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Comment by nikhildaga | Hacker News Reader

" Zuckerberg all but stopped writing code for Facebook in the summer of 2005."

Did he really stop coding? How can one give up coding and focus on managing? I really find it difficult.

I don't see how he couldn't. Managing and coding are both full time jobs. How could he possibly run one of the fastest growing and most influential companies in the world while still remain an effective member of the Engineering team?

On an anecdotal note, I recall reading a story recently about how the FB Engineers gave Zuck a canned 5-minute bugfix which ended up taking him close to an hour. He's clearly rusty, and with good cause.

I know he can. but, I feel that it's not easy. I myself find it extremely difficult. One does not simply give up coding.

I think there must be many others here who must have faced difficulty in making a transition from developer to manager.

Managing a company is not that different from coding: instead of instructing machines what to do, you instruct people.

But machines are rational and logical, people are not. :|

Well, they are probabilistic machines then! ;-)

Actually, Zuck made a statement exactly like that last fall. He basically described his model of running a company as just another engineering problem, comparing delegating tasks to writing subroutines.

I've found the video of him saying that at StartupSchool

http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/298808358

Seek at 9:30.

Ah, interesting. I was actually referring to this talk he gave here at CMU -- http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18392445 -- but he says the same thing almost word for word (spent ~15 minutes trying to find where he says it; I couldn't find it, but I remember him saying it).

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