Hacker News Reader

Comment by kd5bjo | Hacker News Reader

I was a Facebook employee for several years; I left shortly before this memo was drafted. The environment was pretty much the opposite of "don't rock the boat." Dissenting opinions were encouraged and openly discussed, but everyone understood that could only happen if it didn't undermine the PR department's job.

Boz fostered this culture by example, publishing internal memos critical of the company. In this case, questioning whether the company's driving mission was the universal good that leadership thought it was when it was adopted. Having such high-profile dissent in circulation gives more cover to individual contributors with a gripe than any amount of policy language would.

View on HN

> In this case, questioning whether the company's driving mission was the universal good that leadership thought it was when it was adopted.

Except that, Bosworth's shabby recants aside, in the original post the driving mission was not questioned but reinforced to an extreme, cult-like degree by a high ranking Facebook official. He didn't minced words and sought no compromise: growth at any cost, using unethical methods and to the point of endangering people, if that is what it takes. Growth is a good by definition, regardless what your antiquated, pre-Facebook morals tell you.

This a wide extension of the field where debate is possible and a strong reinforcement for unethical behaviour, "Facebook and Boz have your back and anyone questioning growth is an enemy". What was previously unspeakable, is now under debate, we are debating the degree of acceptable unethical behavior and Boz's position seems to be "to any degree". This was merely 20 months ago, not in the distant past when Facebook was founded.

It's specious to call this an environment of open debate, it's a bold move to the organizational culture of a cult or criminal gang. It's not surprising at all then that the current debate centers on ways to root out the traitors and select employees for "integrity" (unflinching loyalty).

I've read it over a few times again, and think I know why it's so divisive. In the memo, he describes a state of affairs, with two possible subtexts:

1) This is the state of things today, and the uncomfortable truth of how we got here; what do we do about it?

2) This is how things both are and should be; either get in line or leave.

I, obviously, gravitated towards the first interpretation and you the second. Without further context, I'm not sure there's any way to really know which was intended.

It seemed more declarative to me. It seemed more about clearly delineating the ugly parts of a pre-existing ideology, not suggesting that there be any change, but that people should acknowledge the consequences of pushing the "connecting people" philosophy.

When viewed in the context of a conversation of whether “the company's driving mission was the universal good that leadership thought it was when it was adopted.” can you see how Boz’s post could move conversation in a positive direction?

I know this is hard to believe from the outside, but most Facebook employees believe that Facebook can have a positive influence on be world. It’s deeply ingrained in the company’s culture. An executive doesn’t just come out and say “it’s all business, fuck the consequences”.

This is why not leaking things is so important. The context and culture within a company change how a message is interpreted.

This falls within: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....” ― Noam Chomsky

It applies to pretty much any tech company that claims to love debate and dissent internally.

Perfect example of what Chomsky was talking about, and the former cult member above who sincerely believes they were in a free speech zone demonstrates how effective this management technique is.

Spot on. It's an effective technique to give people the illusion of having explored all possible options and arguments.

Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

This seems to assume that public debate is masterminded according to a particular design

Debate in a corporate environment is, in fact, masterminded. In these cases, its often specifically encouraged, in a certain fashion. The venues for the debate are built and moderated for that purpose, backed by the policies of allowed conduct of the employer.

An interesting comment from comments on TheVerge:

It’s probably worth bearing in mind that in any company that pushes this kind of ‘open’ communication, there’s an unavoidable pressure on most ordinary employees to say the ‘right’ things. A company that has so much of its internal correspondence open and visible to anyone will very quickly descend into 1984 territory. So those ‘dense’ folk bleating about integrity are likely to really be saying ‘I would never leak, boss, you can trust me’. And in all likelihood, the actual leaker is one of those voices. Personally, I find it baffling that so many supposedly intelligent people see an office under the Eye of Sauron as a Good Place to Work.

Reminds me of Orthodox Judaism (other religions may be similar, but it's what I grew up with). Intense debate was highly valued and encouraged, but as soon as you questioned the fundamental truths that the belief system was founded on, you went too far. e.g. questioning that the bible was written by God, or whether God even exists.

That in turn reminds me of Al-Ghazali [1], and the impact he had on Islam. Unable to resolve why some things seemed to contradict Islamic beliefs, he developed and successfully spread the view that there's actually no such thing as causality or logic -- that every single thing is an independent act of god. In other words a leaf does not start burning when exposed to fire because it reaches a certain temperature (speaking loosely), but rather because god decided he'd set it alight at that exact moment. And of course that ash is not created by the fire, but instead by an instantaneous decision by god to turn the burnt object to ash. By rejecting any and all causality, he was able to dismiss all logical issues by simply asserting that causality and logic are social constructs. And that belief spread like wildfire, as such rationale that offers easy explanations for uncomfortable to accept phenomena is wont to do...

Today somewhere around 1/4 of the world's population is Islamic. And there have been a total of 3 Islamic Nobel laureates in the sciences. It's a rather nice demonstration on the question of whether 'geniuses' are born or made. If Allah's hand is not chained, what point is there in seeking to discover these alleged laws of nature?

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali

Over half the number of Muslim Nobel laureates (sciences and more), according to that Wikipedia link, have occurred since the year 200.

So, obviously, since the graph is spiking, we can expect to see lots more.

This is my sarcastic way of saying that taking a single metric which is affected by tons of different factors, and applying it to a complex argument about, basically, sociology/anthropology (human behavior and culture) really doesn’t provide a lot of value.

I think your post opens a door to a lot of interesting conversations, but that using the # of Nobel Prize nominations per religious / cultural group as a metric closed most of those doors.

It’s also not very scientific.

Please keep the crypto racism off HN.

The Nobel Prize is a European institution.

I'd say it's the same in other religions (from my personal anecdata with catholicism).

But I think that, in such context, the acceptance of fundamental truths are necessary to have a debate, like mathematical axioms are necessary for proofs. In addition to that the fundamental truths are about one's Faith, so I don't think there's a lot to debate on, either you belive or you don't.

Basically saying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_issue with more words :)

That quote is meant to be applied towards government and society. It doesn't make sense when you apply it to companies. Most employees are passive and obedient as long as they get paid. Do you think IBM or Goldman Sachs employees are allowed to dissent internally? I'd much rather work in an environment that's somewhat open than one that is completely closed.

Is your argument Facebook allows more dialogue then Goldman or IBM so this is okay?

>"Boz fostered this culture by example, publishing internal memos critical of the company. "

I read his memo titled "The Ugly." There was nothing in there that was critical of "the company." The only criticality I read was this individual being critical of people who might be prone to self-reflection. Judging from the memo and other employees characterizations of him "Boz" just sounds like a total asshole.

Yes, it does seem like it. However, I would leave the door open a crack for irony. This is hard to judge out of context, but he has to have anticipated (encouraged?) pushback.

Does the memo really come across to you as "critical" or "questioning" anything?

> That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends.

> I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this. Most of us have the luxury of working in the warm glow of building products consumers love. But make no mistake, growth tactics are how we got here. If you joined the company because it is doing great work, that’s why we get to do that great work.

I understand what you and others are trying to say. That he somehow disagreed with his own words, and wrote it to start an internal debate.

But is the reader supposed to know that from some kind of context we can't see? From the words themselves, it seems pretty clear he fully supports the continuation of, in his own words, "questionable" practices.

He said that he didn’t believe his own words. I just don’t believe him. He literally tells employees all the dodgy things they are doing is justified to help them “connect” more people. In no way do I believe he didn’t believe that.

Not only that, but he told his employees what they are doing is totally justified and to keep doing it, because it was sanctioned by management.

This is how I would communicate and do communicate when people are making morally borderline choices.

The most common reaction for people is to ignore the moral implications, a la wall street "We are unlocking value".

If boz went 180 degrees and said "welp, thats it growth is over, we have a major disaster in a few years" - the GREATER force would murder him, namely shareholders.

Even now, Facebooks greatest pain is coming from the hit to its wealth, not to the number of uninstalls coming via "deletefacebook".

At this scale and size for a large top tier tech company, the man in charge is expected to not rock the boat. Any course correction occurs slowly, or through crisis.

Apparently we are doing it by crisis

Please don't try and spin the term "don't rock the boat." A company that brutally cracks down on leakers and has employees en masse calling them "people without integrity" is the epitome of that mentality.

It's great they feel they created a microcosm of openness within the company, but that doesn't seem to have made it act any more morally when it comes to protecting user privacy.

Scary, it seems like they use Newspeak internally.

>Boz fostered this culture by example, publishing internal memos critical of the company. In this case, questioning whether the company's driving mission was the universal good that leadership thought it was when it was adopted.

“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it”

This is not dissent, this is not 'rocking the boat', this is not being critical of the company. He's taking their mission to the extreme worst case scenario and saying that even then the mission is justified. It's the polar opposite of the things you assert it is.

FB is covering by saying no one agreed with it and it was only there to provoke discussion. Why delete the post and its discussion then? It's obvious the discussion on the post wasn't critical enough to actually provide cover for these excuses so they burnt the post and are now lying about it.

"Why delete the post and its discussion then?"

Because the post and the discussion was leaked publicly.

Question remains the same. So what?

You and all the other former Facebook employees sound like people who are working hard to defend the money you made there. Because the dirty looks members of the general public now give those who made their money from Facebook probably gets to you.

Unless you were there since 2005, Boz was a higher up with more seniority, so the original memo was more of a put up or shut up piece than an RFC.

> so the original memo was more of a put up or shut up piece than an RFC.

That couldn't be further from the truth. Facebook's internal communications happen almost 100% exclusively through Facebook itself, meaning this "memo" was most likely a Facebook post, complete with liking, reacting, and commenting capability from anyone in the company.

Buzzfeed touched on this in their version of the story:

> One former employee who spoke with BuzzFeed News noted that they remembered the post and the blowback it received from some workers at the time. “It was one of [Bosworth’s] least popular and most controversial posts,” the ex-employee said. “There are people that are probably still not in his fan club because of his view.”

Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top-face...

I think the issue is that Facebook hasn’t done anything to curb bullying, terrorism, fake news or electioneering. They allowed CA to abscond with user data and they took Russian money to target voters. If they can’t track their ads or comply with federal election laws, that’s a big problem.

> I was a Facebook employee for several years; I left shortly before this memo was drafted. The environment was pretty much the opposite of "don't rock the boat." Dissenting opinions were encouraged and openly discussed, but everyone understood that could only happen if it didn't undermine the PR department's job.

It likely depends on where you are in the company. I haven't worked at FB but have a few friends who have in the past. One of them told me something pretty similar to what you experienced, the other had the exact opposite.

So I'm honestly not sure what to believe about their culture. It seems, once a company gets big enough, that culture becomes multiple sub cultures and I'm not sure there is a single culture that drives the company anymore.

It's also a question of the importance of the issue that you're "rocking the boat" about. It might be completely OK to argue with your manager about how the UI for a particular feature should look, but not OK at all to question the ethics of the company's mission, or the ways in which it makes money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com