

Why All Employees Should Be VIPs At Your Company - biznickman
http://blog.holler.com/why-all-employees-should-be-vip-at-your-company-2011-09

======
rmason
It appears to me from afar that Facebook has forgotten one of the most
important rules of the Valley. When you start ignoring the contributions of
developers the better ones leave.

[http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-
eart...](http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-
earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/)

~~~
megablast
This article is almost insinuating that only the developers work hard, but the
other people at facebook are just coasting on the developers hard work. The
fact is, other people can bring a lot to a company as well. Where do the
developers think the money comes from, not from writing great code, but
getting advertisers interested.

~~~
jonursenbach
An argument can be made that the product, and the underlying code that
comprises it, is what actually brings advertisers in. Not salespeople.

~~~
powertower
And the other 99% of the time sales is king.

The users that use and the advertisers that advertise don't care 1 bit about
the backend.

~~~
lucisferre
Wow really? So they would use a completely terrible product too if that's what
it was? I don't see too many people clambering to advertise on Myspace

~~~
PakG1
You'd be amazed at how many terrible products stay afloat simply because they
get the job done, people don't know about alternatives, are too lazy to
change, and the cost of change isn't worth it. Especially in enterprise. I'd
venture to say it's way more common than not.

~~~
lucisferre
I completely agree, though I find that reality quite sad, but yes bad products
often do succeed in spite of themselves.

What I'm just saying there is definitely huge value, sales wise, in having a
good well built product. The bold statement the parent made that the backend
of Facebook doesn't matter to the people or advertisers who use it is flat
wrong. If it was slow, constantly crashing or down it would become a ghost
town relatively quickly. In the end sales cannot compensate for a bad product,
the product is always king in the end.

As to your comment, I like to use the analogy of a land rush to describe the
software technology landscape right now. There is a lot of open land and so
many people get away without having to seriously compete, particularly if they
are solving niche problems. There is still a lot of land out there, this is
also a reason that makes forming start-ups so attractive right now.

------
donw
There's nothing wrong with having private events -- sometimes, you really
don't have room for everybody at the party.

Whatever you do, though, don't host a public event with a separate area for
the VIPs.

A private party is just that -- a private party. The only people that know
about it are the invitees, and I certainly wouldn't feel excluded if I wasn't
given an invite to a small gathering because I wasn't in-group.

I'd be damned insulted if you hold a public hoo-hah with some big names on the
playbill, and then whisk said big names away to some sort of private,
exclusive party, where I can't go, because I'm not one of the cool kids. Not
because the exclusive gathering was, well, exclusive, but because the open-to-
the-public side of things had some massively false pretenses.

~~~
biznickman
You've effectively articulated my exact thoughts. There's a right way and a
wrong way to do things.

------
rektide
_Small non-exclusive company rails against big companies who shield their
developers / have become exclusive, news at 7._

I'm all for companies that can keep developers and engineers up at the front,
being deeply technical involved and interacting with their communities. But
that's not going to be all companies, and Facebook in particular is one of
those companies that is by their nature a closed system that builds itself not
out in public (ala, say Mozilla), but through the proxy of press releases and
new features dropped onto users' and 3rd partys' laps.

The other big factor I'd pitch would be consistency: how much technical
content is there, and what amount is appropriate for a developer to be showing
off? If the event is not inherently a technical event, a fifteen or thirty
minute segment from a developer might seem really out of place. Developers are
to be respected, but Facebook isn't a technical company, it's a networking
company.

~~~
smokinn
Facebook is a closed system?

I'm not one of their employees and yet I know how their build system works,
how they store more photos than the rest of the internet combined (Haystack),
how they process their analytics and likes (HBase counters + scribe + ptail +
puma), how they store messages (HBase), how their data centers are built (open
compute), the list just goes on and on.

As far as large internet companies goes Facebook has one of the most open
engineering departments I've ever seen.

~~~
rektide
Facebook's infrastructure is open, but their product I would not hesitate to
label as closed, even if it has APIs.

------
gavanwoolery
I have never had any desire to go to any conference, ever. What I tend to find
is that talking gets very little done, and often not much is learned beyond a
few truisms. If I want to talk to people I do it online, it is just more time-
effective. At a conference, I don't necessarily know who a given person is,
but online I have full access to their information (typically), and I only
talk to the people I want to.

If I want to get into a good party (which is seldom), I go to whatever club is
the current flavor of the month and shove a filthy wad of cash in the
bouncer's hand. I could give two shits about an "exclusive" SV party, and I
would hope most Facebook employees feel the same way.

~~~
delinka
I'm right there with you. I can learn more from a good book and an online chat
than I can from a conference. As a developer, I never expect to get work done
as a result of attending a conference because I feel that they are strictly
social events.

------
_delirium
There are quite a few hacker events with more of a flat-hierarchy, open-to-
all-comers ethos, but yeah, you probably won't find them attached to these
more high-profile media events (there are exclusive sponsored after-parties
associated with events like WWDC and GDC as well, to add more examples).
There's fortunately the whole other parallel world of stuff like Noisebridge,
DevHouse, etc...

~~~
mikeash
There are certainly plenty of exclusive events hosted by third parties at
WWDC, but as far as I know, all of the official Apple events are open to all
attendees, as well as (I believe) all employees who are able to attend the
conference.

------
butterfi
How much of this kind of thing is a by-product of marketers as well? I've seen
more then a few events where the people who actually did the development were
excluded to accommodate business partners and clients. It's not that marketing
necessarily wants to exclude developers, but space and resources are limited,
and socializing is an important tool in the marketer tool kit. Not that I
condone this (having been on both sides of this equation), but it does speak
to the shifting sands of prioritizing the goals of these kinds of events (is
it a company celebration to thank employees, or a marketing event?)

~~~
nikcub
all of the major developer conferences (IO, f8, etc.) have been hijacked by
marketing, PR and BD people.

they forgot what these conferences are supposed to be about

~~~
mmahemoff
FWIW that wasn't my experience for the past two IOs. I mostly met real
developers and entrepreneurs, even at the after-parties. To be sure, the lure
of free phones makes for a few fanboys and denies some deserving developers.
But it was overwhelmingly a developer conference and the sessions certainly
reflected that.

------
reso
This guy has obviously never worked for Facebook, and so has no idea how
Facebook treats its engineers. Not getting invited to a particular f8
afterparty (which sounds like it was Spotify's deal and not Facebook's), is
peanuts compared to the level of respect and power they are given within the
company every day.

~~~
biznickman
I agree that developers are given a lot of power. Trust me that I know of the
company well as I covered it daily for four years. That doesn't mean community
events should be divided.

~~~
jsavimbi
You have to separate business events from community events. I never take
offense to not being invited to a business event, even one held in-house,
where management is looking to schmooze with potential investors, partners and
clients. Management rehearses what type of interaction they're going to have,
with whom, for how long and what the content of the conversation will be (or
at least they should be rehearsing), and to be honest, those plans need not be
shared with developers nor should developers/sales/support/operations be
rubbing elbows in the same room with prospects.

It's a business, not an egalitarian democracy. We all know some numbnuts will
get drunk and embarrass themselves and the company. It's easier to avoid the
potential of that happening by restricting the invite list to only the
strategically important people. As a developer, I never considered myself to
be such. Also, I never invite my boss to any of my parties, so whatever.

As far as the marketing/biz dev/party planner people us concerned, they're a
necessary evil who more often than not display asshole behavior of the kind
described in the post, but as a developer you should ask yourself if your life
is worth working with/for people who's great idea is a car-sharing service
with the need for a VIP room.

------
dorkitude
Facebook hardly represents all of Bay Area tech.

And it certainly doesn't represent startups (at all).

~~~
biznickman
Agreed. The same thing isn't limited to Facebook though. I only gave two
examples (one of TC Disrupt, and the other of FB) but there are plenty of
other events where this happens.

------
codecaine
I've never been to Silicon valley, in fact I've never been to the US but I
personally feel that this picture the author draws of "old" SV is very
idealized. This rant contains high amounts of nostalgia and therefore does not
seem to be entirely rational. I would love to know if SV used to be like
O'Neill describes it in his article.

~~~
coffeemug
I live in SV for two years now (moved from NY, and from Ukraine before that).
You can send a cold e-mail to almost anyone here asking for advice, and if
you're polite, sound intelligent, and have sensible expectations, nine times
out of ten you'll get a meeting. I'm talking about people whose bank accounts
are as large as budgets of some small countries. These folks do it because
they genuinely love the startup world and want to help out. This sort of
openness is unheard of in the finance world in NY, for example.

Some people are inaccessible (you likely won't get a meeting with Steve Jobs
by sending a cold email), but it's an exception rather than the rule. I also
suspect it has more to do with his schedule than his attitude (unlike other
parts of the world).

That being said, people will be people, and there's plenty of VIP-type
nonsense going on here. The thing is, you can't think of these things in
absolutes - you have to compare with the rest of the world, and SV is by far
the most open place I've ever seen. That being said, I'd really like the
culture of disrespect for the respectable here to get even stronger:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kirzr6lnSs&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kirzr6lnSs&feature=player_detailpage#t=106s)

~~~
biznickman
Great video

------
sliverstorm
_"Why All Employees Should Be VIPs At Your Company"_

Been visiting Lake Wobegon recently I see.

~~~
biznickman
Love that show!

------
fleitz
The reality of the situation is that a party with 10, 100, 1000, 10000, and
100000 people feel completely different. With social dynamics being what they
are it's difficult to invite _everyone_ and still retain the atmosphere sought
by the planner. I have no insight into the mindsets of the planners but I have
a feeling the situation is probably the result of the realities of party
planning rather than a desire to exclude certain individuals, or a class of
individuals.

The situation with the B-list party could probably have been handled better
with regard to musical talent and an obvious discrepancy between the talent
invited.

~~~
biznickman
Ultimately both parties weren't planned by the same people.

------
thatsiebguy
I skimmed the headline at first and thought it said "How The "IT Crowd"
Hijacked Silicon Valley". Boy was I in for a disappointment.

