
The real threat to Facebook is the Kool-Aid turning sour - smacktoward
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/30/loose-lips-sink-apps/
======
ChuckMcM
I don't know if it is sour kool-aid or just a maturing company. I got to watch
Sun go through it, NetApp's journey, and some of Google's progress, and I
guess its now Facebook's time in the barrel.

What I experienced was a general dissatisfaction by the 'old guard' on where
the company was going. Typically they would vote with their feet and start
leaving to start other companies or other lives. A few of the old guard hung
on, with an increasingly solid position because they had institutional
knowledge that was no where else, eventually those folks can sleep at their
desk and they will still reliably pull down the 'senior person' paycheck. And
the company will refill with new employees who never knew what the company was
like before so this is like how it is now. The company becomes more stagnant
and less nimble, more unaware of what it doesn't know and more vocal about
things it believes to be true but aren't. At this point the company becomes
less competitive and depending on its residual DNA either fades away into the
sunset (Sun) or turns into something else entirely (NetApp).

It is a great time to plant the seeds of something new. If it is cool enough
you can recruit a lot of engineers out of these fading companies.

~~~
DonHopkins
What was the turning point for you at Sun? For me it was Slowlaris.

[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/unix-
haters/slowlaris...](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/unix-
haters/slowlaris/worst-job.html)

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think the start was the breaking up into "planets", and really it was the
"gee if we charge $10 for every NFS client we will make bank!" attitude that
Ed Zander brought to SunSoft.

~~~
luckydude
Zander certainly didn't help, the whole "planets" didn't help, but for me it
was definitely Solaris. It took the wind out of my sails and I eventually
left.

I looked at Solaris recently and it still sucks. Sad to see all that work come
to naught but it happens.

~~~
citizen4
Honest question: what systems/distributions do you like?

What Unix (or unix like system) doesn't suck? The linux distributions are all
fairly sloppy, the BSDs are fine but starting to have issues as so much open
source code isn't being tested there.

Not defending Solaris here, but it seems to me that all the unix systems have
become a little sloppy recently.

~~~
luckydude
I'm pretty happy with Linux. Yeah, I wish it were better but it mostly just
works for me.

Commercial Unix is as dead as commercial compilers. Which is to say not
completely dead, but pretty darn close. Trying to make money off of an OS, a
compiler, a source management system is a non-starter these days. Yeah, Github
is a thing but that's not source management (even though everyone thinks it
is), that's a UI and a very very constrained work flow.

------
IIAOPSW
>It was a tight-knit cult convinced of its mission to connect everyone

Did anyone ever really buy the "making the world a better place" kool aid?

Could you imagine if other companies were expected to act so grandiose and
sanctimonious about their mission? Imagine a world where McDonalds bills
itself as a crusader to make the world better fed.

~~~
smnrchrds
> Did anyone ever really buy the "making the world a better place" kool aid?

I don't know if many people buy it anymore, but many certainly did back in
2009-2012. Tech giants were patting themselves on the back for fostering
revolutions and helping spread "democracy." The media called Arab Spring a
"Twitter Revolution." Making world a better place was in vogue. SV was not
making social platforms for goldfish, it was writing a new chapter in human
history.

It took years for the world to see how empty those promises were, and I am not
sure if everyone has gotten the memo yet.

~~~
cma
Remember the hoodie?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGssbaktT1I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGssbaktT1I)

------
evincarofautumn
“It’s tough to build if you think you’re building a weapon. Especially if you
thought you were going to be making helpful tools.”

Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

Humanity is a superorganism. Thanks to the internet, it’s more connected than
it’s ever been, and can “think” and change faster than it’s ever been able to
before. Facebook is _trying_ to build a neutral platform and useful tool for
communication & socialising. Because of that neutrality, it has no inbuilt
“immune system” for preventing the superorganism from being infected by memes
created by individual humans. Quite the opposite: it _rewards_ memes and viral
popularity because the humans who run its “brain” can extract value from that
effect. Most of these memes are benign (jokes and entertainment, advertisers
trying to sell more widgets and widget-related services) but some are
malignant/parasitic (e.g. influencing political outcomes for personal gain).

 _Any_ sufficiently large social network is going to have to contend with this
and make the hard choice: do you remain neutral and let _humans_ influence
_humanity_ , or do you try to prevent “social infection” when it’s deemed
detrimental? But what are the criteria for intervention—sharing false
information, for example? Who has the power to dictate what’s “true” or
whether to intervene? Facebook? Governments? A benevolent AI—developed by
whom? &c.

~~~
throwawaysecops
You get it. I'm grateful.

Check out double binds. Viral negativity, defined.

------
OrganicMSG
If you are a tech company and you are being moral and trying to keep secrets,
you have to try and weed out any overly unscrupulous employees as they may
sell your data to other organisations.

If you are a tech company and you are being immoral and trying to keep
secrets, you have to not only try and weed out any overly unscrupulous
employees as they may sell your data to other organisations, but also any
overly scrupulous employees, as they may leak to the press, regulators, or
police. This severely diminishes your hiring pool, or guarantees that you will
leak.

------
UncleEntity
Maybe it's just me since I didn't grow up on facebook or ever really saw the
general appeal but.

If the reputation of your company is reliant on _plugging_ leaks then there's
probably something really, really wrong with your company.

For example: before the Snowden leaks most people thought the NSA was a
relatively benign organization...

~~~
amarkov
Any large organization can have its reputation seriously damaged by strategic
leaks. If tens of thousands of people get together for years and years,
_someone_ is going to do _something_ that looks terrible when amplified in the
national media.

------
ggg9990
Ah yes, lack of employee enthusiasm has killed ExxonMobil, United Fruit,
Nestle, and the other evil mega corporations of history.

------
throwaway84742
Interesting fact I was not aware of until recently: the phrase “to drink the
kool-aid” was introduced after Jonestown Massacre, where hundreds of members
of a religious cult willingly drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide, and died.

------
AVTizzle
I'd be very curious to hear from any current (or recent) FB employees on what
the internal climate is like lately. Do the rank and file view the recent
controversy with distaste towards the company, or towards the media/press?

~~~
haZard_OS
I can only offer hearsay since a friend is employed by FB. With that
disclaimer, I will say that, apparently, FB employees are all across the board
on the issue...HOWEVER, there are an increasing number of FB employees
privately revealing that they no longer tell people exactly who employs them.

------
feelin_googley
"Look at enough bullshit highly curated vacation photos on Facebook and you're
bound to find the truth of your life gradually, then suddenly, more depressing
_than it probably is_.

...

I quit Facebook a year ago, and when people ask me why, I tell them candidly:
I don't want to look in people's windows anymore to see what they're doing.
Even if they want me to. Especially if they want me to.

Don't waste your life crafting an advertisement for how great your life is.
Get out there and live a great life."

Source:

[http://time.com/5208108/facebook-cheating-infidelity-
divorce...](http://time.com/5208108/facebook-cheating-infidelity-divorce/)

~~~
jsemrau
Get out there and live a great life.

That is a truly great quote

~~~
toomuchtodo
Curating a great life is easy. Living a great life, genuinely, is hard.

------
blueAndOnlyBlue
Does anyone know why Facebook enforces the standardized, totalitarian blue-
and-white theme for everyone?

I really want to hear what the internal discussions are, about restricting the
color palette and UI appearance to a one-size-fits-all look and feel.

Is the reasoning psychological (blue light as an anti-suicide placebo),
practical (everyone has to look at the same portal, and resolve techsupport
themselves, helping each other), quasi-biological (blue as a circadian rhythm
disruptor, not unlike gambling casinos), capricious (because mark zuckerberg
just likes that format), or something else?

I find it oppressive to have to look at this unchanging furniture for the
Facebook front end. It seems to severely dumb down the appeal to a lowest
common denominator. Maybe that’s the reason?

~~~
bitwize
MySpace allowed extensive customization. MySpace failed. Facebook wants to
avoid the same fate, so they avoid presenting users with the paradox of
choice. This could be scientifically grounded or it could be UX-design voodoo,
but "any color you want as long as it's black" is gospel among those designing
products/services to be used by the hoi polloi.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
The actual reason is that Mark Zuckerberg is colour-blind. Blue is probably
the only colour he and the world agree on.

