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."
Walking wounded... (Score:5, Interesting)
I really don't give a damn about Facebook (the firm). The survivors of event triggered churn (following milestone events) can be painful for the remaining staff.
Additionally this business phenomenon presents a new challenge for both inexperienced managers and leaders that have become intoxicated by constant build-grow success. Add in the additional inconvenience, ramp time, and dollar cost of finding and onboarding replacement staff, event related staff churn can have a damaging effect on the morale and productivity of the existing workforce (and impact their resumes).
The walking wounded; however, can choose to affect the situation or be affected by it. The survivors and thrivers will confront this challenge and exploit the opportunity for what it is... a chance to learn and grow.
Rats deserting a stinking ship... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've often heard the term, "where there is smoke there is fire".
This makes me wonder if there was something strange going on with the IPO. A lot of pissed off people who lost a lot of money. One one hand I can't feel sorry for people that lost money since anybody with a brain could figure out Facebook was not worth that much. On the other hand, if there were any shenanigans, I don't think people at Facebook should get away with it.
It is pretty strange to see that much high level "talent" leave. Suspicious is another word.
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:4, Interesting)
And FB will have cash until the users stop showing up.
I'm curious about how the exodus will happen. I don't see it going to G+, really. I think Diaspora died along with one of the young founders. FB copycats are a dime a dozen, but haven't heard any word in the way of compelling alternatives. Perhaps individual services will eat away at them through mobile...
Re:Love fb (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you are trolling.
I love facebook. It's an awesome idea. It'll survive and thrive.
I despise facebook. Its got potential as a concept. Social networks will survive and thrive -- but hopefully facebook will crash and burn to be replaced by something good.
Get some fresh minds working on more cool shit.
If your entire platform is the shit that is privacy invasion and advertising no matter what you build on it, it will eventually sink into that shit. Start over. Do it differently.
Facebook has changed all our lives whether you want to admit it or not.
It actually has had virtually zero impact on mine; but then I declined to get an account.
The sum total of its impact on me is that i see little blue "f" icons on a bunch of stuff that i ignore, and companies jibber about their facebook pages instead of their websites now. I don't visit their fb pages... and nothing of value was lost.
Re:Frankly, I saw this coming (Score:5, Interesting)
My sister tried that - once.
I don't have a facebook account and refused to get one.
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.
Re:Frankly, I saw this coming (Score:4, Interesting)
That is actually the initial trigger to drive the popularity of other newer social networks. Each time a person tries to coordinate via a social network, only to get refusal and rejection with the recommendation of an alternate network, that person is motivated to try the alternate network and if they get enjoy the new network try to shift their other friends to it, 'using the old social network'. Fascinating isn't the old fad social network actually accelerates it's demise but facilitating the mass transfer of people to the new fad social network.
Facebook has got on the nose, seen as being old and now flooded with wanna be, has been teens, still trying to hang onto their youth. This seems to be the ultimate killer of social networks, the ageing of their users and users seeking to escape unappealing contacts for what ever reason.
Re:Love fb (Score:4, Interesting)
Well considering how many people use FB, I guess in your mind most of the adult population is "feeble-minded". Arrogant much?
FB is a pretty smart idea; only a fool would say otherwise. However, that doesn't mean that FB is the greatest possible implementation of that idea. It has a lot of problems; the biggest problem is that of monetization. Sure, it's kinda cool to have some big online meeting place to find all your friends and post dumb pictures and links and chit-chat about it all, but someone's gotta pay the bills to keep it all running, and people posting silly comments about cat pictures and pictures of their kids isn't exactly a big money-maker, and people tend to get turned off by too much advertising, so while that can be used to bring in revenue, if you overdo it, it'll backfire, plus it's not hard for people to block ads with things like ABP, making advertising even less valuable.
The other problem I see is that FB just isn't that well done. For instance, suppose I want to look up someone I knew way back in high school to see what he or she is up to these days. If they have an uncommon name, no problem, just search for that name and they'll pop up if they have a FB account. But what if their name is John or Julie Smith? Good luck finding the person you're looking for there. Now, you'd think that you could just narrow it down with some keywords or something (e.g. school names they've attended, towns or states they've lived in, etc.); but no, the FB people aren't smart enough to implement that apparently.
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Interesting)
How much are MySpace and Digg worth now?
Re:Do we really care? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do we really care?
What's this FaceBook thing anyway?
Does it compile into native code or P-code?
Fun fact: FaceBook uses HipHop [facebook.com], a tool they developed themselves to convert PHP code to C++, and then compile it to native code.
And the craziest thing is that they compile everything into a single 1.5 GB binary [arstechnica.com]:
So, yeah, FaceBook compiles to native code! :-)
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:4, Interesting)
And FB will have cash until the users stop showing up.
True, and false
True - fb will see a big drop in their income if all their users stop showing up
But that will almost never happen - due to the fact of the sheer number of users fb has gathered
Once you achieved a critical mass, like what fb has gotten itself, it'll not be that easy to topple it --- Ask yourself if Microsoft going to close its door tomorrow, that Bill Gates is no longer on the helm, and Steve Ballmer still throwing chairs around
And false - Remember fb has garnered many billions of $$, and if they do not repeat stunts like what they did in the $1 Billion acquisition of Instagram - fb will still be around for quite some time to come
Re:Love fb (Score:5, Interesting)
Good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the design manager was the one who has made some of the UI decisions for Facebook over the last year or two maybe it's best he departs. Facebook is convenient for me for keeping in touch with a lot of people I know but I haven't heard anyone say anything good about their user interface design in a very long time. I don't really have any ill will towards anyone at Facebook (I have a number of friends who work there) but perhaps this is a good thing.
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Interesting)
Smart folks at FB realize that hype didn't work and every step FB takes to monetize their users will alienate them. Their only ace in the hole is that there isn't yet a good FB replacement for the 2010's -- but that's why we have Stanford!
The exodus this early should be very alarming to FB.
Re:It won't kill FB (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And this is surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your expectation that the regulators exist to actually root out and punish fraud in the market is touching but quite naive, especially in light that regulators have done absolutelly nothing at all to punish market-mispractices by large companies in the last 20 years (and when they do something, the miniscule fines they impose are usually less than the profits made by the companies breaking the law).
Given the size of Facebook and that the lead bank in their IPO was Morgan Stanley, expect the SEC to do absolutelly nothing at all.
On the other hand, given that Facebook stock still has a Price-Earnings per share above 50 (the typical PE for high growth Tech companies is about 25), expect a further fall in price. A better explanation for the exodus of several high-level managers with over-bloated but meaningless titles just as they become allowed to sell their stock is that they've been holding off from leaving a drifting ship until they could get their paws on hard cash.