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Comment by lazzlazzlazz | Hacker News Reader

I have never heard of this as a slogan at Facebook and I have close ties there; this seems like someone venting emotionally.

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I am absolutely venting emotionally, I thought that much was clear. :) But I heard a variant of this in dozens or hundreds of meetings, generally when a project was getting shut down or canned or reorg'd, so it's not true to say that it's not true.

It's not even a bad slogan. Company priorities should come before territorial interests. This is why it's important to work in a place that shares your values at a high level.

I think people are juxtaposing "what's good for Facebook" not with "what's good for [territorial subunit]", but rather with "what's good for the lives of the people working at Facebook." A slogan like that is sensible in the first case and terrifying in the second case.

I think you're right, and I completely intended it in a practical, non-incendiary way. People would constantly say they weren't there to pursue personal, political agendas, they wanted to have maximum impact and do what was best for Facebook. It's like the #1 catchphrase you have to memorize to get ahead. It makes sense. In most cases, it's even true.

I may have a separate set of issues with Facebook People policies, but there are a ton of really passionate, amazing engineers working there who deeply believe in the mission (or at least their local specialty). I miss many of them very much and wish them all well.

When I went into Facebook's bathroom, at eye level over each urinal was posted a weekly newsletter, which talked about changes to their PHP API.

haha for some reason, i love this idea

The first instance of this I saw was "Testing on the Toilet" which started at Google in... June? July? 2006.

Still going strong, though depending on the office and particular bathroom distribution seems to have problems at times.

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