" are the local population and their cattle who the army will eat and rape.

So the army will eat the local population and rape the cattle, or rape and eat them both?

Re:It won't kill FB

[edremy]

Same reason they call porn actors/actresses "talent"

Re:It won't kill FB

[fredrated]

Are you saying that it is too bad Digg didn't go public, sell $200 million in shares, decrease in value to $500K and cost it's share holders $199.5 million?

Is this you way of redistributing wealth?
Just askin'.

Re:It won't kill FB

[modmans2ndcoming]

No. AOL is around because they own lots of popular media properties that they did not rebrand.

Re:It won't kill FB

[slashmydots]

I think you mean Facebook won't die as long as the people who left weren't in charge of gathering and selling people's data to advertisers and basically anyone else.

Re:It won't kill FB

[JoeMerchant]

Getting rid of the legacy "Talent" at FB could actually improve the service.

They actually have the money at this point to hire people who know what they are doing, if only the remaining management can promote and hire based on merit.

Re:It won't kill FB

[tompaulco]

I'm curious about how the exodus will happen. I don't see it going to G+, really.
Perhaps people will go out and make real friends.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Alex Belits]

If high level management isn't important, where is your Facebook?

VCs did not give me a shitload of money to build a company that has no chance to survive for more than a few years.

Re:It won't kill FB

[wisnoskij]

And why not? anyone stupid enough to invest in FB deserved to lose money, whether they were a rich or poor.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Alex Belits]

Yeah, they can hire Carly Fiorina, Rick Belluzzo and Stephen Elop when he will be done with Nokia.

Re:It won't kill FB

[aaarrrgggh]

This is where the thin IPO hurts the company. They only raised $10B-- much better than the $5B the shares are worth now, but not enough to power them through a dark decade. They need to be able to manage costs and maintain revenue, which doesn't look promising right now.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Surt]

Yahoo is slowly bleeding to death. In the world of the internet, users leave a service and do not come back. This has been the pattern enough times for people to believe it is inevitable now. So Yahoo will last until their number of users no longer makes them an attractive advertising target, or the budget falls below the discount rate on server racks. And then they will be gone for good. When facebook starts to shrink, people are going to begin thinking about it the same way, which will become a self-reinforcing flood of defections to new services. All they've done is set the bar higher in terms of how big people think the next big thing can be.

Re:It won't kill FB

[cfulton]

Dammit, Everybody who reads about my supper on facebook "likes" it. The more pictures of Chicken, Steak and my secret Pot Pie I put up on my FB page the more "likes" I get. And everybody know that a lot of "likes" equates to love and love makes a person happy. So, don't ruin my personal happiness by dissing FB food posters you fun hater. :-)

Re:It won't kill FB

[dkleinsc]

Well, they hired a CEO that certainly seems to know what she's doing. That's pretty extraordinary.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Surt]

However, in this analogy he's a dictator with no power to prevent people from fleeing the country. He didn't execute his generals, they abandoned him, and faced no consequences for doing so.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Surt]

Because doing a high level executive's job well requires a great deal of skill. And, unfortunately, many people assume that those jobs are being done well at companies that succeed.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Surt]

I did? My parents weren't able to afford an ivy league school for me, and in spite of perfect grades at a strong HS and activities matching those of any of the scholarship winners, I didn't win the scholarship lottery.

Re:It won't kill FB

[rtfa-troll]

Yes. Probably all of the above and most likely in that order.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Hatta]

So it's just like every other social network?

Re:It won't kill FB

[hierophanta]

No, they should have gone public and then used that capitol to prevent their loss of market share / valuation. That is the point of raising capitol -> to make it make you more money.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Meeni]

Raising capitol, lovely spelling mistake that is very revealing of the way things work in big business :}

Re:It won't kill FB

[Meeni]

Do you remember of ICQ? It's been knocked out standing for 10 years, it used to be the cool place to be, its not anymore.

Re:It won't kill FB

[ceoyoyo]

Agreed. Once enough "but we have x million users" companies prove to be spectacularly poor investments we won't have to suffer through the hype anymore. In the meantime, they almost convince me that shorting is a valuable market feature.

Re:It won't kill FB

[ceoyoyo]

It will be something out of the blue, that we haven't seen yet. MySpace didn't see Facebook coming either.

Likely what will happen is that Facebook will face more and more pressure to grow their revenue, which they can only really do by introducing more advertising and more spying. At some point a critical mass of Facebookers will get tired of it and move to something else. Possibly even G+. Then Facebook will wither.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Eponymous Hero]

aol has old ladies who think they need it to connect to the internet. and aol instant messenger.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Eponymous Hero]

because people rise to their highest level of incompetence.

Re:It won't kill FB

[orgelspieler]

Raising capitol, lovely spelling mistake that is very revealing of the way things work in big business :}

I suppose the only solution to such intractable corruption is razing capitol.

Re:It won't kill FB

[slew]

...all of my vague acquaintances and high school classmates who I didn't like then will always need a place to tell me...

I always wonder...
1. what motivates people accept friends on facebook that they don't like?
2. how different these folks are from the other 85million fake people on facebook? ("these folks" being a deliberatly vague reference)
3. why people post anything on facebook at all given #1 and #2?

Re:It won't kill FB

[Rich0]

Yup, I had a relative finally get on the internet, and my much younger cousin gets them set up with an AOL browser and email address. I have NO idea what they were thinking...

Re:It won't kill FB

[flappinbooger]

...all of my vague acquaintances and high school classmates who I didn't like then will always need a place to tell me...

I always wonder...
1. what motivates people accept friends on facebook that they don't like?
2. how different these folks are from the other 85million fake people on facebook? ("these folks" being a deliberatly vague reference)
3. why people post anything on facebook at all given #1 and #2?

1) because to not accept would be "rude" and/or the requesters try to get as many "friends" as some sort of contest or because the only purpose of the account is for some "business" purpose
2) the stats on fake (various meanings of the word fake) accounts on FB is apparently not good
3) ego stroking in some weird "look at me" way

I've posted meaningful thought provoking status updates on FB and it was like crickets chirping and tumbleweeds. I once posted "I just had some ice cream!" having actually just had some ice cream. It was amazing how many people liked that I just had ice cream and were thinking about having their own ice cream or had in fact also just had ice cream or wanted to know what kind of ice cream I just had.

Re:It won't kill FB

[JoeMerchant]

I wouldn't call that hiring based on merit... more like business development through visions of strategic alliance - whether or not it works out in the end tells you more about the people who decided to "marry" the other side than it does about the talent or lack thereof on the strategic figurehead (aka pawn.)

Re:It won't kill FB

[Alex Belits]

My education is superior to one available at Stanford, but it does not automatically guarantee winning VCs' funding lottery or entrance into the good old boys network.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Alex Belits]

I thought, it was obvious that the people listed are examples of top management (in case of Rick Belluzzo, top management of multiple companies) with no merit whatsoever.

Re:It won't kill FB

[Surt]

Exactly my point. That access is reputation based rather than skill based, and it's not the reputation of the individual seeking the finance that matters.

Re:It won't kill FB

[peawormsworth]

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

My prediction is that facebook will be taken over by Google. At first there will be a lot of debate about what will happen to facebook, but slowly and steadily facebook will get better and better. The name will remain 'facebook' and slowly people will overlook that it is another arm of Google and just use it. G+ will remain in existence, but slowly fall out of favour. Security and privacy on facebook will improve and less will complain about it. G+ will still exist, but just stay in the shadows. Integration between G+ and facebook will improve.

This is what happened with Google Video and Youtube. This is what will happen to facebook. IMO

Besides...

[schnell]

So four people left... are these really surprising super high-level departures? At least in the Big Company I come from, you aren't considered any kind of "executive" unless you have some kind of "* Vice President" or "C*" in your title. "Director" or "Manager" may mean you're actually doing important work, but is nobody's idea of an "executive."

Maybe Facebook is very different, though...

Re:Besides...

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

"At least in the Big Company I come from, you aren't considered any kind of "executive" unless you have some kind of "* Vice President" or "C*" in your title."

So does being a "C/C#/C++ Programmer" make you some kind of big shot?

Re:Besides...

[schnell]

So does being a "C/C#/C++ Programmer" make you some kind of big shot?

By virtue of having three consecutive alphanumeric Cs in your job title, you would outrank everyone else in the company. Unless of course they hired a CCCCEO.

Re:Besides...

[ardle]

They don't need to hire one, just change someone's job title. Maybe we'll have an acronym arms race (in fact, I assume there is one already!)

Re:Besides...

[Guignol]

My former job's title in one of the coolest startups ever was CJT
Where CJT stands for "CJT is my Job's Title" which by virtue of its recursivity propelled me at the highest possible rank of finite and infinite job's ranks of the universe
But I just left the company last year and am now in a new even cooler startup with transfinite job titles, I am slowly working my way to the top, it's a long way but it's worth it

Re:Besides...

[khallow]

But I just left the company last year and am now in a new even cooler startup with transfinite job titles, I am slowly working my way to the top, it's a long way but it's worth it

So is it a bad thing, if I hope you die first?

lil guy investor gets screwed yet again

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel yer pain o ye small average investor. I'm glad I didn't jump on that bandwagon with yall. Don't hate me, I bought VMW near its high. I too, am a fool. Like ye, Oh ye without access to inside info like those bastard criminals.

Re:lil guy investor gets screwed yet again

[gagol]

The only thing an investor have to do is make sure they put their money where it will grow. The facebook IPO was a complete and utter joke (feel free to review my past comments). If Joe wants to make it's placement itself, he bears the risk. If a financial advisor told Joe to invest in Facebook, he should be sacked prompy, head first. Simple as that.

Dont want risk? Invest in primary industries that MAKE STUFF people NEED. Period.

Re:lil guy investor gets screwed yet again

[macbeth66]

hmmmm... What investor invests in something they know nothing about? If they had paid just the scantest of attention, they never would have invested in FB. I am not knocking FB, I am mocking the 'investor'. All of the issues that the press screamed about after the IPO were discussed prior to the IPO. These are the same people that would have invested in tulip bulbs in the 1600s.

What idiot invested in mortgages after 2005? "No income verification! No money down!" Say what? Or derivatives?

And how about the dot.com bubble? I had already moved everything out of that sector the year before. Yeah, I missed out on a some gains, but I avoided the stampede. I do feel a little pity for my workmates that had bought on margin. Ouch.

They still haven't re-instated the Glass–Steagall Act. And they left the super, mega banks intact. Today the finance sector is right back to their old tricks.

Re:lil guy investor gets screwed yet again

[ceoyoyo]

"What investor invests in something they know nothing about?"

Most of them? Perhaps that's why professional fund managers don't do any better at picking stocks than monkeys throwing darts. Also, monkeys throwing darts sounds like something pretty entertaining to watch. From behind a strong window.

Frankly, I saw this coming

[sandytaru]

If I had the ear of any of the big investment firms, I would have told them not to buy into Facebook. Why? Because unlike the other web behemoths, such as Google or Amazon, Facebook is just yet another social network, and those things go in cycles. Over the course of my Internet "life" I've had around twenty accounts on various social networks. They never make money like they believe they will, and they never retain their user base over the long term. Facebook was hoping to be the exception to that rule, but you just can't make money off people sharing Photoshopped pictures of various celebrities wearing the Scumbag Steve hat.

Re:Frankly, I saw this coming

[taxman_10m]

I used to think that, but lately it seems like Facebook has become what I used to use email for. I use Facebook to send messages to friends and also coordinate events with them. And my actual email is mostly spam.

Re:Frankly, I saw this coming

[mister2au]

Correct call but you don't need to be a genius to work that out.

All business have a finite life and well predicted cycle - just some are on cycle measured in by centuries (eg Encyclopædia Britannica, Kodak, NY Times) while others are measured in years or decades.

Only question is not whether Facebook will decline but how much it can cash-in before that happens which is really dictated the length of decline itself - market valuations are more in line strong growth and a life of AT LEAST 10-20 years while I think people's gut-feel is often more on the order 5 years.

Re:Frankly, I saw this coming

[vux984]

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.

Re:Frankly, I saw this coming

[rtb61]

That is actually the initial trigger to drive the popularity of other newer social networks. Each time a person tries to coordinate via a social network, only to get refusal and rejection with the recommendation of an alternate network, that person is motivated to try the alternate network and if they get enjoy the new network try to shift their other friends to it, 'using the old social network'. Fascinating isn't the old fad social network actually accelerates it's demise but facilitating the mass transfer of people to the new fad social network.

Facebook has got on the nose, seen as being old and now flooded with wanna be, has been teens, still trying to hang onto their youth. This seems to be the ultimate killer of social networks, the ageing of their users and users seeking to escape unappealing contacts for what ever reason.

Re:Frankly, I saw this coming

[SolemnLord]

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.

The event was doomed to fail anyway, if the organizers can't figure out how to keep one "hold-out" (for lack of a better word) in the loop through other means.

Re:Frankly, I saw this coming

[vux984]

The event was doomed to fail anyway, if the organizers can't figure out how to keep one "hold-out" (for lack of a better word) in the loop through other means.

Who said the event failed? The point was that planning and organizing it on fb when you have hold outs doesn't work. As soon as they stopped using fb to coordinate, everything worked just fine.

If you put facebook through a compiler ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... the outcome is a bunch of soiled butt-papers
 

not hard to work out why

[Swampash]

Jonathan Matus, mobile platform marketing manager
Ben Blumenfeld, design manager

Facebook is SHIT on phones and iPads. I hear quite a few people use those these days.

Re:not hard to work out why

[Tough Love]

Jonathan Matus, mobile platform marketing manager
Ben Blumenfeld, design manager

Facebook is SHIT on phones and iPads. I hear quite a few people use those these days.

True, I tried it on a tablet today, it looks uglier than sin. I wonder why, I mean it's pretty ugly at best but sheesh. Messages work, but the question is, what is the advantage over gmail?

Re:not hard to work out why

[ceoyoyo]

Actually, I think it works quite well on my phone and iPad. They haven't updated the client in a while so it's got less ads and the Timeline thing is only sort of there. The web page, on the other hand, is pretty infested with ads, some of which are difficult to block, and has a confusing interface.

Surprise!

[Ol Olsoc]

The most amazing thing about this whole sad saga is that not one single person foresaw Facebooks IPO problems. Not one I tells ya!

Re:Surprise!

[macbeth66]

The most amazing thing about this whole sad saga is that not one single person foresaw Facebooks IPO problems. Not one I tells ya!

Really? Were you even reading the financial news?

Re:Surprise!

[macbeth66]

Egads! I've been had? Can I chalk it up to being up too late after a weekend of too many 'serious' drunken discussions about what is wrong with this damn country...

Who's Zuckerberg's alter ego?

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Facebook's biggest problem as a young company is Zuckerberg has never had a corporate alter ego. The most prominent of the newer information companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google were started by partners such as Steve Jobs/Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates/Paul Allen, and Larry Page/Sergey Brin. Like a vanishing twin, one of the partners might eventually leave the company, but in their early histories, none of these companies was dominated by a single alpha-geek but by a Batman and Robin or Laurel and Hardy dynamic duo.

Re:Who's Zuckerberg's alter ego?

[binarylarry]

Unfortunately for Microsoft, they lost both Professor X and Cyclops and have had to make due with Matter Eater Lad for the past decade.

Re:Who's Zuckerberg's alter ego?

[phantomfive]

Tom. He had a million friends.

Re:Who's Zuckerberg's alter ego?

[Heretic2]

What about Elon Musk? Who was his "alter ego?"

Re:Who's Zuckerberg's alter ego?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the company, in almost all of them he had a strong second man or multiple ones, I think he only founded X.com on his own and that merged pretty quickly with confinity.

With spacex his partner is the propulsion designer (forgot his name, but he was/is the main technical driver behind the company.
With Tesla it was originally the founder of tesla, nowadays I don't know.

I think the main thing with Elon is that he doesn't mind publicity or even loves it while the rest of the important guys can focus on the company itself. Same with Jobs/Wozniak and Gates/Allen.

Re:Who's Zuckerberg's alter ego?

[jsepeta]

What about Larry Ellison? He's missing a partner.

Not every startup company is headed by Bonnie/Clyde, Laurel/Hardy, Lucy/Ethel, Barney/Fred, Larry/Moe/Curly/CurlyJoe/Shemp.

Re:Who's Zuckerberg's alter ego?

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

You're right of course. But Ellison's over a decade older than Jobs and Gates. So while Apple, Microsoft and Oracle were all founded in the 70s, Ellison presumably had more business and real life experience than Jobs, Gates, and Zuckerberg when he started his company. If I'm not mistaken Jobs even hired Scully the softdrinks salesman to run Apple for a while since outside investors thought Jobs was too brash and young to run Apple, much as Eric Schmidt was hired as Google CEO while the co-founders got schooled in corporate hard knocks.

Re:Who's Zuckerberg's alter ego?

[tool462]

Yes, the Sherlock/Watson dynamic. You see, the problem here is that Zuckerberg isn't Sherlock Holmes. He's Professor Moriarty.

What's new?

[Lord Ender]

Every tech company is losing staff, because none are willing to hire junior-level workers and train them. So companies keep competing over the same fixed number of people. And the quickest way to get a raise is to jump ship. So there you have it.

It's not just tech, either. There are lots of college-educated bartenders these days, because every "entry level" position requires 3 years of experience. It's absurd.

Re:What's new?

[Osgeld]

One day a few years ago I saw a job listing that required 3 years of experience specifically on a product that wasnt due to be released for another quarter. Not just some update, but a pretty radical departure from its previous version, and only hit the news a half year before.

I sent in a resume claiming I was Marty Mcfly and that I had over 2 decades of experiance using the software that was not released yet... I got a rather rude email back

HR = retard

Re:What's new?

[tokul]

It is not low level tech rotation. Management is leaving and four heads are doing it at the same time.

Re:What's new?

[Anonymous Coward]

HR has no sense of humor and doesn't "get" technical people. My two best jobs came because the process bypassed HR. I got excellent reviews from my immediate reports, and funny looks from HR when I handed them my resume. They all require a resume as a formality. They probably learned nothing from the fact that my resume would have ended up on their reject pile if I had gone through chanels.

It's become my rule no. 1 of getting hired: get around HR. Yeah, yeah, some people send out hundreds of resumes to HR and get hired. For me (and I suspect a lot of other people) it's such a low percentage play that it's not worth it.

Re:What's new?

[Anonymous Coward]

> saw a job listing that required 3 years of experience specifically on a product that wasnt due to be released for another quarter.

Probably a gamed H1B posting. This was never intended to be available for the public, they are justifying the existence of an existing engineer.

Re:What's new?

[CAIMLAS]

Add to that, it seems the 'resume padders' are the ones doing most of the jumping.

Sure, they've got hands-on experience with such-and-such. Do you know what they don't have? Indepth experience. So all their knowledge is superficial. Case in point, I know of an admin with no more than 3 years of actual, hands-on low-level sysadmin experience. He is relatively good; however, he was just hired as the senior administrator at an internationally renowned organization.

Meanwhile, the only people staying in their positions are either brutally honest or have a stake in remaining at one place for long periods of time.

Honestly, the best thing you can do for your career right now (in IT) is lie. It's what all your managers and supervisors do, and it's the only way you're going to get your resume past the filters HR departments have in place which are probably already looking for 10+ years of experience with Windows Server 2008...

Re:What's new?

[toddestan]

The depressing part is that once you manage to get some experience in something you end up type-cast, where you end up stuck doing the same thing with the same tools you started with, because that's all employers think you're good for. Throw that in the whole "overqualified" BS and it's nearly impossible to change careers nowadays.

Re:Love fb

[ThorGod]

I sort of agree, and it's good to hear at least one decenter from the crowd. I also don't really like facebook, and scorn it for my own personal reasons. But, I do see where people are always going to be looking for ways to connect. FB did that pretty well at one point. (Myspace did it for a while, and before them yahoo, etc, in different ways.)

I think the problem with FB, now, is they're either too greedy or too big. It might be a case where several, smaller FB-like organizations, ran privately, would do the same job and more profitably. Instead, they've sold themselves to the market, and the market is realizing what FB's income sheets look like.

(I'm kind of free associating so get your salt lick out.)

Re:Love fb

[vux984]

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.

Re:Talent drain?

[casab1anca]

There is no lack of talent in most large companies. But often this talent is concentrated in the lower levels of the company, and the drain begins as soon as they realize that the people at the top have no clue what they're doing. A lot of this talent then moves to smaller companies, some of which eventually succeed and become large companies. Rinse and repeat. This happens all the time in the tech industry.

Re:Love fb

[casab1anca]

Isn't this the same thing people said about MySpace back then?

And nothing of value was lost

[rudy_wayne]

director of platform partnerships

platform marketing director

mobile platform marketing manager

design manager

Sorry, but those mostly sound like made up bullshit job titles.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Ryanrule]

They pay six figures salary though, and that's without bonuses and other compensation.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[phantomfive]

Of course, six figures isn't very impressive in Silicon Valley.....

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[digipres]

This lot sound like they should all be on the Golgafrincham B ark: http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Golgafrincham

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[wienerschnizzel]

Sorry, but those mostly sound like made up bullshit job titles.

Then you know nothing about the software business. The Facebook platform is a well designed interface that attracted a lot of corporate attention to Facebook. Go on and read up on it. It was one of the most successful things Facebook did and, it's where Google's attempts at social network failed. From what I can tell, the design manager, platform marketing director and director of platform partnerships must have made a really good job.

And now these people are moving on...

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[heathen_01]

I guess the rest of facebook are doomed to die from a keyboard pathogen in the near future then.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[19061969]

Given that getting a large number of regular users is a core part of the business requirements for design then yes, it is bloody well designed. Even with ~10% of fake accounts, it has a lot of real eyeballs which explains the successful (from a Zuckerberg PoV) IPO.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[wienerschnizzel]

Yes it is!

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Pieroxy]

Of course, six figures isn't very impressive in Silicon Valley.....

I'd say it all depends on the first digit now, doesn't it?

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[outofluck70]

...those mostly sound like made up bullshit job titles.

Ugh, how depressing. That these *don't* sound like BS job titles to me. I've fully absorbed the corporate poison. Guess I'll just wait for them to liquefy me and feed me to the next "battery".

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Dahamma]

They are real jobs, they are just FAR from "high level execs". Middle management, at best. And they are mostly marketing positions, which while important for the company, are much more about personality and general experience than any Facebook-specific knowledge they may have built up. Doubt Facebook will have much trouble replacing them.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Rich0]

Well, I wouldn't say that Google has failed so much as it hasn't succeeded to the same degree. People use Google+, some exclusively - just not as much as Facebook.

Google's main problem is that Facebook managed to get Aunt Tilly to sign up (something its predecessors never achieved), and that has created a huge network effect. That's the reason AOL is still around. Back when everything was just teenagers then myspace or xynga or whatever could be the latest fad. Now if you want to talk to Aunt Tilly then you need to use Facebook.

The whole platform thing was never the reason Facebook took off. It might be something helping it to stay around, but Aunt Tilly is still mostly the reason for that. I'd love to see Google+ gain an API though, as long as they keep all the app spam outside of my feed.

Re:Love fb

[Grishnakh]

Well considering how many people use FB, I guess in your mind most of the adult population is "feeble-minded". Arrogant much?

FB is a pretty smart idea; only a fool would say otherwise. However, that doesn't mean that FB is the greatest possible implementation of that idea. It has a lot of problems; the biggest problem is that of monetization. Sure, it's kinda cool to have some big online meeting place to find all your friends and post dumb pictures and links and chit-chat about it all, but someone's gotta pay the bills to keep it all running, and people posting silly comments about cat pictures and pictures of their kids isn't exactly a big money-maker, and people tend to get turned off by too much advertising, so while that can be used to bring in revenue, if you overdo it, it'll backfire, plus it's not hard for people to block ads with things like ABP, making advertising even less valuable.

The other problem I see is that FB just isn't that well done. For instance, suppose I want to look up someone I knew way back in high school to see what he or she is up to these days. If they have an uncommon name, no problem, just search for that name and they'll pop up if they have a FB account. But what if their name is John or Julie Smith? Good luck finding the person you're looking for there. Now, you'd think that you could just narrow it down with some keywords or something (e.g. school names they've attended, towns or states they've lived in, etc.); but no, the FB people aren't smart enough to implement that apparently.

Re:Love fb

[Osgeld]

It hasn't changed my life one bit, its just another in a long series of popular communities, they run for a while, crap out and get replaced while some child claimed they changed humanity

Re:Love fb

[Osgeld]

"FB is a pretty smart idea; only a fool would say otherwise."

So was AOL, myspace, and another 2 dozen communities just like it in the past, its a fad

that fad will eventually grow tired and move on to the next facebook, leaving all that time and effort spent reduced to a news blog, its impressive no doubt, but so were each and every one of its predecessors, and the future will be yet another service that "change people's lives" thats just facebook + a few of the things you mention to make it 0.07% slightly better for your aunt or teenage cousin to bullshit about nothing on for a few more years.

Re:Love fb

[Mashiki]

I don't care. I love facebook. It's an awesome idea. It'll survive and thrive

You know, I remember people saying the same thing about myspace, and a bunch of other 'social media' sites. They're doing pretty good too huh? It won't survive that's the thing, myspace changed a lot of stuff too, then it died. The only reason why it's hanging on now, is because corporations are living on the high life for it. When that changes and it becomes useless as an advertising platform, it won't matter. Car companies have already realized this. GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Lexus, VW, Volvo, and so on have all already pulled their advertising, it just "doesn't work."

Exodus

[The Evil Atheist]

Zuckerberg, let my people go.

Re:Exodus

[porjo]

That's kinda ironic given Zuckerberg was born into a Jewish family...

Re:Exodus

[Kupfernigk]

Surely you mean "appropriate", not "ironic".

Making bricks without straw - isn't that the very definition of what Facebook is about?

Of course. Lockup just ended.

[Animats]

Much employee-owned stock couldn't be sold until the first lockup period ended. Which it just did. So, given Facebook's declining stock price, it's time to cash out. Of course they're quitting. Facebook is profitable, but the stock is overpriced by an order of magnitude or so.

Lockups are far shorter than they used to be. When I cashed out of Autodesk in the 1980s, insiders had a 2-year lockup on restricted stock. And you had to pay taxes when you exercised an option, even though you couldn't sell for another two years. That was before "deregulation", and kept insiders from cashing out before the company tanked. Now it's 90 to 277 days. This encourages hyping the stock, taking the money, and running.

any Dilbert or xkcd.com references?

[k6mfw]

alrighty I'm too lazy to search but I wonder if these two have something on FB and the Big Z.

As long...

[cbreak]

As long as it's just managers it's ok. All they seemed to do is form facebook into the privacy failure that it is today anyway.

Re:Love fb

[Conspire]

FB did not change my life. FB did not change anyone's life that I know of. FB is a major number pumper. I guess at least 20% probably a lot more of the "active accounts" are fake.. Even more so are people that only use it to look at pics grandkids sent them. FB is run by a guy with zero scruples. FB entire strategy relies on them selling your personal data to advertisers in one way or another. Should be called "FaceCrook" FB is a major fad, yet slowly running out of steam. When the real attrition starts, it will deflate quickly and like many on this thread state "will become a news site" I don't know anyone who "loves facebook" anymore. I'm surprised you are so behind the times and so in love with it!

Re:Love fb

[Conspire]

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!

Good thing?

[adenied]

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.

This might be for the best

[hyades1]

If this exodus can delay or reverse the forced conversion to that gawd-awful "Timeline", then it's all to the good.

i'm curious...

[crutchy]

... as to whether the exodus was by choice or due to "rationalization"

Re:Love fb

[Grishnakh]

Yes, I never said FB was the be-and-and-end-all, and after that part you quoted I pointed out major problems with the implementation. Also, we already have yet another service that's 0.07% better as you were saying; it's called "Google+". The jury's still out on that one though. A lot of times, things like this have a first-mover factor, such as Ebay where no one bothers with the alternatives because the other people aren't on them; of course, that didn't save MySpace or AOL, so there's some kind of threshold where people abandon the player that has inertia.

Re:Love fb

[Johann Lau]

I guess in your mind most of the adult population is "feeble-minded". Arrogant much?

Just because it's a whole lot of people doesn't mean they're not feeble-minded. It's just that fallacy is more likely to employed. Well done on that, but otherwise: yeah, if you're going to say "facebook changed my life"... what friendly reply is there to that? It's not nice to call people idiots, but is it better when idiots insist on their idiocy not being pointed out? It's not about the individual idiots, after all -- not for me, for them maybe -- it's about the proliferation of idiocy. We all have it to some degree, so can't we just stop being fucking sissies about it? Yeah, the way facebook was absorbed is fucking stupid. Just like the way humanity jumped into all sorts of things which we now have to clean up / figure out was stupid. Facebook is exactly as stupid as AOL was, or MSN.

The rest of what you're talking about is called the internet. It's quite good, which is why so many parties try to pull numbers on it. Good thing most people are feeble-minded, right?

Apparently very nice for engineers

[David Gerard]

I am told by geeks that work there that it's really very good, and lots of fun working on a site that's hugely popular and where your work will actually be used by millions of people every day. So I would not expect a serious engineer exodus. Though perhaps "FYIFV" buttons may become fashionable.

When genius meet investors

[Alice Lee]

There are so many companies that buid up by talented people, they are impressive, they are very interesting, they are full of vtality... It seems as if they can grow into a business empire when they introduced investors, usually IPO. But the result are always disappointed. The genius who founded the company is usually leave the company in the end. Even if they don't leave, they can't operate the company at will. The morden business management and the genius usually in conflict of the company's future.

Re:Love fb

[Fnord666]

I think the problem with FB, now, is they're either too greedy or too big. It might be a case where several, smaller FB-like organizations, ran privately, would do the same job and more profitably.

Diaspora could fill this requirement. The key to several small versions is that they have to interconnect to form a useful whole. You still see your friend's posts regardless of whether you are on the same host or not. You will need a number of these companies or sites so that users have options and they will need to be able to migrate from one to another easily if you want something like this to gain traction. Different sites can have different privacy policies and the protocols that are used to communicate between sites support and enforce those policies.

Re:Manage THIS!

[jellomizer]

But we have gotten old and many of us are managers now.

Of course they're leaving.

[mark_reh]

Let me explain how this works (having gone through an IPO at a company where I worked years ago):

1) founders of company want to generate some cash.
2) founders hire a bunch of execs and engineers promising the company will go public and everyone wiil get options at pre IPO price.
3) dopes take the jobs.
4) company goes public, stock price soars, people start dreaming about what they will do with their newly minted wealth.
5) reality sets in- founders are the only ones able to exercise their options, everyone else has to wait to be vested in 5 years.
6) founders sell off their stock, generating the cash they sought, leave everyone else twisting in the wind.
7) Now-wiser execs realize their options won't ever be worth anything and jump off the sinking ship while they can.

It has been done so many times you'd think people would be wise to this scam by now, but it keeps working over and over.

Re:Of course they're leaving.

[kesuki]

It works becuase the model is over 10,000 years old. since wealth was invented it has been a 'game' to get the most cash for the least effort. the government doesn't shut it down because they make money and have guarenteed jobs slapping the wrists of repeat offenders. there are plenty of people who know that their retirment plans are being ruined by an out of control revolving doors that is the congress, senate, and the president.

Re:Of course they're leaving.

[Rich0]

Yup - generally a problem with any non-public company - stock and associated things don't really have the same kind of value, because those in control can rewrite the rules to suit them. You can always try to sue them, but that is expensive.

Once the company is public those kinds of shenanigans tend to go away. However, it looks like Facebook is using multiple stock classes and such, so we probably need a major scandal or two to get the SEC and Congress to actually do its job. Right now they're still busy trying to pretend that 1929 never happened.

So

[wisnoskij]

They just saved loads in wages and what is it going to do? push back the next complete GUI overhaul 3 months?

employees can start selling their stock Thursday

[peter303]

Thats when the IPO blackout ends. If too many sell, that could mean a loss of confidence and a another big drop in the stock value. But this is an opportunity for employees to buy homes now with their rewards.

Re:Love fb

[Achilles123]

Now, you'd think that you could just narrow it down with some keywords or something (e.g. school names they've attended, towns or states they've lived in, etc.); but no, the FB people aren't smart enough to implement that apparently.

Well actually you can narrow it down using Location,Education and Workplace in that order in the 'People' filter.

Now would be a great time to go private

[EmagGeek]

If the same firms that sold the IPO stock at $38 were to make a tender offer for all outstanding shares at $31 (a ~50% premium), not only would people fall over themselves trying to take that deal, but the firms would make a tidy ~22% profit in just a couple of months.

Not too shabby, if you ask me.

Re:Now would be a great time to go private

[ceoyoyo]

Hm... everybody was wondering what Facebook was going to do with the proceeds of the IPO.

AOL is still around because..

[intellitech]

They merged with Time Warner. That's the only reason.

Satan.

[Kupfernigk]

"Trust me, Larry, our users are all sado-masochists. Deep down, we're giving them what they want. And deep down is where they're all going to end up, so it's kind of a win/win situation. Did I tell you about how they tried to get Heaven working on MySQL? They're back to clay tablets already."

Who left?

[Fatch Racall]

So, wait. What you're telling me is the person who managed the terrible design changes over the past years, and a few marketing managers, have left. Boo freaking hoo.

"talent"

[zooblethorpe]

Same reason they call porn actors/actresses "talent"

I'm pretty sure I don't want to see any FB execs naked, though.

Fewer managers?

[PeterWone]

Oh no, who will pester the developers now? Productivity will soar.

The Future is Dark

[knownware]

Eek, this worries me if Facebook can really hold on in the future to come. They need to spice things up a little.. SOMETHING to keep them on the top. Wouldn't want Facebook to end up like MySpace one day..

Couldn't happen...

[DiEx-15]

Couldn't happen to a nicer company!

Now thanks to this, the dictionary has a new addition: Suckerberg.

Re:Love fb

[singingjim1]

Facebook changed my life in that it made it much easier to be in touch with the people I want to be in touch with and introduce me to more people I want to be in touch with. I had a fantastic life before facebook and an even better one now. To say that I'm an idiot because of this is just proving you're an angry, bitter person. You don't know me, but you've certainly shown yourself to us. I race mountain and road bikes almost all year round and travel the country doing so. I've met so many people in my travels and through racing that I keep in touch with and share pictures with through facebook. It's an enhancement of the life I already led and judging by the sheer numbers I think a lot of very intelligent people with wonderful lives would agree with me.

Re:Love fb

[singingjim1]

How am I trolling? I just voiced my opinion. You people sound so angry. And all the jibberjabber about privacy. That's hilarious. What privacy?? You think you have privacy??? And even if you did, then so what? I don't give a crap who knows what about me. I volunteer information about me on a daily basis. I WANT companies to know who I am and what my interests are. Bunch of tin foil hat wearing paranoid geeks is what I'm seeing in this discussion. Facebook allows me to almost instantly contact whomever I want in my circle of friends without the need for dialing a phone. I NEVER talk on the phone anymore. No need to. I do everything through facebook messaging or posts in groups. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Re:Love fb

[vux984]

Facebook allows me to almost instantly contact whomever I want in my circle of friends without the need for dialing a phone.

So does email, SMS, Intant messenging. And what is wrong with a phone call anyway? You can't abide actually talking to your friends?

I WANT companies to know who I am and what my interests are.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

And really that is the least of your concerns.

I don't give a crap who knows what about me.

That's what a lot of people say until it bites them in the ass.

People have been fired from jobs, harrassed, physically attacked, stalked, had their homes robbed, and had their identities stolen thanks to that attitude.

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

And you ask how are you trolling? Good one.