
The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg - nikunjk
http://nymag.com/news/features/mark-zuckerberg-2012-5/?mid=nymag_press
======
cletus
As much as you can criticize Facebook for its privacy fumblings and other
missteps I have an enormous amount of respect for Zuck for one simple reason:

For someone of that age with so little experience to guide something that
started from his dorm room into a (potentially) $100B company in ~10 years
while still maintaining effective control of it is a truly remarkable
accomplishment. There would have many, many opportunities (and traps!) to
exit, get ousted by investors or whatever.

The fact that he didn't cash out and maintained his singular vision is (agree
with it or not) a remarkable trait.

He does seem like he has come a long way since his virtual meltdown at the All
Things D conference 2 years ago.

~~~
simondlr
What happened at All Things D?

~~~
rgrieselhuber
He got nervous and started sweating. Might be a bit aggressive to call that a
"meltdown."

------
joelrunyon
1-page version here --> [http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/mark-
zuckerberg-2012-...](http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/mark-
zuckerberg-2012-5/)

~~~
mhartl
Maybe there should be an official HN policy to post one-page stories when
available, and perhaps even alter story URIs when necessary?

------
peterwwillis
The crazy thing to me is how well suited people of Zuck's age group are to
running companies suited to web technology. A more "mature" CEO would not have
the right mindset to steer something as pliable as a web app into a product
that keeps up with the non-stop competition for users' attention. If something
cooler comes around the corner and enough people latch onto it, you're fucked.
Zuck gets this because he probably thinks exactly how his target audience
thinks. So the question then becomes: What happens when Zuck is too mature to
see what's coming next?

~~~
chime
> So the question then becomes: What happens when Zuck is too mature to see
> what's coming next?

He can buy/hire people who are good at that.

~~~
jonny_eh
But will he listen to them? What if "they" can't even agree amongst
themselves? How would he decide?

~~~
tiles
A heavy theme of the article is how good Zuck is at building a suitable
management team. He'll have to pick a Tim Cook someday.

------
geraldfong
> “Basically, there are two ways to build an organization,” a former Facebook
> employee explains. “You can be really, really good at hiring, or you can be
> really, really good at firing.” Zuckerberg has been really good at firing.

There seems to be a plethora of news about hiring, but when was the last time
you saw something about firing?

~~~
EricDeb
I thought the firing aspect was the one new thread in the entire 5 page
article. The rest was simply a rehash.

------
cal5k
"It is a huge sum, even in context. Zuckerberg’s impending fortune is more
money than Wal-Mart’s 10,000-plus stores made last year."

This line is a little disingenuous. It's more money than Wal-Mart "earned"
last year, not "made". Wal-Mart earned ~$15B on revenues of $447B in 2011.

Still, sort of surprising given the company has annual revenues higher than
many countries' GDPs...

~~~
rationalbeats
Considering the author of the story is permanently banned from Wall Street for
fraud, it does not surprise me he is loose with the numbers.

I would also question the rest of the analysis as well.

~~~
AVTizzle
Interesting. Context via Wikipedia:

>>Henry Blodget (born 1966) is an American former equity research analyst,
currently banned from the securities industry, who was senior Internet analyst
for CIBC Oppenheimer during the dot-com bubble and the head of the global
Internet research team at Merrill Lynch. Blodget is now the editor and CEO of
The Business Insider, a business news and analysis site, and a host of Yahoo
Daily Ticker, a finance show on Yahoo.

>>Blodget received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University and began
his career as a freelance journalist and was a proofreader for Harper's
Magazine. In 1994, Blodget joined the corporate finance training program at
Prudential Securities, and, two years later, moved to Oppenheimer & Co. in
equity research. In October 1998, he predicted that Amazon.com's stock price
would hit a pre-split price of $400 (which it did a month later, gaining
128%).

>>This call received significant media attention, and, two months later, he
accepted a position at Merrill Lynch. In early 2000, days before the dot-com
bubble burst, Blodget personally invested $700,000 in tech stocks, only to
lose most of it in the years that followed. In 2001, he accepted a buyout
offer from Merrill Lynch and left the firm.

>>In 2002, then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, published
Merrill Lynch e-mails in which Blodget gave assessments about stocks which
conflicted with what was publicly published. In 2003, he was charged with
civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He
agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry and paid a $2 million
fine plus a $2 million disgorgement."

Link: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Blodget>

~~~
cagenut
This is what made me spit out my drink at the top of page 2

    
    
      But that crash was a product of investors’ and analysts’ overexuberance (sorry!), 
      not evidence of a fundamental flaw in the tech industry’s start-up ecosystem.

------
ohashi
It seems like hindsight is still 20/20. I wonder how much of this is simply
crafting a story loosely around a person/company.

------
brado86
Of late, I'm seeing a lot of articles about Facebook doing this great thing or
that. Agreed what they do is technically challenging and they are extremely
interesting, but these also seem to be a sequence of puff-pieces meant to whip
up the public with feel-good sentiments about the company before the IPO? The
HN readership might want to keep that in mind while reading these articles -
indeed, we did have another post a couple of days ago about exactly this -
<http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

/2cents

------
EternalFury
The IPO is timely because there is no telling how long it will take for
Facebook to become the next MySpace. It could be 6 months or a couple of
years, or never, if they find some way to reinvent themselves before then.

~~~
chime
I'm not at all worried about Facebook failing. I'm worried about them
succeeding beyond all expectations.

~~~
EternalFury
You shouldn't be worried about either.

Smoke and mirrors are always in stock.

~~~
chime
Not the stock I'm concerned with. It's the fact that 1 in 8 people in the
world now use Facebook monthly. When that becomes 1/3 or 1/2, what happens? A
successful IPO can make that happen.

~~~
coryl
I can't really see how a successful IPO helps them grow, its not like they
need the cash?

------
wyck
>Because not only is Zuckerberg declaring that he considers Facebook’s social
mission a higher priority than Facebook’s business and financial mission—a
view many on Wall Street would consider treasonous

Wall Street, meet the wall.

------
bsimpson
Interesting read, but man, those are the most obtrusive displays ads I've ever
seen - and I'm in the ad industry.

------
trickjarrett
Zuckerberg deserves many of the accolades he's received for his maturation at
the helm of Facebook, but I can't help but wonder what would have happened to
him had Facebook failed?

~~~
planetguy
He'd probably be a mid-level software engineer at Sony, a division of Myspace.

------
nikhildaga
" Zuckerberg all but stopped writing code for Facebook in the summer of 2005."

Did he really stop coding? How can one give up coding and focus on managing? I
really find it difficult.

~~~
doktrin
I don't see how he _couldn't_. Managing and coding are both full time jobs.
How could he possibly run one of the fastest growing and most influential
companies in the world while still remain an effective member of the
Engineering team?

On an anecdotal note, I recall reading a story recently about how the FB
Engineers gave Zuck a canned 5-minute bugfix which ended up taking him close
to an hour. He's clearly rusty, and with good cause.

~~~
nikhildaga
I know he can. but, I feel that it's not easy. I myself find it extremely
difficult. One does not simply give up coding.

I think there must be many others here who must have faced difficulty in
making a transition from developer to manager.

------
davmar
great discussion. interesting topic. garbage article. really. read it. it's
absolutely atrocious.

~~~
hfz
Why is it atrocious? Care to explain?

~~~
davmar
sure. the line that was toughest to swallow was this one:

"In a market where ­speed is critical, venture-capital funding allows young
companies to move faster than they could if they had to rely only on revenues
to fund product development. Entrepreneurs who understand that tend to stick
around to make plenty of money later"

really? do they really stick around to make plenty of money? sentence 1 may be
true, but that doesn't make sentence 2 true.

i couldn't finish the article. here are a few more choice phrases:

"Many promising tech companies place too much emphasis too soon on the
business rather than the product"

"Most entrepreneurs are creative and impatient, an often fatal
combination—trying to do too many things, they spread their tiny companies too
thin"

it's just not my style of writing. at all.

------
myspy
I had to read the headline five times to get what it's really about. (mast __)
Sorry :/

------
thespin
"Facebook was not intended to be a company."

I'm still not sure it is a company. What exactly does FB produce? It's main
asset is your personal information. Which of course it does not own.

FB users produce everything, and hand it over for free to the "funethical"
crew of FB "engineers" to play with. As Zuckerberg would say, "Dumb fucks."

~~~
zem
> "Maybe he's not a good guy, but he's not a bad guy." Translation: He has too
> much money, and FB has too much potential influence on our readers, for us
> to tell you what we really think.

that's unduly cynical. if you read the rest of the article, they explain their
reasoning - mainly that, when zuckerberg might have fired people ruthlessly in
his rise to the top, they did not feel that any of those firings were actually
unfair.

~~~
thespin
"rise to the top"?

I think you mean _protecting_ his position at the top from "executives". Some
of who may have little skill to offer the company (as someone above said, age
is a factor) but are who are quite adept at maneuvering their way into higher
salaries and greater powers of decision-making.

~~~
zem
rise to the top of the social network mountain (or dungheap if you prefer)

------
goggles99
People who bash Zuckerberg fall into 3 categories. Haters, entitlists or are
jealous of Mark.

If you are so pissed off at Facebook's privacy stance, don't use them (Yes it
really is as simple as that).

If you cry foul and say this is unfair because you won't be able to keep in
touch as well with all of your family/friends just remember this. YOU are not
entitled make your own rules when using someone elses' company services.

All the whining does nothing - only votes matter. You have your vote (your
free choice to use or not use Facebook). if enough people agree with you and
decide that it is not worth it to use Facebook - then they will be forced to
make changes. All the whining in the world will not make a bit of difference
if they still know that THEY HAVE YOU and you along with everyone else will
continue to use their service (meaning no significant amount of people are
leaving and growth is still good).

~~~
jan_g
>If you are so pissed off at Facebook's privacy stance, don't use them (Yes it
really is as simple as that).

While I agree with you in general I think that the matter is not so simple. Of
course, it is in fact true that when you don't like something, you simply
won't buy/use it.

However, many people have had similar view with regards to Microsoft and
Google (and other big companies). But when a big company does something it
affects so many people/companies that it's not _just_ an issue of voting with
your wallet.

~~~
tensor
In this case, it really is that simple. Unlike Google, which provides a
necessary service, Facebook is not necessary. I have lost nothing at all from
not using Facebook. Social media might be important for advertising, but
chances are that you personally really don't need Facebook.

Delete your account and go on with life. Some people might not forward you an
invite to some event, but they are really not friends if they choose to do
this. Writing a short email is not a big time investment. Hell, you can write
one email to all your non-Facebook using friends!

~~~
joering2
I +1 you and agree with you. Its funny how people say "just dont use it".
Well, I would have stopped using it have I had opportunity to educate all my
friends (at once at one sit!!) that your privacy is at huge risk. But since
this is impossible to happen, you keep protecting yourself as much as you can
and keep "partying" with friends and family online. Its like with government.
Take paying high taxes, for example. Nobody likes it but everyone has to do
it, and unless everyone takes on the issue, noone can legally quit it.

------
sparknlaunch12
Wow, tough life. Another terrible first world problem.

Zuck has had the best "learning by experience"opportunity ever. Whatever
happens he has done something totally unique.

------
flotblot
Am I the only one who misread the second word in the post title? Maturation is
not a word often used, but there is a similar looking word that is...

Looking forward to the IPO. Should be a wild ride.

~~~
philwelch
Oh, grow up.

