Takes some extraordinary lack of self awareness to write something like this while burning tens of billions of dollars a year spearheading the "Metaverse", which is as big a digression from the company's core competency as you could possibly get. And soon after publishing this he would go on to lay off a large chunk of the team and more than 20,000 employees total.
If that was the case then he wouldn't have continued doubling and tripling down on these same product decisions for many more years.
Ask anyone at Meta and they will readily agree that Boz is among the most incompetent and unserious leaders in tech. His only qualification is being Zuck's friend, and that shields him from all criticism. At a more "focused" company he would have been fired a decade ago. As it stands he lost the shareholders $150B+ (and counting), dipped from the org, and got rewarded with a new role overseeing the shiny new thing - AI.
> Each individual digression from our core competency like this can probably be measured positively on ROI when considered locally. But I believe they collectively add up negatively.
I’d love to see the official internal leadership stance on what Meta’s core competencies are today.
Boz, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts if you had become the CTO at Facebook after joining as the 10,010th engineer, not the 10th. Pretty much everyone on this forum would have become the CTO at Facebook if they had been employee #10.
Boz, really? This is the guy who messed up Meta's "Metaverse" biz first, then introduced privacy invading tracking to all employees and now messing up their AI biz big time. Where is the Focus?
I don't think it was thought of that Facebook would be worth $1.5T some day, but I'm positive what was on the 10th employees mind while getting paged at the middle of night was "I'm in the process of getting filthy rich". That certainly would help me focus.
Facebook was a networking site for a handful of college campuses at the time. It had some great traction, sure, but I doubt "filthy rich" was a serious expectation among employees.
The early iterations of Facebook, just like the early iterations of most internet community and social platforms legitimately brought and kept people together and helped them forge and maintain more solid group connections… I still communicate with a wider range of people from my past, high school, university, etc because of it and enjoy easy access to excellent information about certain vehicles and natural areas (hot springs) because of it. That core value still exists behind all the evil.
Thanks to Facebook I am finding out that those people I grew up with and had connections have become assholes and would behave like one in public forums, even at the matured age of 40+. No thank you.
The focus wasn’t making the world a better place, or even to provide any value at all to its /users/, who are not its customers. The focus it was and is making money and to take this essay at face value, nothing else. Nothing wrong with making money - honestly.
Fcb for me it's ads, ads ads and even more ads. The newsfeed is complete slop from news outlets. It's just extremely noisy. The only thing that I use there is the Messenger because my older friends aren't too savvy with Whatsapp.
And even the Messenger app is a sloppy behemoth of an app with barely working Search. This is coming from a company with thousands of engineers and the core features of the business barely work.
Anecdote, I know plenty of people who use FB exclusively for private and secret groups. The ability to require approval before approving (tied to looking up the profiles of people applying) while still allowing members to ask questions anonymously within the group (like maybe for health advice), moderation, some basic administrative roles, event invites / rsvp, discoverability by location (new mom club around me).
Not like any of these features are particularly good, but the combination beats anything else out there, which is surprising because usage of groups seems to be huge.
Discord comes close, but the complaint I see from FB group users is they don't like the real-time chat stream.
Takes some extraordinary lack of self awareness to write something like this while burning tens of billions of dollars a year spearheading the "Metaverse", which is as big a digression from the company's core competency as you could possibly get. And soon after publishing this he would go on to lay off a large chunk of the team and more than 20,000 employees total.
Christ sake, really? I dont want to say it since it is against the rules but common…
I wouldn’t be surprised if he had the Metaverse in mind but found it less offensive to his colleagues to use charity as the example.
Did you read the whole thing? he is clearly talking about having lost focus which is directly in agreement with your take on the Metaverse.
If that was the case then he wouldn't have continued doubling and tripling down on these same product decisions for many more years.
Ask anyone at Meta and they will readily agree that Boz is among the most incompetent and unserious leaders in tech. His only qualification is being Zuck's friend, and that shields him from all criticism. At a more "focused" company he would have been fired a decade ago. As it stands he lost the shareholders $150B+ (and counting), dipped from the org, and got rewarded with a new role overseeing the shiny new thing - AI.
Could this standpoint be any more unsympathetic?
I guess the culture at Facebook was set very early and we’re still seeing the effect of that play out today.
> Each individual digression from our core competency like this can probably be measured positively on ROI when considered locally. But I believe they collectively add up negatively.
I’d love to see the official internal leadership stance on what Meta’s core competencies are today.
Whatever Zuck is feeling on any given day. At the moment it seems to be prediction markets.
Boz, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts if you had become the CTO at Facebook after joining as the 10,010th engineer, not the 10th. Pretty much everyone on this forum would have become the CTO at Facebook if they had been employee #10.
This needs 2023
[2023]
Right, that changes the reading
Focus on making the world a worse place. Great. Please retire.
Focus, or, Where Humanity Went Wrong. Imagine being proud of this essay.
Boz, really? This is the guy who messed up Meta's "Metaverse" biz first, then introduced privacy invading tracking to all employees and now messing up their AI biz big time. Where is the Focus?
I didn’t know that. Box was responsible for all those things?
I never heard of him before reading this article just now.
They don't care. Messing up is cheap for Meta.
The banality of evil, everyone.
I don't think it was thought of that Facebook would be worth $1.5T some day, but I'm positive what was on the 10th employees mind while getting paged at the middle of night was "I'm in the process of getting filthy rich". That certainly would help me focus.
Facebook was a networking site for a handful of college campuses at the time. It had some great traction, sure, but I doubt "filthy rich" was a serious expectation among employees.
They didn’t know if they would get rich.
They certainly hoped that would be the outcome. But they would have been idiots to not know most startups fail.
What good has Meta even done?
They harm teen mental health with their products and farm user data. What an achievement of youth to waste it on that noble mission.
The early iterations of Facebook, just like the early iterations of most internet community and social platforms legitimately brought and kept people together and helped them forge and maintain more solid group connections… I still communicate with a wider range of people from my past, high school, university, etc because of it and enjoy easy access to excellent information about certain vehicles and natural areas (hot springs) because of it. That core value still exists behind all the evil.
Thanks to Facebook I am finding out that those people I grew up with and had connections have become assholes and would behave like one in public forums, even at the matured age of 40+. No thank you.
The focus wasn’t making the world a better place, or even to provide any value at all to its /users/, who are not its customers. The focus it was and is making money and to take this essay at face value, nothing else. Nothing wrong with making money - honestly.
I’m sure a lot of early employees convinced themselves Facebook had positive social value in addition to making them rich.
That was the default mindset in the early days of the web.
Fcb for me it's ads, ads ads and even more ads. The newsfeed is complete slop from news outlets. It's just extremely noisy. The only thing that I use there is the Messenger because my older friends aren't too savvy with Whatsapp.
And even the Messenger app is a sloppy behemoth of an app with barely working Search. This is coming from a company with thousands of engineers and the core features of the business barely work.
98% of newsfeed is recommendation slop.
Anecdote, I know plenty of people who use FB exclusively for private and secret groups. The ability to require approval before approving (tied to looking up the profiles of people applying) while still allowing members to ask questions anonymously within the group (like maybe for health advice), moderation, some basic administrative roles, event invites / rsvp, discoverability by location (new mom club around me).
Not like any of these features are particularly good, but the combination beats anything else out there, which is surprising because usage of groups seems to be huge.
Discord comes close, but the complaint I see from FB group users is they don't like the real-time chat stream.
Before Facebook, after people lost touch with their high school or college friends, they often didn't have a good way to get back in touch again.
This is harder to do accidentally now, for better or worse.
But I suppose there are lots of other alternatives nowadays.
One of the worst people doing anything anywhere. Fuck you, boz.