Facebook Faces High-Level Staff Exodus 346
angry tapir writes "It has been troubled times for Facebook since the social network's IPO in May. There has been speculation that Facebook could suffer a talent drain in the wake of the IPO, and now the organization has lost four of its high-level managers the space of a week: Ethan Beard, director of platform partnerships; Kate Mitic, platform marketing director; Jonathan Matus, mobile platform marketing manager; and Ben Blumenfeld, design manager, have all resigned from the company."
And this is surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd bail too from a ship that just went over a cliff.
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
That was the plan all along. Cash out and move on. It's a shallow company with no real long term potential. People are fickle, color me surprised.
When the avalanche has started (Score:4, Insightful)
It won't kill FB (Score:5, Insightful)
The exodus of the 14 execs won't kill FB
How many execs have left Yahoo ?
Is Yahoo still around ?
FB won't die until it runs out of cash. As long as it has cash left, it will go on, just like Yahoo
Re:And this is surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
I especially want to bail out of the ship when the SEC is going to start sniffing around.
Re:Frankly, I saw this coming (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to think that, but lately it seems like Facebook has become what I used to use email for. I use Facebook to send messages to friends and also coordinate events with them. And my actual email is mostly spam.
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Insightful)
What's new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every tech company is losing staff, because none are willing to hire junior-level workers and train them. So companies keep competing over the same fixed number of people. And the quickest way to get a raise is to jump ship. So there you have it.
It's not just tech, either. There are lots of college-educated bartenders these days, because every "entry level" position requires 3 years of experience. It's absurd.
Re:When the avalanche has started (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually the shareholders will hold the board's feet to the fire
False.
Even though he owns a small number of shares, Zuckerberg owns a large majority of the voting shares. He has complete control of the company.
Many other companies have a dual-class share structure allowing a small minority to retain control with a small financial stake. Generally speaking, it sucks, and companies with this kind of share structure don't tend to do very well. Don't buy their stock.
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Insightful)
And nothing of value was lost (Score:4, Insightful)
director of platform partnerships
platform marketing director
mobile platform marketing manager
design manager
Sorry, but those mostly sound like made up bullshit job titles.
Does /. mod criticism of /.? (Score:0, Insightful)
Funny how pointing out editorial post manipulation finds it's way to -1 for no other reason than
it criticizes editorial policy.
Worse, IP's are tracked & opposition is prevented from posting--effectively silenced. This is a horrendous policy for a forum which
speaks so much about censorship.
Re:Frankly, I saw this coming (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole platform falls on its face as an event organization platform if even one key person refuses to sign up to having their personal lives data mined.
The event was doomed to fail anyway, if the organizers can't figure out how to keep one "hold-out" (for lack of a better word) in the loop through other means.
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Insightful)
If AOL is still around and kicking today, it's pretty hard to believe that Yahoo will just up and die. It's important to note that Yahoo still has 10s of millions of active email users, the best fantasy sports platform on the internet, a pretty solid website in Flickr, and a bunch of other random shit. AOL has much less, yet somehow stays alive.
Agreed. Compare, however, with FB who is essentially a one-trick pony. It's a pretty amazing trick, I'll grant you that, but still...
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Insightful)
Your analogy is flawed
In a real life military scenario, an exodus of several general will create mass confusion and drastic drop of morale amongst the soldiers
On the other hand, in the case of fb, even if 90% of the exec decide to leave, you think that will do anything to the fb users?
Nope, zilth, nothing
Them users will still use fb to tell the world when they go to toilet, what they ate for breakfast and what they did with their gf/bf the night before, like usual
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Insightful)
And why do people call high level execs "talent" anyway?
Re:Rats deserting a stinking ship... (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as you can make about 75K from someone else you can do quite well for yourself. Manage your money. That's the key to pretty much the entirety of being successful.
My dad made 74k a year on a team of guys who all made 74k a year (this was about a decade ago). Some of them bought boats, some cottages, some had expensive wives etc. The ones who bought stuff with resale value (the cottages for example, or mutual funds and bonds) are all doing fine in retirement, they can afford holidays, etc. The ones who bought boats, and planes (and god help them, both), the ones who landed wives with expensive tastes in things that are worth nothing, they're struggling now.
Working for someone else does have significant advantages, pension plans, fixed hours that sort of thing. When you work for yourself you can very easily slide into working 12 hours a day and not having vacation time, and still not making very much money. And if you get sick, your whole business can fall apart, and you might not have customers to go back to as they've found someone else.
Ultimately, it's up to you to manage your money, if you can do that you can manage your business or you can manage your paycheque. Working for yourself is always better than a bad boss, and working for yourself *can* be better than a good boss, but not always.
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Insightful)
And why do people call high level execs "talent" anyway?
Dear Sir,
You have asked a pertinent question
It's a social hierarchy thingy - When you're an exec of a company as famous as fb (or M$ or Google or Apple) ppl will automatically associate you with the successes of that company
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
This. It's called being short against the box [briefing.com], and while it cannot be (easily) used to defer or reduce taxes, it's a perfectly legal hedge against long stock.
The lockup period prevents you from selling the stock the day the company goes public. Company policy prevents you from going short. (I suppose you could argue that being short against the box is a market-neutral position, but your company's policy may prohibit you from doing so as a condition of employment).
So you have a stock in which you want to preserve your IPO-day gains, but you can't sell it, and you can't go short against the box and still keep your job. If the stock's high enough (and with the $FB IPO, we could be talking "Fuck You Money [metafilter.com]" here), a valid strategy to preserve those gains is to quit your job, go short against the box for 3-6 months until the lockup expires, and liquidate both sides of the trade.
This might be for the best (Score:5, Insightful)
If this exodus can delay or reverse the forced conversion to that gawd-awful "Timeline", then it's all to the good.
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:4, Insightful)
If I was foolish enough to have bought FB stock I'd be pretty panicky around now.
LOL !!
We were allotted a part of fb for something that we'd done for them
All the shares under my name (not that much, btw) got sold out the first day of the IPO
Based on my own experience (since the 1970's in the tech field) I do not see any bright future for fb
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Insightful)
The exodus of high level leaders at same time, however can definitely kill a company. Think of it this way, if several generals or even majors of an army quit at the same time, it leads the army directionless for a fair bit.
However, in this analogy, Zuckerberg is a dictator. He has majority voting share and it is obvious he does what he wants. (Think Instagram, which was done by Zuckerberg before he told the board.)
When the voice at the top is the only one that gets heard, it really doesn't matter how many underlings leave, even if they are high-level.
Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
Another reason for mass executive exodus is so they CAN have more opportunities in the future. Its good not to be there at the end game. These guys want to go on to be C?Os or board members elsewhere, to do that they need to be able to maintain the fiction things were fine at Facebook when they left. The don't want to be on the list of people who ran it into the ground.
Naturally most normal people can see thru this, but star-y eye'd near do wells, in their desperate greed will toss tons of money at these people in hopes of getting their own Zukerburg like pay out. Of course it won't work out but that has never stopped anyone on either side of the equation.
Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
High level exec would have known of the coming IPO. Most of those who planned to leave have probably delayed their departure until after the IPO.
In other sectors it is common to have departure at all levels after the bonus, not really because they think that the bonus sucks, just because "you don't quit before bonus time". That is not really a proof of anything at all.
Of course they're leaving. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me explain how this works (having gone through an IPO at a company where I worked years ago):
1) founders of company want to generate some cash.
2) founders hire a bunch of execs and engineers promising the company will go public and everyone wiil get options at pre IPO price.
3) dopes take the jobs.
4) company goes public, stock price soars, people start dreaming about what they will do with their newly minted wealth.
5) reality sets in- founders are the only ones able to exercise their options, everyone else has to wait to be vested in 5 years.
6) founders sell off their stock, generating the cash they sought, leave everyone else twisting in the wind.
7) Now-wiser execs realize their options won't ever be worth anything and jump off the sinking ship while they can.
It has been done so many times you'd think people would be wise to this scam by now, but it keeps working over and over.