
At Facebook, Boss Is a Dirty Word - prostoalex
http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-millennials-arent-entitled-they-are-empowered-1419537468
======
jacques_chester
Earlier today, someone told me that I've "drunk the kool-aid" of my employers,
Pivotal Labs.

Well, it happens that I decided to work for Labs after visiting the Facebook
campus. Literally while I was driving back to SF from Palo Alto.

At Labs I work for 40 hours per week. Not an on-paper 40 hours -- _actually 40
hours_. When I was new to the company I found myself one night on a train to
Philadelphia for a personal trip. I was bored, so I opened my laptop and
answered some emails from a client. The following week I got a mild dressing
down from my colleagues for working after-hours and I was told by my manager
not to do it again.

If I am at a computer more than 10 minutes after 6pm, co-workers start
wandering up and saying "you're not working, are you?". I've only worked late
twice, and the latest I've worked is 6.30pm (because I thought I'd broken
Golang support on Pivotal Web Services and wanted to be sure I hadn't before
going home).

Meanwhile, at Facebook, after being shown all the cool workspaces and the free
food, I asked what the hours were. "There are no hours, you set your own with
your team". On my drive back to where I was staying in SF, I remembered that
on their campus, I'd seen a barber's shop.

It struck me that, so that you don't leave for 30 minutes, once a month,
Facebook has a barber on the campus. Someone later pointed out to me that the
buses they run have wifi. So life becomes: wake up, shower, get on bus, work,
get off bus, breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner, work, get on bus, work, get
home, sleep.

Frankly? I prefer the damn kool-aid.

~~~
zeroonetwothree
I'm an engineer at FB and I work 6-8 hours most days. Most people with
families don't work crazy hours. Most people that do choose to because they
love their work.

~~~
jacques_chester
We love our work too.

We just think it should stay at work, during sustainable working hours.

------
j_baker
Like similar abstractions, participation is an empty goal unless it is gauged
in relation to the job to be done. It is a means, not an end, and when treated
as an end, it can become more repressive than the unadorned authoritarianism
it is supposed to replace… No one wants to see the old authoritarian return,
but at least it could be said of him what he wanted primarily from you was
your sweat. The new man wants your soul.”

– William Whyte, The Organization Man, 1956

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jes5199
(I'm not going to subscribe to read this so I'm just assuming...)

Is this a good time to bring up the Tyrany Of Structurelessness?
[http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm](http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm)
The observation is: if you pretend that you don't have a hierarchy, then your
de facto hierarchies will be harder to see, harder to criticize, harder to
improve.

This is reflected in the standard failure modes of agile process (
[http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/09/why-scrum-should-
ba...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/09/why-scrum-should-basically-
just-die-in.html) )

so, tell me - who _actually_ makes decisions at Facebook?

~~~
op00to
For WSJ, just google the title and the first hit will generally be the
article. When you come in with Google as your referrer, the full article loads
instead of the paywall'd version.

~~~
jes5199
and I'm sure it's completely worth the trouble.

------
jim_greco
The biggest thing that Facebook gets right is having respect & trust in their
employees regardless of their position or prior experience. They're willing to
let their employees own an idea and fail if necessary. Traditional top-down
organizations (99% of companies) equate respect & trust directly with title &
seniority.

------
rhgraysonii
Anyone have a non-paywall link?

~~~
eknkc
Also, out of curiosity, who votes these up?

~~~
spitfire
I can speak for myself. I often up vote for the conversation rather than the
content of the linked article.

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AndrewKemendo
_Facebook can be disorienting for some older employees, who feel their past
experience and accomplishments aren’t valued._

Maybe I'm in the minority but I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. Past
experience and accomplishments get you in the door but beyond that those
things don't matter, the question should be: what are you doing now to bring
value?

~~~
eweise
The idea is that past experience helps you make better decisions in the future
which is the value they are bringing to the company. I sense that you don't
have much experience yet otherwise this would be fairly obvious.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_I sense that you don 't have much experience yet otherwise this would be
fairly obvious._

You sense wrong. Anyway, I don't disagree with your first point, and it
doesn't refute mine.

The point here is that no-one should get extra "rank" just by being
experienced. If that extra experience doesn't help you out-compete someone
without it then you might as well not have it.

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joncp
Most telling line: “After seven or eight years or 10 years, you’re done,
you’re burned out, you get replaced...”

So it's just another Silicon Valley meat grinder. They just grind the meat a
little differently.

~~~
waterlesscloud
But they really need to let in the other 95% of the world's great programmers,
so they can grind them down too.

~~~
droopyEyelids
Thats a pretty thoughtless joke when the threat of the other 95%, tied to the
job at lower wages (on threat of deportation) would be sufficient.

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dep_b
At Hacker News, Paywall is a Dirty Word

~~~
possibilistic
I have to agree. Why waste space on the front page with paywalled content? I
have no inclination to ever subscribe to this. I appreciate that others may
have different sentiment, but this feels wasted on the majority of us.

~~~
mkirlin
Just Google the title and click the link to the story. Goes right around the
paywall.

~~~
click170
That works, but it misses the point. The point is to penalize sites that
employ paywalls by taking your pageviews elsewhere.

~~~
frostmatthew
Because it's wrong for companies to charge for their product or service?

~~~
jsprogrammer
I don't think anyone claimed it is wrong?

~~~
frostmatthew
> I don't think anyone claimed it is wrong?

click170: _The point is to penalize sites that employ paywalls by taking your
pageviews elsewhere._

One usually penalizes behavior they consider _wrong_.

