What Employee Lock-In Means At Facebook

theodp writes "In the early days of Facebook, the company would go into what CEO Mark Zuckerberg called lockdown, where no one is supposed to leave until the task at hand is done. Speaking on Saturday at Startup School 2013, CNET reports, Mark Zuckerberg remarked that the practice persists to this day. Facebook doesn't lock people in the office, but it comes "as close to that as we can legally get," Zuckerberg said to an eruption from the crowd. The lockdown isn't the first at-home-in-a-Bangladesh-garment-factory management technique Zuck's touted at Startup School. Back in 2007, Zuckerberg drew fire for advising company founders "you should only hire young people with technical expertise" if they want to be successful. And while there are no reports of Facebook hiring 9-year-old bosses yet, the LA Times reports that only young undocumented immigrants are welcome at the hackathon hosted by Zuckerberg's FWD.us next month where "tech CEO's like Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman, Drew Houston and Andrew Mason will be sitting side-by-side with undocumented youth [with technical expertise] creating tech products to help the immigration reform movement" (invitation to 'day (and night) of working')."

Comments

Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are illegal immigrants being called undocumented? The are documented, by their countries of origin. The reason they are undocumented in the US is because they are here ILLEGALLY. They have no right to claim legal status when they did not go through the proper legal process. IMO, these people are brazenly flouting our immigration laws without any fear of prosecution which only encourages more illegal immigration. This has to stop.

Illegal is illegal.

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is to obscure the fact that they are in the USA illegally. One way to win an argument is to change the terms or the definition of the terms. If the terms "illegal alien" or "illegal immigrant" were to persist the anti-amnesty position would prevail. Since the the accepted term is now "undocumented immigrant" has become the term used, the pro-amnesty position will win on this issue. The actual and most dramatic losers will be the legal immigrants--those people who applied for permission to enter the USA and applied through the system to become USA citizen. (And they are typically against illegal immigration.)

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[nashv]

No AC , 'Undocumented' means status cannot be determined. For example, family moved here illegaly but baby is born within US borders in a shack without a birth certificate. The baby is then 'undocumented'.

Naturalised US citizen who lost passport, then became homeless and ended up the other side of the country with amnesia = Undocumented.

There is a difference. Unless, any immigration is proved in court to be illegal, it is undocumented. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[Gavagai80]

Perhaps that rule should be applied fairly to all. Deport everyone (perhaps at their 18th birthday if not at birth) to a specially created territory, and only allow people to come back as US citizens by standing in line and earning it. Having accidentally been born somewhere shouldn't give you special privileges.

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[Anonymous Coward]

I might be wrong, but I suspect the vast majority of the people called "undocumented" in the mass media were not "born without a birth certificate" or "lost their passport".

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[causality]

One way to win an argument is to change the terms or the definition of the terms.

Nothing "won" that way ever turns out well in the end. The practice is one reason the US has so many batshit insane laws like the War on Some Drugs that don't stand up to analysis, and continues to keep these laws even after this is well known.

The lack of rationality will have been the root cause of our downfall.

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[Gavagai80]

Time to relocate all humans to the exact part of Africa where the species first evolved, then. Everyone elsewhere is an undocumented immigrant who the native species did not welcome.

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[dbIII]

So? Already in the place is already in the place. Nobody is going to send them all elsewhere especially since so many of those who make the rules are already benefiting from a shadow economy of people that can be paid less and treated worse than a "legal" employee. Pretending otherwise is not going to make it all go away by magic and treating these people like subhumans is only making things worse, making that shadow economy even more attractive and reducing the conditions for the "legal" employees.
The USA cannot afford to send them "home". Just getting angry about it hasn't helped for the last century+ either.

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[jasper160]

Calling illegal immigrants undocumented workers is like a drug lord an undocumented pharmacist.

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[ebno-10db]

Having accidentally been born somewhere shouldn't give you special privileges.

Good idea. Let's get rid of the birthright citizenship that ensured that former slaves were citizens, and also ensures that the children of illegal aliens who were born here are US citizens. Do you prefer that we abandon jus soli in favor of jus sanguinis, so that people whose families have been in this country for generations are not citizens? Or should everyone just be stateless until such time as some country decides to grant them citizenship?

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[Megane]

The anti-Latino prejudices of today are no different than the anti-Asian, anti-Jew, anti-Irish, and anti-German prejudices of the past.

Except for, you know, that part where the Asians, Jews, Irish, Germans, etc. did their paperwork to get in. If they didn't, they weren't let in. Apparently Spanish-speaking immigrants are "more special" and don't have to immigrate properly.

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[tompaulco]

But many of us feel that a free society should welcome people that want to come and make a better life for themselves.
I think the majority of us feel that way. Which is why we created a system by which people can immigrate to the United States. My wife did it, my grandfather did it, about a million people per year do it. So, why should we reward people who do it illegally by giving them a free pass, while punishing those who do it legally by making them do all the paperwork and pay fees?

Re:Illegal, Not Undocumented.

[rock_climbing_guy]

For immigration activists to call illegal immigrants "undocumented foreign workers" would be like if marijuana legalization activists called marijuana an "undocumented plan", or if the NRA referred to assault rifles as "undocumented firearms".

It's quite clear to me that they're pushing to destroy the working class in this country by flooding us with cheap labor and they're trying to control the language to achieve their goal.

It's hard to believe that back in the day, Henry Ford was proud to say that people who built his company's cars could afford to buy them.

Young stupid people

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you need young people, because they are stupid enough to think that spending hours for your employer is a great way to spend the precious little free time you'll have in your life. I used to think it was cool to spend 3-4 days at a demo party just hacking away. Now I would rather sleep, exercise and keep myself in good shape without worrying about crashing and trying to make up for lack of sleep.

Re:Young stupid people

[gmack]

Stupid managers as well. Every few years my employer retries that idea only for the bug counts to skyrocket as the hours get later. After about an 11 hour day, more time is spent fixing bugs created by overtired employees than making actual progress.

Re:Young stupid people

[gsslay]

Young people also have little in the way of life experience that allows them to differentiate between "can we do this" and "should we do this".

Result; no qualms about implementing things on a technical basis without consideration to the social/moral consequences.

And before you vote me down; I'm not suggesting young people are less morally or socially concerned than anyone else. Just that, plainly, they do not have as much life experience. Many issues that the likes of FB raise are not new just because the technology is. It's the same old struggle between individual rights and the demands of big companies and authorities.

Re:Young stupid people

[phantomfive]

When I first graduated from college, I was lucky enough to have a coworker who had gotten over that. He worked hard and fast, and was focused during work, but as soon as 5:00 came around, he relaxed and went home.

This was a new thing to me, because I was used to being in college where I had to stay up all night if my project/homework wasn't done. If I hadn't worked with him, I would have stayed with the 'all-nighter' attitude for a long time, because I didn't know anything better.

Bad summary

[barlevg]

Conflating two stories that shouldn't be conflated: the FWD.us hackathon isn't a Facebook-employee lock-in. It's (basically) a publicity stunt designed to help / help raise awareness for immigration reform. That has nothing to do with any tyrannical measures Zuckerberg is taking as CEO.

Re:Bad summary

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

if only it WAS.

You see illegals picketing all the time in D.C.....why no crackdown/arrests/deportations?

Well, you see, America has what's called a "Two party system". One of the parties operates under the bleeding-heart assumption that illegal immigrants might actually be humans, and might actually vote for them. The other party isn't that optimistic; but likes its laborers cheap, expendable, and powerless.

(Also, when it comes to playing law-enforcement whack-a-mole, fighting the 'war on drugs' and getting some of that sweet, sweet, civil forfeiture action pays so much better than rounding up illegal mexicans.)

so why isn't the meeting going to be busted?

[gl4ss]

genuinely curious. if you have time to arrest and send people out for making remarks on twitter how come undocumented(I assume that's double speak for illegally working) immigrants can hold public meetings?

Re:so why isn't the meeting going to be busted?

[Lithdren]

Maybe because being undocumented has nothing to do with being here illegally? While its possible, its not a given, as many different situations can cause someone to become an undocumented individual who cannot prove their citizenship or right to be in the country. Lucky we're not all jerks and deport people without due cause.

Re:so why isn't the meeting going to be busted?

[SirGarlon]

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think attendance at a bank robber conventions is sufficient to arrest someone. You'd need a warrant for that person's arrest, meaning reasonable suspicion he had actually robbed a bank.

Put another way, arresting people just because they chose to attend a gathering *is* an infringement of their right to assembly. The exception being if the gathering itself is criminal, e.g. a conspiracy meeting or a riot.

If all this is true

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

and I admit to not reading the many links, but taking the article at face value (dangerous I know)
BUT
if all of it is true and accurate, it sounds like Mr. Z is a world-class asshole and is trying to bring back the dark days of robber barons building their wealth on the backs/lives of indentured servants...

Yet one more reason (like you needed another really) not to use Facebook

Re:If all this is true

[Electricity Likes Me]

Because it's a town full of people with specializations in a growth field (so they think its as easy for anyone else as they perceived it to be), and then they became rich so now there worldviews will never be challenged, nor will they ever experience any of the issues anyone else ever does.

As was noted in an article on the Great Depression, perspective colors everything: if you were rich and didn't lose everything, and lived in the right neighbourhood then "there were no bread lines".

Highly educated slaves

[korbulon]

That's the true goal of these companies, and a big reason they're all so keen on H1B1.

These big tech fucks move into a town, drive the real estate prices sky-high so you basically have to be upper management to own a place outside the "campus", and if not then you must either live well outside the critical radius and spend at least an hour commuting (good luck with your family), or opt to live within company provided housing ( http://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/Facebook-partner-to-build-Menlo-Park-housing-4860826.php ).

But this has been done before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town. Sigh. So wearisome.

tl;dr

[bradley13]

tl;dr - if you want to be a huge success in business, you need to be an a**hole

Zuckerberg

[MrKaos]

A fine example of leadership without empathy.

Sounds like he figured out the truth

[roman_mir]

Sounds like ZB figured out the truth about America and is acting upon it. The only way to hire people is to ensure that they have little ability to appeal to the American court system.

Re:Sounds like he figured out the truth

[malkavian]

No idea how you managed to get a -1 for that.. It's the reason I didn't move to the US long ago (the balance between the worker and employer is screwed, and it's only become worse as time has progressed).. It does seem as though some corporates really are trying to set up an environment that is very close to indentured servitude. Natural citizens still have legal privileges that trump the desires of the corporates for cheap labour, so they want to import.
That, really, is a crappy way to do business. It'll work in a short term, but ends up as a race to the bottom, and probable collapse far earlier than necessary (wasting a lot of long term productivity and profit).

So?

[jcr]

If I had any interest at all in working for the latest version of MySpace.com, this might be upsetting, but I don't, so who cares?

-jcr

Re:Breaking the law

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Admitting to age discrimination are we?

Of course not. Our HR department's compliance specialists would love to assure you that no such violations are taking place. Now, as an unfortunate matter of fact, old, uncool, balding sickies with 'families' and 'lives outside work' happen to be a poor fit for our company culture, and our hiring process takes ensuring the continuation of the company's innovative culture very seriously; but all applications are given the consideration that the law requires.

Zuckerberg H. Christ

[Anonymous Coward]

I think bosses prefer hiring HB-1s and illegals because it gives them something powerful to hold over the employees head. If the employee feels secure in their life, then they are more likely to challenge the employer and stand up for reasonable rights. So, "immigration reform" to these companies is a way for them to legalize slavery while importing people whose only goal is to export as much of their paycheck back to their home countries as possible.

And seriously, employee lock-ins? Why do people put up with that crap? Is working at a social media company, which will most like be replaced by another social media company within five years, some great honor? People need to have some respect for themselves.

let the hysteria commence

[jbmartin6]

There's nothing in the linked articles to suggest that these "lock-ins" are any different than what many other companies do, especially start-ups, when there is a crucial problem at hand. (To me this 'necessity' sometimes indicates poor management and planning, other times perhaps it's needed). I notice that the first Google result I found isn't mentioned in the summary. It clarifies a bit what the lockdown means, apparently doesn't mean no one is allowed to leave the office or other such nonsense. The link to the Bangladeshi factory story appears to be an absurd comparison.

Illegal != Undocumented

[sjbe]

I assume that's double speak for illegally working

Undocumented means exactly what it you think the word means. It means there is no documentation available to prove the person's citizenship status. If I were to lose certain important documents, I would be undocumented and I'm a US citizen. Often immigrants who are here illegally are also undocumented but undocumented does not mean illegal and illegal does not mean undocumented.

Re:Bullshit

[mrchaotica]

Your red herring is transparent and stinks.

It's transparent and red? I think we've just discovered the Invisible Pink Unicorn equivalent of the devil...!

We call them "Cannonball Run"

[EmagGeek]

We have Cannonball Runs, where our developers and engineers work long days, enjoy company-provided, catered meals, and concierge services to help in their absence at home, and of course preems, which are financial incentives for accelerating the schedule.

It's about as far from what this asshole is doing as you can get, but we get fantastic results, and the work product is very high quality. That's why I spend the money to do it. It does cost money - about $5k/day for a team of 10 people (I refuse to call them "resources").

Re:Because "Illegal" is a stand-in for racial slur

[DoofusOfDeath]

It's not a slur for me. I honestly couldn't care less what race/ethnicity someone in this country is. Here's what anger me about illegal immigration:

• We have laws on the books, but the President won't enforce them. This is a basic breakdown in democracy. Either enforce a law, or repeal it. To have extensive laws on the books that are enforced at the whim of a government official is an invitation for tyranny.
• Illegal immigrants jump ahead of all would-be legal immigrants who are waiting for visas. They basically screw over law-abiding people.
• What do you say to an honest construction company owner, who loses jobs because someone who pays illegal immigrants under the table is able to under-bid him?
• Is it just that the handful of victims of violent crimes by illegal immigrants were attacked? After all, those perpetrators weren't supposed to be here in the first place.
• My state university now allows illegal immigrants to get in-state tuition, but legally present citizens from neighboring states cannot. Basically, following the law is for suckers, apparently. How is this just?

Re:Because "Illegal" is a stand-in for racial slur

[DoofusOfDeath]

A few points. First, I don't consider our right to control who enters our borders to be tyrannical. (I do agree that there are cases where enforcing the law is immoral, as with the examples you gave.)

I'd also be more accepting of having unenforced laws on the books if it was for very brief periods. But instead what we seem to end up with is a legal code that monotonically grows. I see that as incompatible with the doctrine that "ignorance of the law is no excuse". Our legal code is so large now that we basically have ex post facto laws: the government can always find something to arrest anyone for, if they really care to. To me this is a great evil.