Facebook CIO Discusses Zuckerberg's "Will You Resign?" Email 141
CarlaRudder writes: When Mark Zuckerberg sends an email with the subject line, "Will you resign?" people remember it. In this case, the email went to the entire company after someone leaked damaging information, but CIO Tim Campos talks about his hesitation to open the email, thinking it was addressed to him personally. He goes on to share an insider's perspective on the power of culture at Facebook, the benefits of giving employees time and space to both fail and create, and why data is at the core of every decision made in the company.
YES (Score:4, Interesting)
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The answer should always be:
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I got laid off a few rounds after tha
Re:YES (Score:5, Insightful)
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C-levels in public companies always resign. Never get laid off. Their compensation does not suffer from putting a spin-friendly name on it.
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There have been times in my life when I'd happily reply to that email.
Then leave. Seriously if you do not want to be there the company will not want you there either. Why force yourself something you and your employer do not want to do and for what purpose?
If you made mistakes (I have in the past) where you have a question past or might be labeled a job hopper by HR than that is on you. Life is short
Look at it this way. Work is a relationship if you ask a psychologist. Humans have relationships to groups too and not just individuals that meet each others needs. So like a bad
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Well I never said walk out the door immediately. If you can't find other work that is better than you don't deserve it. Ask any SV Nosql programmer here? They get several calls a week for jobs.
If you can't leave you're not a valuable employee. Probably because you have a bad attitude for not loving your job and wanting to quit. Ouch but it is true
Life is short for the employer too. I refuse to stay chained to misery and encourage others. If risk is not your Forte then you need an attitude adjustment and be
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I had a CEO who would always ask if you liked your job. Anything but a yes was grounds for termination.
Sounds like a typical jackass CEO who uses lame litmus tests to make important decisions. Just about anybody will instinctively answer that question in the affirmative, regardless of how they feel, because they know it's a sensitive question being asked by a person in a position of power.
Personally, work is work, and I can take something I enjoy, and when I'm forced to do it to make a living, it's not fun anymore. My guess is that's true for a lot of people.
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Personally, work is work, and I can take something I enjoy, and when I'm forced to do it to make a living, it's not fun anymore. My guess is that's true for a lot of people.
Never make your hobby into a job, it tends to result in you growing to hate your hobby.
Re: YES (Score:1)
It's money, isn't it. "Why do you want to work here?". Money. Slightly different problems elsewhere. I'll move when it gets bad enough here. Sometimes it's funny watching management fail, too. Hey, they're paid more than me, and they're fucking stupid as shit. Yes, back in the day I raised concerns but.. You know... Management knows best. I'm not passionate about whatever the company I'm currently paid by happens to produce. What would be the odds of that? It's just a job.
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It's money, isn't it. "Why do you want to work here?". Money. Slightly different problems elsewhere.
Company founders, generally, aren't in it for the money. They're in it because they think they have a cool widget and really want other people to value that widget. They want everyone they work with to share that passion.
Workers want to trade time for money. They share the management belief that employees are faceless, fungible cogs that can be plugged into tasks without any real connection to the business or widget. Coding, digging coal, torturing puppies, whatever...it's just a job.
Healthy people are
Re:YES (Score:5, Insightful)
Work is a relationship if you ask a psychologist. Humans have relationships to groups too and not just individuals that meet each others needs. So like a bad gf dump.
I tell people all the time - superiors, especially - that my job, in my perception, is just as much a relationship to me as it is to my husband.
And as such, I've learned that if it isn't meeting my needs or making me happy, I should find something else to do.
The ones who understand treat me with respect. The ones who don't have typically an unhappy set of employees under them, not just me.
A small anecdote regarding the latter:
The last job I left, my boss sat me down and begged me not to leave, even after letting go of two employees due to budget cuts (cutting the staff from 10 to 8; we were a satellite office of a much larger company). I told him that I was too young to be tied down to a job where I was clearly not allowed to branch out (he constantly hedged and made excuses, but I took the diplomatic tack of not blaming him in this conversation). He was willing to offer me something like 10% above my current salary to keep me on board, but couldn't guarantee that I'd be allowed to find work elsewhere within the company.
So, I told him this, and I think he still didn't get what I was talking about:
I once had a boyfriend who would tell me "maybe" all the time. All the things I wanted to do were "maybes". Maybe we'll go out tonight. Maybe we'll make plans for next weekend. Maybe we'll move in together. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
I told said boyfriend that if those maybes didn't start turning into yeses, that I'd leave.
He then went on to treat me like I was an ungrateful brat. Sure, I wanted things, but he was giving things. And even if they weren't the things I wanted, hell, he was contributing, and dammit, why wasn't I happy with that?
Boyfriend, boss, same deal. If someone keeps telling you "maybe" you'll get the things you want someday, all you're going to get is a bunch of "maybes". And that's what I got from my boss. I told him I don't have the time to sit around waiting for "maybes" to turn into "yeses".
My point here is: much as you spend time with a significant other, you're going to spend about as much with your job. I'm surprised that more people don't think that they need to set as many expectations for an employer as they do a spouse.
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I once had a job that i was very underpaid for. i was promised a large raise. months and months passed nothing. i would ask and they would be like the paperwork is still going though, oh we will have it budgeted next quarter etc. nothing. So one day i schedule a half day and show up in a suit. when asked about the suit i said i had some personal business to take care of after work. damned if that paperwork didn't go though by the end of the week. unfortunately for them i had gotten the other job and after a
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Then leave. Seriously if you do not want to be there the company will not want you there either.
My last job I wanted to leave several times but there were hug stock and ownership promises on the table that I would be giving up. Eventually, they let me go after I had finished building their system for them without giving me any of the promised stock or ownership. So it turned out I could have left at any time and would have made more money in the long run if I had quit early on. But hindsight is 20/20. And I learned a valuable lesson. Don't trust employers. Especially ones who claim to be Christians.
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Never trust anyone who talks about their religion. The louder the talk the less they can be trusted.
Same applies to signs. See a christian fish on the sign, keep driving, guaranteed thieves.
Openness (Score:5, Insightful)
Zuckerberg went on to write that the employee obviously didn’t share the same values of openness and transparency because they shared the confidential information in a way they were asked not to do.
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Penny Arcade had a comic that is probably relevant to that topic: (in the first frame) [penny-arcade.com]. GitHub's opinions on diversity and inclusiveness don't matter much. If GitHub service becomes lousy, then I'll stop using their services, that's about it.
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Seriously, you need to get perspective on history or something, because comparing the holocaust to Github is silly.
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Tell that to Brendan Eich.
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Brendan Eich voluntarily resigned as the CEO of a nonprofit when it was revealed he, publicly, advocated including LGBT communities and their input in the Mozilla project [brendaneich.com], but privately supported a campaign to deny LGBT people their constitutional rights.
He didn't lose his job for his beliefs, he lost his job because he was the head of a huge non-profit and it transpired he was duplicitous and had no integrity.
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What you see as "duplicitous and without integrity", I see as professionalism and putting company values before their own personal beliefs. Isn't that exactly how a CEO should act?
Also, the donation was in 2008; the Mozilla announcement was in 2014.
Similarly, in 2008 President Obama was decidedly against gay marriage being legal. By 2012 he was a stro
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He should have got a Nobler Prize just like that Kenyan guy who was also against giving LGBT people their constitutional rights.
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How can you afford an internet connection after you've spent all your money on really good drugs?
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Tell that to Brendan Eich.
Not really seeing the problem there. First amendment and all that. Mr Eich is free to support whoever he likes. His employees are free to resign and make a fuss about working for someone they don't like. He had a choice: stick to his job or lose employees, and he chose the former. No one got arrested, no one got disappeared.
It seems odd to me that the so-called "free speech advocates" seem to actually only support "offensive" speech and appear to find quite normal free speech rathe
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The kids complaining about GitHub are the ones that are complaining about Reddit going down. Eh. There are other sites out there. Git was designed to be distributed.
This is the SJW/Brianna Wu/FreeBSD Girl twitter shit spilling onto Slashdot.
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What controversy? It's not being forced onto people, so what's the issue?
I disagree with your assessment (Score:2)
Openness means freedom to speak your mind, to share things that would otherwise be not shared, and to know things you don't specifically need to know.. This includes sharing information that is otherwise confidential, at least to people outside the company. But to do that, you need to be assured that people won't spread information with which they've been entrusted to people outside the circle of trust. It's not just social, either. Sometimes sharing things outside a company has financial or legal consequen
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Sometimes sharing things outside a company has financial or legal consequences to the company itself.
Insider trading information can't be shared within the company, either (except to designated insiders).
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Unless the entire company is designated as insiders and restricted to trading windows. Which I've seen several times.
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Insider trading information can't be shared within the company, either (except to designated insiders).
That's false. I'll agree many places operate that way, to keep liability lower, but that's a corporate policy, not law.
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there is no company ever that has been run on openness and transparency. anything that is "open and transparent" is inconsequential and shallow
secrets and politics is absolutely essential to running a company. any hierarchical organization of humans. it is the only way to get anything done. a social structure that is formless and free is a confusing mess of overlapping chatter. the natural inclination is to squelch most of it. to get some fucking work done: "only let me know what i need to know so i can foc
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yeah i was thinking the same thing
all organizations have secrets. some of those secrets are necessary. divulging them of course is damaging to the company. it's a betrayal, a backstab. for any number of motivations: greed, revenge, etc
meanwhile, openness and transparency are nice attitudes to have towards your clients and customers, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the internal workings of a corporation. this is plainly obvious to anyone in a professional organization. openness and transparency j
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yeah, we all know the cynical line "if you don't pay for it, you are the product" and it's a funny laugh
I can tell you, I've worked in ad tech, and it's not a "funny laugh." It is absolutely true.....the best ad tech companies try to respect their users, but they know where the money comes from, and the sales people get rewarded for bringing in more money. The company becomes naturally organized around the people who pay money.
At the end of the day, that is why we have malware in ads.
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if you are a cynic, and a slave, yes
to the extent that what you said is not true, is to the same extent the number of people with enough heart and enough backbone to believe and do otherwise
so grow a fucking backbone
the world is improving. progress is real. slowed down and held back not by those with malicious intent- those assholes always exist, but by people like you. the most amazing thing to me is people like you. people who willingly and openly bend over and accept their malice as your reality. fucking
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You say all those nasty things about people, and then you turn around and vote them into high office and buy their products... How does that work? It certainly appears you are the one bending over and projecting that onto everyone else. In fact, that is exactly what is happening.
And my dear! What is up with all that swearing and talking down to everybody? Are you really such a superior being? Believe me, you're no Don Rickles! Not even close!
Re:Openness (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing to say about this Zuckerberg quote. Someone doesn't understand 'openness.' I will never work at that company.
Zuckerberg went on to write that the employee obviously didn’t share the same values of openness and transparency because they shared the confidential information in a way they were asked not to do.
That person released confidential information without telling anyone about it, and without coming out when it was leaked, so they were not doing it in a transparent manner. This is just like the dude at Wikileaks who operates in total secrecy but publishes the secrets of other people. Once you start doing cherry picking on what you "share", that's not being open and transparent.
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A lot of firms keep almost everything secret from most employees because they don't trust them. If a company is open and transparent then they might share things like details of customer negotiations with more employees, that doesn't mean they are hypocritical for asking those employees not to post that sensitive information online or give it to competitors.
You don't have to think encryption is wrong in all circumstances to be al
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There is nothing to say about this Zuckerberg quote. Someone doesn't understand 'openness.' I will never work at that company.
Zuckerberg went on to write that the employee obviously didn’t share the same values of openness and transparency because they shared the confidential information in a way they were asked not to do.
The management and C-level folks know about massive layoffs and things that effect the employees months in advance. Are they totally open and transparent about these important things which affect the lives and families of their employees? Of course not. But they expect the employees to be totally open and transparent with them.
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Some people never got over the death of MySpace.
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Took you quite some time to figure that one out.
Meh (Score:3)
Will You Fire Me? (Score:5, Informative)
I asked that once of the Director. It was a blatent request.
He refused. "Nope."
Left me stuck with an impossible job. Fortunately, things worked themselves out.
Nowadays, he comes around and pesters me. I want to fire him, but can't, because he's retired. Maybe I should resign.
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It's too bad you weren't more employable that you couldn't find another job.
Looks like facebook (Score:1)
has some weird psychological warfare going on there.
Effing Useless (Score:2)
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I only read the summary.
My thought was that "but CIO Tim Campos talks about his hesitation to open the email, thinking it was addressed to him personally." is says a lot about the company culture.
If I saw an e-mail from my boss with the subject line "Will you resign?" my first thought would be why he is worrying about that and that I'd have to reassure him that I'll keep working for a couple of more years.
If the CIO looks at that subject with dread and feels that it is likely that he would be asked to leave
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Yeah, TFA is a waste of bytes on it's own. I read it with a view to employers past and present, and adding in that knowledge it starts to be passingly interesting.
TFA is missing: what did the email say? did the 'leaker' resign or were they found out? what was the nature of the leaked information?
These things are important, because without them it's hard to make any real conclusions about any of it. If the email read "ha - fooled you - have a $1000 bonus for being great", then that says something very differ
What does CIO stand for? (Score:1)
because the first thing that popped into mind was Chief Idiot Officer
What was leaked? (Score:3)
So, what information was leaked? Seems like a fairly relevant point, odd that it wasn't mentioned.
Mobbing and agitprop is "culture"? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The Power of Culture: "At Facebook, culture is everything and it's an incredible timesaver," Campos said. Culture allows Facebook to cut through bureaucracy, he said. Among the ways Facebook emphasizes its culture is through its now well-known posters that say things like: "Fail harder;" "Move fast and break things;" and, "What would you do if you weren't afraid?"
Facebook also reinforces its culture through storytelling, like the "will you resign" email example he shared with the audience. "It was an incredibly powerful message," Campos explained. "Everybody at the company read this email and had the exact same takeaway and perspective that I did, they all thought it was immediately addressed to them. And it was striking as a result of that. And they never forgot it. And we keep talking about it - we talk about how do we handle confidential information in the company. The 'will you resign' email is quite famous." There are a ton of stories like this that Facebook uses to reinforce key culture points that prevent the creation of unnecessary steering committees and advisory boards, Campos said.
Posters he's describing are pure propaganda, all basically shouting "WORK HARDER AND MORE!", while those mass "Your job is insecure" emails are nothing but mobbing.
If that's culture, it's nothing but culture of fear.
Ah well... someone has to keep getting stress-related heart attacks, strokes and cancers I guess.
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"Your job is insecure" emails are nothing but mobbing.
What does "mobbing" mean in this context?
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In norwegian, mobbing means bullying... Maybe GP is norwegian?
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Also in Swedish, well technically it's only the kind of bullying that a group does (hence the mob part). But in everyday speak it's used for bullying.
Try "workplace harassement". (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In the workplace
Main article: Workplace bullying
British anti-bully researchers Andrea Adams and Tim Field have used the expression "workplace bullying" instead of what Leymann called "mobbing" in a workplace context. They identify mobbing as a particular type of bullying that is not as apparent as most, defining it as "an emotional assault. It begins when an individual becomes the target of disrespectful and harmful behavior. Through innuendo, rumors, and public discrediting, a hostile environment is created in which one individual gathers others to willingly, or unwillingly, participate in continuous malevolent actions to force a person out of the workplace."[3]
Adams and Field believe that mobbing is typically found in work environments that have poorly organised production or working methods and incapable or inattentive management and that mobbing victims are usually "exceptional individuals who demonstrated intelligence, competence, creativity, integrity, accomplishment and dedication".[3]
Shallcross, Ramsay and Barker consider workplace "mobbing" to be a generally unfamiliar term in some English speaking countries. Some researchers claim that mobbing is simply another name for bullying. Workplace mobbing can be considered as a "virus" or a "cancer" that spreads throughout the workplace via gossip, rumour and unfounded accusations. It is a deliberate attempt to force a person out of their workplace by humiliation, general harassment, emotional abuse and/or terror. Mobbing can be described as being "ganged up on." Mobbing is executed by a leader (who can be a manager, a co-worker, or a subordinate). The leader then rallies others into a systematic and frequent "mob-like" behaviour toward the victim.[4]
Psychological and health effects
Victims of workplace mobbing frequently suffer from: adjustment disorders, somatic symptoms (e.g., headaches or irritable bowel syndrome), psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression.[5]
In mobbing targets with PTSD, Leymann notes that the "mental effects were fully comparable with PTSD from war or prison camp experiences. Some patients may develop alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders. Family relationships routinely suffer. Some targets may even develop brief psychotic episodes, generally with paranoid symptoms. Leymann estimated that 15% of suicides in Sweden could be directly attributed to workplace mobbing.[5]
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I know your mom is, but what am I? (Score:1)
Does your gran know you're potty-mouthing with her slashdot account?
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Posters he's describing are pure propaganda, all basically shouting "WORK HARDER AND MORE!"
Work harder... doing what? Facebook has 10,000 employees. What are those people doing all day? The guy wrote the first version working part-time while he was at school. Of course they have improved it, I know they got all fancy with their php jvm and nosql database and whatnot. But still... 10,000 people?
Tesla has about the same number of employees and they design, build, sell and service futuristic electric cars that accelerate faster than a Formula One racing car.
Wtf.
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I write firmware, and have an electrical engineering background. I appreciate the incredible job Musk has done with Tesla and recognize how great a car he's built. In earnest however, I'd have an easier time managing the design of something like that than the (presumably monumental) codebase that facebook has by now. People tend to forget how complicated software ends up being because there's nothing to show for it. There are years and years of work in the underlying systems of the world wide web. Face
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First off, no they don't. The Tesla has a 0-60 of 2.8s, an F1 car does 2s or lower. You may be confusing "an F1 race car" with "the McLaren F1" which is a production road car and which Tesla stated they wanted to equal in performance.
To your main point, organizations tend to grow non-linearly in my experience. As you add more of your "primary" em
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So why are Zuckerberg and Jobs the ones who get held up as model CEOs?
The answer to nearly every question of that form is: PAGE VIEWS.
When people actually care about becoming a better CEO (for example, at an MBA school), they do case studies of plenty of little-known CEOs, good and bad.
*Boop* Reply To All (Score:2)
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Always sandbag at least one raise for your own uses.
Culture (Score:3, Insightful)
The takeaway from this story is that Facebook uses email for the important stuff, not Facebook messages.
So... (Score:2)
Did they find the guy who leaked the information?
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I doubt he read replies to it even.
ten thousand messages with title "why?" sitting in his inbox. in his email address he doesn't use anyways.
nice (Score:1)
Tells you something about the culture there (Score:5, Insightful)
If the CIO, a rather high ranking C-Suite officer, is afraid to open a mail from his CEO talking about resignation, something is amiss. If a C-Level pretty much expects to be laid off by email instead of a more personal way of communication something is VERY, VERY wrong in a company.
Don't get me wrong, being laid off by email is common for lower ranks in huge, "faceless" corporations. I never experienced it on this level, though. We're talking about a handful of people per company. It's not like there are a dozen CIOs littering the top floor. Even a company like Facebook will hardly employ hundreds of C-Levels. These people KNOW each other. Personally. They have meetings. They organize and coordinate strategies. Depending on the company they even know each other on a rather personal level, down to their family status and whether the kids have the flu.
If such a person expects to be fired by email, this does not speak kindly of the prevailing corporate culture.
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Both Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Campos are millenials - their standards for such things are very different from anyone over 40.
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Both Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Campos are millenials - their standards for such things are very different from anyone over 40.
Sorry are you saying they lack social skills completely? I'm not that much older than Zuck and I can tell you right now that I would not consider it acceptable to ask for someone to resign or to fire them by email. Have I resigned by email? Yes. Twice. But that is a little bit different. The resignation should be in writing so that all parties should clearly know and have something they can point back to during the termination process. Even the lowliest of employees should be told in person that they
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It may seem that way if you're judging them out of context, yes.
I hate to break it to you, but you're one person - and trying to draw a curve through a point comprised of a single piece of anecdata is abysmally stupid. Millennials and digital natives have (as a group) somewhat different s
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It may seem that way if you're judging them out of context, yes.
I hate to break it to you, but you're one person - and trying to draw a curve through a point comprised of a single piece of anecdata is abysmally stupid. Millennials and digital natives have (as a group) somewhat different social expectations and mores than the cohorts the preceded them, this is well known and widely established.
Define digital native, if you please. The only difference their 'digital nativity' and mine is that I did not grow up with SMS and cell phones. That was not until my college years and their high school years. Claiming that they grew up nursing on the teat of technology does not change social norms, all of the sudden.
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So the heads of the largest social media page lack any semblance of social skills?
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If the CIO, a rather high ranking C-Suite officer, is afraid to open a mail from his CEO talking about resignation, something is amiss. If a C-Level pretty much expects to be laid off by email instead of a more personal way of communication something is VERY, VERY wrong in a company.
I don't think it's evidence of that. The subject line was "Will You Resign?", I think anyone would be freaked out if they saw that email from their immediate superior, especially if they were in a position where resignations are the typical form of firing, all it really says is Zuckerberg is either oblivious or a bit of an asshole.
Don't get me wrong, being laid off by email is common for lower ranks in huge, "faceless" corporations.
Is it? That sounds pretty screwed up, everyone should have a manager whom they deal with personally, they should be able to convey the news in person (or phone call for a remote w
if I saw some shitty native ad pass for an email (Score:2)
like this cross my desk, sure I'd quit.
Let FB plummit, it's nickle stock, completely overvalued.
Data driven decisions? (Score:2)
Isn't that how decisions should be made? Why is that it seems to be such a big deal?
Jerk (Score:2)
Management 101 (Score:4, Interesting)
Some background please? (Score:1)
What was leaked? Does anyone have the full text of the e-mail?
Globalization (Score:1)
Corporates are giant ponzi/pyramid scams in globalization;