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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."
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...
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.
"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.
Unemployment is so high that workers feel powerless and afraid and employers can abuse their power.
Duh....
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.
Just because the company's run like a cult doesn't mean the employees are communists.
Just because employees form a union doesn't mean they are communists.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
...and you have been telling everyone you meet about it ever since! Honestly, Facbook quiters are worse than vegans.
Hoodie hoods up! Drawstrings to maximum tightness! Engage!
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
Working for any large company is like joining a cult. Try working for nike sometime...
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.
That's like saying you deleted a file without overwriting it. You didn't delete shit. It's still there. With social media the only winning move is not to play.
It's also why MS doesn't compete with FB (the only software market which MS does not try to overtake... because FB plays ball with MS).
Seriously?
Microsoft enters markets in which it believes it can make money. Lot of money. Microsoft also enters markets where it believes it can win. Every single hair-brained scheme they tried under Ballmer's reign to capture niche retail and consumer markets ended badly. Today, Microsoft is into the big enterprise systems where they can win, so long as they play the long game. For example, originally SharePoint was a bit of a joke. Today, it's almost mission critical. Dynamics CRM was a toy, today it's giving Salesforce a run for it's money. ERP. The list goes on.
I guess you missed the bit where Microsoft grew tired of competing with Quicken after almost 20 years, and threw in the towel. They tried to take over that market and failed. Portable music players tied to an online store? Zune was a flameout. Enterprise and consumer smartphones? They bought Nokia and still cratered. Don't forget there were plenty of companies that "played ball" with Microsoft over the years and got bitten bad (Cringely's Accidental Empires had a good list, go read that).
No, my friend, the Ballmer era Microsoft wanted it all and ended up stalling the company for years. The "new" Microsoft (the one who plays nice with Red Hat on Azure; the one bringing Ubuntu into your Windows 10; the one bringing SQL Server to Linux) knows it can't overtake markets anymore, and instead is trying to learn to place nice(er).
Facebook isn't safe because of Ballmer. Facebook is safe because they are the 100lb gorilla in a very small niche that Microsoft knows they could not dislodge. Funny, Myspace thought they were that, too...
Facebook is safe because they are the 100lb gorilla
A 100lb gorilla is a very small gorilla....
We're living in the age of ever-shrinking computers. What required an S/360 system in the 1970s can often be done by a microcontroller these days. What if the metaphors are shrinking, too? I, for one, welcome our 1lb gorilla overlords of the 2050s. Look how cute they are!
Ezekiel 23:20