From what I know of Google, their internal staffing of projects is done much the same way: you're assigned to certain teams when you first join the company, but after that the various Product Owners try to recruit and advertise within the company for engineers to join their team.
When I was interviewing there I recall seeing flyers posted in common areas advertising different projects that were in need of engineers to come join them ("Interested in _____? Google ___ could use your help!").
Could you clarify why this is? I'm not trying to imply anything, certainly not that Facebook is Enron, just that (to me) they have similar attitudes to assigning staff to work duties. When I read the Facebook quote, I immediately thought of Skilling's quote.
It seems to me and many others here on HN that I've read over the last few months have problems with the way Facebook operate e.g. those who need to use their API to integrate with their own service, privacy concerns, spam, etc; and Facebook doesn't seem to address these issues at all. That was my ultimate point - how they address with these issues, and could the fact they are not dealt with in a timely manner actually be a symptom of letting engineers pick their own work?
Let's see how I can put this. What you've just done is the business equivalent of Godwin's law. It would be like comparing US customs to the Nazis because, you know, both want to look at your papers.
What makes Enron Enron isn't how they did staffing, it's how they cooked their books and defrauded people. Their name is synonymous with fraud and corruption, and so invoking them in conversation about similar staffing practices seems... misleading.
If facebook is starting to go down this same road they might arrive at the same end.
Perhaps they just need to sustain this model long enough to get to an IPO.
This goes back to the well-known advice of "make a product you want to use"
But obviously those users are a tiny minority.
I challenge your conclusion that they should get their priority straight: if their goal is to keep growing at current rate as you seem to suggest, then they probably shouldn't change a damn thing, because they are darn good at it.
- Jeff Skilling, former president of Enron
http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_07_22_a_talent.htm
Contrast that with the Facebook approach:
"Resourcing for projects is purely voluntary. -a PM lobbies group of engineers, tries to get them excited about their ideas.
-Engineers decide which ones sound interesting to work on.
-Engineer talks to their manager, says “I’d like to work on these 5 things this week.”
-Engineering Manager mostly leaves engineers’ preferences alone, may sometimes ask that certain tasks get done first.
-Engineers handle entire feature themselves — front end javascript, backend database code, and everything in between. If they want help from a Designer (there are a limited staff of dedicated designers available), they need to get a Designer interested enough in their project to take it on. Same for Architect help. But in general, expectation is that engineers will handle everything they need themselves."
Good god. Does this strike anyone else as disturbing? Surely every single piece of work being taken on should have the USERS needs and concerns as top priority and not sexy stuff that can attract sufficient engineering interest?
What if there's important problems that are really bothering lots of users and a PM can't get anybody interested (or no-one decides to take on the problem?)
Here's a complaint from a guy about maintaining a personal page and fan page:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/01/leaving-facebook/
Some quotes from that piece:
"As a programmer myself, I can’t fathom that it would take much technical and design effort to address these issues, and Facebook is flooded with complaints from users begging them to fix these headaches. From my perspective as a Facebook user with a very active personal page and fan page, I can’t help but get the impression that Facebook deliberately wants to make some basic admin tasks (like blocking spammers) difficult or impossible in order to compel you to spend more time on the site. There doesn’t seem to be any other logical reason for these glaring design flaws that I can comprehend, other than pure incompetence, and based on their success in other areas, it seems more likely that these choices are deliberate."
"Surely someone on their team is aware of all the complaints and requests to fix the broken elements. So why do they seem to ignore what appear to be such glaring (and fixable) problems?"
"I thought that Facebook would be an interesting place to share inspirational messages and build more community around growth-oriented people. But the current implementation of Facebook can’t handle the way I’ve been trying to use it without creating more headaches than it’s worth, and their momentum appears to be headed in the wrong direction for me to expect that these problems would be fixed anytime soon."
"So I’ve crossed the threshold where Facebook’s value isn’t worth the hassle to use it. I concluded that the best choice was to simply drop the service altogether and invest my time elsewhere."
Who will take on these issues?
Again from the Malcom Gladwell article linked above:
"You might expect a C.E.O. to say that if a business unit can't attract customers very easily that's a good sign it's a business the company shouldn't be in. A company's business is supposed to be shaped in the direction that its managers find most profitable. But at Enron the needs of the customers and the shareholders were secondary to the needs of its stars."
Facebook should wake up in my opinion. They did really well to reach 600m users (or whatever the figure is now) but if they want to stay there they should get their priorities straight.
EDIT: Grammar