

Facebook CTO Bret Taylor Departs (For Start-Ups Unknown) - mlinsey
http://allthingsd.com/20120615/exclusive-facebook-cto-bret-taylor-departs-for-start-ups-unknown/?mod=tweet

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chris123
Japanese proverb: "With the fall of one leaf we know that autumn has come to
the world."

Interpretation: More departures coming soon.

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eco
But there is an old greek proverb (Aristotle actually) that says "One swallow
does not a summer make".

What am I to make of this? I don't know who to trust anymore.

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ktizo
If Aristotle said it, then it is almost certainly wrong. Is generally a good
rule not to trust the opinion of someone who can't count the legs on a fly and
who also claims that menstruating women cloud mirrors.

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1123581321
It is similar to how you did not bother to check his track record on politics,
ethics, virtue and philosophy.

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ktizo
Well, I've read through a bit of his stuff that I found on Project Gutenberg.
Personally, I prefer the outlook of Diogenes.

[edit] And don't get me started on Aristotle's politics, which in my view were
largely self interested, shallow and myopic. For example -

" _But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom
such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a
violation of nature?_

 _There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason
and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only
necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out
for subjection, others for rule._ "

Now if we compare that to the story of Diogenes when he was taken and sold as
a slave and then asked by the gangmaster what he was useful for, he apparently
told them that he was quite useless at everything, other than as a governer of
others. Also he apparently told Alexander the Great _"I was searching through
some bones for those of your father, but could not distinguish them from those
of a slave."_

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eavc
Aristotle was a philosopher, not a pundit. Most of his opinions were rooted in
reason, even ones that seem silly or backward to us now. It's easy to read the
work of people from past eras and be dismissive of them. After all, they were
wrong about so much.

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ekm2
Aristotle was certainly a philosopher,but i fail to see how he could not see
that slavery is wrong,that barbarians are somehow 'inferior'.No,it isnt based
on logic.I guess that makes him as human as the rest of us.

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eavc
Have you studied Plato and Aristotle? There are arguments behind those
opinions. I disagree with them, mind you, but it's easy to just scoff at the
past for holding presently unpopular opinions.

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zerostar07
I always thought he was wasting his talent in there. I mean it's a big
platform and everything, but he basically took an existing API and converted
it to REST (the "open graph" etc).

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ryguytilidie
I think you forgot money.

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troymc
It's interesting to see that Cory Ondreijka is taking over mobile at Facebook.

He was one of the early employees at Linden Lab (makers of Second Life) and
was best known (to SL residents) as the coder who created the Linden Scripting
Language. The story goes that he created it quickly, like over a weekend. (It
_did_ get improved after that though!)

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ddol
There were $256.9m of trades on FB stock ~14m49s before he announced the story
on his timeline. Two trades of 4,287,969 shares.

What is likely to have happened here? Did an institutional investor get wind
of the story early? If so, why did the share price jump up?

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malandrew
If your departure from a company is a material fact by virtue of the position
you hold, does it make it insider trading to dump your own shares in a company
you are leaving?

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phil
I'm pretty sure the answer to your question is yes.

Typically, if you're in a position where you'll often have material non-public
info you need to create a trading plan in advance, or otherwise remove your
ability to trade the company based on all the secret stuff you're always going
to be knowing. Look at it that way and for the CTO of a large public co.,
their own departure is just going to be the last of many, many pieces of info
make it problematic for them to trade the stock.

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didip
All I have to say is: Thank you for co-creating Tornado.

I hope more good things will come out from him.

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imrehg
I guess now they will have to change this tutorial of querying one's friends
in the Facebook Query Language [0]:

    
    
      Determine whether the currently logged in user is friends with another user, Bret Taylor (Try this query):
      SELECT uid1, uid2 FROM friend WHERE uid1 = me() AND uid2 = 220439
    

[0]: <https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fql/friend/>

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ivankirigin
Bret is a badass. Congrats and good luck!

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napolux
Hey Bret, fix the Friendfeed password recovery!

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veyron
He got his FU money.

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csmeder
Will this likely mean he is giving up large amounts of stock options? Or is it
likely most of his stock options have vested?

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coreygoodie
I couldn't think of any scenario - unless there was something profoundly
personal/family oriented going on - where someone in his position would leave
before they have vested.

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ChuckMcM
I had the good fortune of joining Sun the day the Monday after they went
public. There were certainly people who left 180 days later, even though they
had unvested pre-IPO stock, because the return on their vested stock was
'enough' for the next stage of their life.

There was also a clue in their S-1 [1] where his name is not included in the
'executive compensation' section, generally that is a sign that either he
won't be continuing on with the company going forward (likely case) or that if
he quit it would not materially affect the company (hence not of interest in
the prospectus)

Given that he's been there 3 years out of four, has a C level position, and
all of the other C level jobs have multiple millions of shares, lets give him
a 'lowball' grant of 4M shares. So 3/4 are vested and that is 3M shares. So FB
is currently $30/share but lets say he sells all 3M and pays 50% in taxes.
Lets be even more pessimistic and say that his sale pushes the price down to
$25, that is 1.5M shares @ $25 that he pockets free and clear. So $37.5M in
the bank. Perhaps he did this math and said, "You know, I've got lots of
things I want to do and that chunk of money would give me the freedom to do it
until I die."

[1]
[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001193125120...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/d287954ds1.htm#toc287954_13)

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moreorless
Don't forget he still has to pay for the stocks.

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bmelton
That's a cashless transaction. They just deduct whatever requisite amount from
his payout.

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moreorless
The point was that he still needed to add the strike price to the calculation.

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known
What is the source of income for FB apart from advertisements?

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zbruhnke
pb ... you staying at YC or heading out with Brett? lol

