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Working at Facebook Sounds Like Joining a Cult (gizmodo.com)
Vanity Fair has run some excerpts from an upcoming book by a former employee that gives insight on how things work at the social network. The chapter, among other things, details Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's actions when Google launched its own social networking service Google Plus. The extract finds Zuckerberg's behaviour so intense that it calls it "bordered on the psychopathic." It reads: [...] hit Facebook like a bomb. Google Plus was the great enemy's sally into our own hemisphere, and it gripped Zuck like nothing else. He declared "Lockdown," the first and only one during my time there. As was duly explained to the more recent employees, Lockdown was a state of war that dated to Facebook's earliest days, when no one could leave the building while the company confronted some threat, either competitive or technical.â [...] Rounding off another beaded string of platitudes, he changed gears and erupted with a burst of rhetoric referencing one of the ancient classics he had studied at Harvard and before. "You know, one of my favorite Roman orators ended every speech with the phrase Carthago delenda est. 'Carthage must be destroyed.' For some reason I think of that now."
More like joining a Skynet-Workcamp...
I like how through the whole summary, the elephant in the room is that Google is a much bigger, more evil cult.
A slashdot summery of a Gizmodo summery of a Vanity Fair article? Is the source really that are to link to when it is the first line of the Gizmodo summery? http://www.vanityfair.com/news...
This is why you don't put a liberal arts twat in charge of anything technical.
Doesn't sound much like my idea of a cult. More like a business run by a spoiled brat. What are the supposedly cult-like aspects?
Kifflom, brother; kifflom!
... they need a union.
I deleted my account 8 years ago....
Sociopaths manipulate in various ways:
intimidation, anger, suppression, force, charming, acting emphatically.
Many are admired or shunned and often failed to be recognized as such.
Oh please! It's a requirement for the job. It is the dominant trait of the business world.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"Carthago delenda est."? Why even revert to Latin if you don't even know your quotes? Where is this from, Asterix? I mean, Cato the Elder's stock ending was famous enough that its start "Ceterum censeo" is almost better known than the rest: "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam." Without the "Ceterum censeo", a Classic Latin speaker would drop the redundant "est" anyway and just state "Delenda Carthago.". Actually, I think the latter is the Asterix version so Goscinny still beats Zuckerberg, Harvard be damned.
Another reason I will always be an hourly contractor.
You'll see Facebook-like tyrant/sycophant behavior at all of the major companies coming from startup culture. You must always support the company meta. This is evident at Google, Amazon, Valve, and on and on... No real news here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Unemployment is so high that workers feel powerless and afraid and employers can abuse their power.
Duh....
Wow, zucky is an even more underdeveloped privileged douchewad than I had suspected. I haven't seen (or heard of) behavior like that since middle school many many many ages ago. These privileged shitheads really don't grow up past 12 years old? astonishing.
Facebook is being led by a leader who promptly reacts to challenges facing his company. If this was supposed to paint Facebook/Zuck in some sort of negative light... it managed to do the completely opposite.
Meet kettle.
You're right, now we need to summarize further in a Slashdot tl;dr comment.
My summary would be "Facebook delenda est."
Hoodie hoods up! Drawstrings to maximum tightness! Engage!
Who could have imagined that a company based around creepy exploitation of personal data and violations of privacy would be a bad place to work?
If you have an account, delete it, if you work there, quit. It should be obvious by now that FB is a net negative influence on society.
You either didn't read the article or don't remember the situation very well.
At the time, Google was pushing Plus REALLY HARD. It was even going to be integrated into *search results*, by ranking Plus results higher! If you do not think that had a viable chance at de-throning Facebook at the time, you are nuts.
Did the efforts of Facebook have anything to do with it? Well why not? If Facebook was suddenly adding new features and working better than ever before, why could that not have prevented a lot of defection to Google Plus?
My own side target with that whole thing is that I do a lot of photography, and all sorts of professional photographers were really pushing Plus super hard. In fact I think they were really the last group to leave... So Google's push was working to some extent.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As was duly explained to the more recent employees, Lockdown was a state of war that dated to Facebook’s earliest days, when no one could leave the building while the company confronted some threat, either competitive or technical.
"I can't leave the building? Well, here's my badge. Fuck you."
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I wouldn't want to work those insane kinds of hours anymore, but there was a long period of time where I did and enjoyed it a lot - as well as greatly advancing my technical skills. Nothing like cramming years of practical experience into months...
After reading the whole article, I also had more respect for Facebook and Zuckerberg than I did before.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Another corrupt leftist org much like facebook where they recently released a picture of an editorial meeting to show off "diversity" and it was a room with 98% whites with a token asian or two in the back, zero men, and only one of them was over the age of 25. Source: http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2016/huffington-post-editors-photo-of-diverse-meeting-immediately-backfires
Leftist cults. Don't patronize them for the good of mankind.
and call it Zuckertown.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Do you actually have to JOIN the cult?
Or can you issue a SELECT COALESCE and use a subquery instead?
How about "get fucked." No job is worth having to suffer somebody who feels they have the right to exercise that kind of absolute authority over you. Even if there weren't dozens of other tech companies in the bay area ready to gobble up talent - and there are - that would be immediate cause for walking, no question.
I did not register 12 years ago...
I'm still curious as what they were supposed to do during this "lockdown". Perhaps improve Facebook to the point that it was better than G+?
If so, they didn't need to do much.... As all those eager G+ joiners soon discovered.
Also, at that time I do not recall FB changing noticeably. G+ seemed to be a non-event for someone on FB.
if it walks like a duck....
same thing is true of psychopats
The guy is trying to invoke the original computer revolution of Gates and Jobs and tries to paint Zuckerberg up to their level (poorly) while claiming he's the Edward R Murrow on the lines.
The Zuckerberg spoke latin while invoking his genius brand of over-caffeinated geek speek because he can't bother with banal trvialities.
Yay.
Where, in the article discussing the tech genius of the wunkerkind Zuckerberg and his legion of zealots about how hard working and clever they were WAS THE SOLUTION THAT WON THE WAR?!?
You want a TL;DR of this article?
1> Google makes Google+
2> Zuckerberg has a meltdown and invokes THE LOCKDOWN because he's a megalomaniac... or her cares... or I'm not even sure what the point is...
3>???
4> Facebook wins and we were all oh so smart.
C'mon man - Facebook didn't win. Nobody wanted Google+ because nobody wanted all their pr0n searches mixed in with the photos of the kids to grandma under the same account and Google acquiesced.
Zuckerberg isn't a genius, never was, never will be. He made a blog site that was only slightly less onerous than MySpace. He absolutely doesn't have the wizardy of Woz, the marketing savvy of Jobs (or his magical reality distortion field) or the business acumen of Gates. He was lucky, smarmy and greedy enough to win the lottery.
I, for one, will be more than happy to see him and his overbloated, completely useless behemoth of a website put out to pasture in the dung heap of history.
End of line.
But it's okay, cuz billionaire.
At the time I used facebook a lot, and I didn't notice any changes. I don't use it so much anymore, but when I log in - I still don't see anything different.
Maybe because I block ads?
Facebook is a sickness created by a delusional madman that most people lap up.
They all deserve what happens next in the world.
Zuck's immortal words: "young people are just smarter."
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Summary... Idjit
So working for Facebook is almost as good as working for Wal-Mart? Good to know ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/us/workers-assail-night-lock-ins-by-wal-mart.html?_r=0
Why learn anything? In a hundred years or less you'll be dead, and it will have been a waste of time.
ad absurdum?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
FB wants to be the only web site you visit. Rather like a cult that wants to control who you talk to, what you read, etc. I can only imagine how much worse it is when actually working within that organization.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
When are Apple suing?
Facebook likes to hire young, techie, inexperienced, and fairly self-assured people. I mean remember this is the company run by a guy who said that anyone over 30 is "out of ideas", a stance which, shocker here, changed when he got near 30. They hire the kind of people who buy in to their cult bullshit, who want to work at Facebook because "It is the best, most important place EVAR," and will deal with this kind of shit because they don't see it as a problem, or even that strange.
It isn't a case of some evil company saying "You will do what we want, when we want, or you will starve!" Rather it is as the article talked about: A cult like atmosphere where people will do as they are told, even when it is stupid, because they want to, because they believe in the BS.
A lot of it about - check out the utter weirdness with the Goldman Sachs exec parties, the Enron stuff and plenty of others. Prancing around to the strange whims of their bosses like a fantasy of French Nobility before they got the chop. They think they OWN people as seen how they dictate social life outside of work hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
makes me laugh every time
I read this book, what, 17 years ago? https://www.amazon.ca/Corporat...
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
We're criticizing a guy that made a big company and the 800 Lbs gorilla in the room says it wants to do what you do? Possibly replace you? He had probably been approached for a buyout before.
I think anyone would be very concerned (i.e. shit their pants). He faced a very real threat. He managed to survive. I think he had the right reaction, do whatever he could to stop it.
Who knows, if Google bought them out, they could be one of the many projects in the Google graveyard by now.