Not just that, the top-down structure is shaped after a cult of personality.

Talking to my friends who work at Apple, FB, Google, Amazon and others, facebookers are the only ones who seem to be willing to defend their leader on a personal level, as if they had a dear friend being attacked.

My other friends couldn't care less if someone criticizes or attacks Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar and so on.

The only other company I can think that behaves in the same way is Tesla with Musk (well, an Apple with Jobs in the old days), but the key difference is that most Muskians don't seem to work for Tesla, and the folks I know at Tesla aren't actually obsessed with Musk.

In the case of FB, it is the opposite.

Have to agree. I've observed that there seems to be some hero worship in Facebook that employees use as justification for continuing to work there or being inspired to work only in Facebook (not anywhere else). The same process is also used to brush off every wrong that Mark Zuckerberg himself brushes off and/or apologizes (insincerely) for the millionth time.

It almost seems like a reinforcing self-selection mechanism is in place for such hero worship.

Maybe I am way off base, not knowing enough about these companies individual cultures, but

What I see from Apple, FB, and Google is too much optimism and belief in good. They arent cynical enough. "We are doing this gray area thing in a good way, and what we are doing WONT be used for bad." Its either sheer willpower of the leadership to force this culture OR its cognitive dissonance, OR its a lie and manipulative means to an end. In some way, I do believe Mark delusionally believes his "bringing the world closer together" so much so that it causes him to not think critically enough about how many people benefit from conflict and divide.

Apple takes a cynical approach to privacy, but an optimistic approach to the value of walled gardens.

Facebook takes a cynical approach to security and uptime, but an optimistic approach to evil social use. They default to "most people are good, and the few bad ones can be silenced. We can do this through AI and some eyeballs." Facebook, like many other companies is also WAY TOO OPTIMISTIC about people reading popups. People forget acknowledging something by the next day. People want to play a quiz, they are conditioned to click next next ok until they get to the quiz. Facebook vastly overestimates the majority of the populations care in knowing: is this safe to click, what are the consequences of clicking, do I know what I am doing, do i know how this works, do i care. You can honestly tell me that 99% of the world population understands what installing an SSL cert on their device actually does?

I think defending Mark amounts to people BELIEVING that the work they do WILL BE used for more good than bad. And people who distrust Facebook's competence care more about how tools can be used for bad than good. And so if you believe that youre building something that COULD be used for bad in the wrong hands (or you believe a competitor could build a more evil version first if you dont,) but believe you are the right hands to execute it in a positive way, you obviously are going to defend the leadership that vocalizes and spreads that belief among the workforce.

Apple would do good to give up a little on vendor lockin. Their turning point was iTunes being available on Windows. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have all come to terms with making their best products run on all platforms. Homekit could be a good start. If spouses are split Apple/Anrdoid, they should both be able to manage a smarthome equally. Apple should be releasing killer apps that function fully on other platforms, but have some added benefit when run on their more integrated os.

Facebook would do good to stop believing that speech is good by default, and focus on amplifying "good" speech, instead of spending monumental effort to downrank "bad" speech. Facebook needs to let go of its cognitive dissonance, where it believes sharing twerk or fall viral videos equates people sharing their personal social experiences with close friends. Facebook may need to give up on its belief that one platform can function all as reddit/youtube and craigslist/vacationbabyphotos.

(As for google, they are way too optimistic that their org structure will support building and launching a product, and then iterating it. No one with any semblance of historical context trusts them anymore after reader/allo etc.)

A hair off topic, but is Muskrat ever used as a denotative?

I haven't heard that before, but ... I like it! I hope that 'muskrat' makes its way into the lexicon.

Same here! The two terms I've heard describing the cultists so far are Muskians and Zuckerboys (and we should also include Zurckergals and Zuckerfolks).

This is mostly a millenials thing. I don't know why young people are fixated with the Zuckerbers and Bezos of the world. Did I miss something the past 15 years?. I'm in my 40s

Having idols is a young people thing. Young folks just didn't used to attach to business leaders as much as they do now. When I was a kid, typical idols were music stars, actors, sports stars. The Internet created a new category of success for young people, and therefore created a new category of idols for young people.

Geez, we are lucky the Koch brothers build their empire before the social media was a thing, otherwise they will be also considered "influencers and trend setters"

Result of a lack of community, friends and local family support system. Work has become Church, the CEO head of the flock, your role becoming your identity, bowing at the alter of RSUs and total comp.

And new HQ buildings are the cathedrals of our time.

That sounds like sampling bias rather than a real generational trait. Corporate culture like this isn't universal but it goes back to before many millennials were even born. It's become stronger in cases where it's part of the justification for extremely high compensation but it's an inevitable failure mode for human social systems.

This is probably everyone and their dog have an irrational belief that Zuck is a comic book villain when in reality he's just a regular old capitalist.

Nah, good old capitalists are rarely trying to create a religion after them, going around the country and taking pictures feeding baby cows.

Zuckerberg is indeed a good old capitalist, but one who doesn't want to be seen as a capitalist, but as a messianic savior.

That's why you create a for-profit company and call it an "Initiative" focused on "advancing human potential and promote equality".

Yep, look no further than Sheryl Sandberg still doubling down on defending this practice: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/30/facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-de...

Like you said, rotten from the top-down.

They think they can keep using an apology tour to dismiss all past misdeeds ("we have work to do"). It looks silly at this point and completely incompetent.

As evidenced by Stamos' departure and decision not to replace him.

> source: several friends working at Facebook, and reading public tweets of Facebook leaders

The people I know at Facebook have been resorting to whataboutism (everyone is doing it, look at the Google app doing the same thing, for sure Apple is also hiring market research firms who do the same thing, why aren't you concerned about AT&T/Verizon, etc etc)

Whataboutism seems to be the go-to fallacy used by Facebook leaders.

See for example the ex CSO deviating the discussion to Apple privacy concerns in China: https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1090918043969114112

To be fair, whataboutism is rampant here too, on Reddit, and basically any forum with company fans. Any time a “Company A does something unethical” article comes up, people will always come out of the woodwork to defend with “Well Companies B and C do it too!”