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).
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.
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.
It applies to pretty much any tech company that claims to love debate and dissent internally.
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?
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.
The Nobel Prize is a European institution.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
“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.
Because the post and the discussion was leaked publicly.
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.
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...
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.
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.