Internal Facebook posts of employees discussing leaked memo - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/30/17179100/facebook-memo-leaks-boz-andrew-bosworth <comment><USER2> The Guardian has a piece that discussed the FB employees reaction to this leak and it was down right scary. Many calls for hiring workers "with integrity" on talking about how this leak was destroying FB's perception as a great place to work.

How scary it must be to work at a place with such an overwhelming "don't rock the boat" mentality. Leakers everywhere, and Google, FB, and Apple especially risk their jobs and their career to give the public an open look at places which hold overwhelming power over our personal lives.

FB's internal perspective on privacy and goals are vital for the public to know, it shouldn't take the next massive breach of trust to trigger an investigation to learn the detais. A leaker, sorry, I mean someone "without integrity", in 2016 could have done a lot of good.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about Facebook in particular, but what you're missing is that the reason employees can debate _internally_ about policy is that they trust it won't leak _externally_. The risk of leaks eventually results in companies clamping down on security, so most employees aren't told anything that's not already public, unless they need it for their job. (Much like Apple has been all along, where employees only know what they need to know.)

So I would ask you where you'd rather work? At an employer that trusts you not to leak stuff, or somewhere that doesn't trust you? If it's the latter, you might as well be a contractor.

You'll find this is true in most organizations, not just companies. They want to know if they can trust you with their secrets. It does require some faith that internal debate will help the organization make good decisions most of the time, which admittedly can be a stretch sometimes.

<comment><USER4> I think you're missing the greater context here. Bosworth's memo is classic end justifies the means. This is almost an admission that they knew things they were doing would be deeply unpopular.

The post in full doesn't read at all like it was to stimulate discussion. It reads more like it was to silence dissent.

If you really wanted to stimulate discussion and gather employee views on this stuff, you'd send a survey round. But the relationship is still asymmetrical between boss and employee.

All you're doing when posting something like this semi-publicly is creating an environment where more quiet conscientious views get shouted down by the loudest voices.

<comment><USER5> >It reads more like it was to silence dissent.

Which makes his response read all that more hollow. Calling it a straw man? The post seems to have been an all out justification for immoral behavior by an executive. I can't imagine a Jr. Engineer or someone fresh out of college with their MA in Stats feeling super comfortable hopping in and going, "Hey this sound unethical and if people saw you saying it they would think we're hella fucked up." I'm relatively low-ranking at another big SV company and the thought of needing to stand up to a high ranking employee like that is more than a little intimidating.

<comment><USER6> Same. I'm not even THAT low-ranking, and it's still a big deal when I push back against a VP or director on something that's in my area. For some topic where I didn't even feel like an expert, against such language, and with morals concerned? I think I'd just silently start looking for a new job.

<comment><USER7> > I think I'd just silently start looking for a new job.

That's good though. Boz already made the decision to prioritize connecting more people, despite the costs. He didn't have to tell his employees, but he did. This allows you to make the decision on whether it's worth staying at Facebook.

<comment><USER8> So basically, he's admitted to unethical behaviour? Is this why his heart is breaking?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's kinda ironic that a post about "All we are doing is connecting people and information" gets deleted because it gets connected to a lot of people ("leaked").

You can't simultaneously hold the opinion that there's no harm in sharing information, while also holding the opinion that there is such thing as a "leak." It just strikes me as so ironic for a company that champions "privacy is dead, live with it," to have to delete its own valid internal debates because of the consequences of lack of privacy (i.e. leak = lack of privacy).

<comment><USER10> > You can't simultaneously hold the opinion that there's no harm in sharing > information, while also holding the opinion that there is such thing as a > "leak.

Likewise, you can't simultaneously hold the opinion that users should have control over where their content is seen, and that it's OK to publish and comment on an internal post. In a less spiteful world, some of the employees' reactions might have been taken as evidence that they _do_ understand and care about issues of privacy or containment. Maybe that would lead to more collaboration on solutions, which is necessary because there are actually some tricky tradeoffs here. But that doesn't give the same dopamine hit as cutting down the tall poppies, right?

<comment><USER11> >> Likewise, you can't simultaneously hold the opinion that users should have control over where their content is seen, and that it's OK to publish and comment on an internal post.

This argument is illogical, because Facebook forces everyone to sign its ToS to use its services, while nobody forces a Facebook employee to leak internal stuff. Said another way, whether or not I wish to have control over my FB data, FB _coerces_ me to agree that it can do whatever it wants with my data. Its not exactly opt-in, is it? Its far worse, of course, if you consider shadow profiles, because it is even coercing people who didn't even explicitly sign up to the ToS. Unless the leak happened via some kind of coercion (which doesn't seem to be the case), your comment is incorrect.

>> In a less spiteful world, some of the employees' reactions might have been taken as evidence that they do understand and care about issues of privacy or containment.

What? You mean you care about something, but you just won't _do_ something about it, nor openly tell anyone _why_ you wouldn't do something about it, or even _talk_ about it _before_ the issue blows up? Yep, totally convincing.

>> Maybe that would lead to more collaboration on solutions,

Why do people need to "collaborate" on solutions? What do they get from it? Is Facebook going to pay people a share of the profits? If Facebook is a corporate entity which serves its self-interest against people's self-interest (which they have clearly been doing for a long time), what kind of idiot would suggest the people whose self-interest has been affected should now "come to the table" so "we can all work something out"?

>> which is necessary because there are actually some tricky tradeoffs here.

The only tricky tradeoff here is: should Mark Zuckerberg be the only one who should go to jail, or should the entire company be rounded up? It is quite tricky, I do agree.

>> But that doesn't give the same dopamine hit as cutting down the tall poppies, right?

I don't know about tall poppies, but "culling" the "weeds" is the only way to have a healthy garden.

<comment><USER10> > Its not exactly opt-in, is it?

You're free not to use it. If that opt-in isn't enough, exactly how many levels do you want? If you _do_ choose to use a free service, whether it's Facebook or a public library, you have to consider how it's paid for. Actively using something and also actively undermining its means of support ... well, I'll just leave that thought there.

> You mean you care about something, but you just won't do something about it

You seem to have some pretty unrealistic expectations of what individual employees can do at a 30K-person company, or about anyone taking the right action without deliberating first.

> Why do people need to "collaborate" on solutions? What do they get from it?

Ummm ... the solutions, which are not only applicable to Facebook? This is a _general_ problem faced by many companies. The solutions could also be useful to the people who blather about creating a distributed alternative to Facebook. I've been a member of the decentralization and distributed-system community for far longer than Facebook or Y Combinator have existed. I also know something about the scale and connectedness of the data at Facebook. We're multiple basic innovations away from being able to create such an alternative. Wouldn't it be nice if people who actually understand various parts of this can talk and work together? That doesn't become more likely when every discussion is filled with people who only read others' comments enough to find where to insert their own half-baked opinions or insults.

<comment><USER11> >> If that opt-in isn't enough, exactly how many levels do you want?

Since you can't seem to count to 2, how about:

1\. You let us share your data with others in return for free service

2\. You don't let us share your date in return for paid service

>> If you do choose to use a free service, whether it's Facebook or a public library

Well, a public library is tax funded and people _outside_ the library employees have a big say in its inner workings. So you can't get your comparisons correct either.

>> Actively using something and also actively undermining its means of support ... well, I'll just leave that thought there.

Perhaps you should complete the thought, because I don't actively use the something

>> You seem to have some pretty unrealistic expectations of what individual employees can do at a 30K-person company, or about anyone taking the right action without deliberating first.

Really, as opposed to your very realistic expectations that everyone should just trust FB employees would have "done the right thing" had they not been caught red-handed? Oh right, because FB knows better what is best for everyone else.

>>Wouldn't it be nice if people who actually understand various parts of this can talk and work together?

This is truly bizarre. So if FB rolls over and dies tomorrow, does it mean innovation will come to a complete halt? Let us say you think, "oh, but it might take much longer". Does that automatically adversely affect people _more_ than the damages that can be caused to society via rampant data collection? How can you be so sure? Oh wait, because you must be smarter than everyone else, as you got through the interview.

And finally, it is interesting all the things that you selectively left unsaid (exactly like other FB employees have been doing all the while).

\- you don't have the courage (what an ironic handle) to discuss shadow profiles

\- you never actually addressed the fact that no one from outside coerced the leak, which made your first comment more rhetorical than substantial

\- you cleverly twisted the "collaboration" to be _amongst_ FB employees when clearly the line following tells that you actually meant collaboration between FB employees and its users (dopamine hit for whom, that is? so you are now assuming others cannot read either?)

<comment><USER12> We've banned this account for violating the site guidelines.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER13> Bystander here. Why the ban? It's snarky in places for sure but I'd say it's a pretty solid set of points and counter points. It definitely "added something" to my experience reading this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised by the sheer amount of blind loyalty at Facebook.

I mean, I consider myself to be a loyal employee but I'm not blind to ethical violations. The way these employees are defending a global multi-billion dollar organization it's almost like they were executives. They'd rather sell out the rest of the world for what? To be a FB engineer until they retire? It's like Facebook indoctrinates it's employees somehow.

I can't think of a single non-managerial employee at my company that wouldn't speak up if we deliberately started violating agreements with our customers and coming closer and closer to breaking the law, and I'm comfortable with that.

<comment><USER15> These employees are people who are pulled straight from college, given salaries higher than most of their contemporaries ever dreamed of earning, and are told they are special and are changing the world. Why wouldn't they be blindly loyal to the sociopathic machine they helped create?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the original post by "Boz"[0]:

> Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in > a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And we still connect people

This guy is a VP at Facebook. Words mean things and his words have weight within the company. This alone disgusts me. He could have easily taken the other side of the argument to stir debate and chose not to.

> Leakers, please resign instead of sabotaging the company

I think the level of hubris espoused by these Facebook employees is a much better reason to delete Facebook than anything I've seen so far. In fact, although the data we have gotten is incomplete, it seems to possibly be the general feeling. The focus on growth and profit over any thought of doing the right thing is actually evil, especially when one recognizes that evil is being done.

This company is no longer a small company built out of a dorm room. It is a massive publicly traded company that has revenues and active users in the billions. Despite the current climate, words actually have meaning, especially words greatly amplified on these tools, and these actions have real consequences.

[0] [https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top- face...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top-facebook- executive-defended-data)

<comment><USER7> The reason Facebookers hate leakers so much is because it helps no one. The leaker gets to continue working his cushy software job while a bunch of PR people are forced to work overtime to control the situation. Facebook is going to continue to do whatever it wants to do, but they'll just be more secretive about it within the company. Boz could have easily written a memo with corporate-speak if he just wanted everyone to drink the Kool-Aid.

<comment><USER17> > The reason Facebookers hate leakers so much is because it helps no one.

It helps the general public by giving insight about how crazy is the people that builds and moderate the platform used to communicate by millions of people.

<comment><USER7> How are they crazy? If anything, I think it's refreshing that a VP acknowledges Facebook's problems. If he never acknowledged it, everything would be peachy. I guess ignorance is bliss for most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the outside, this all seems rather cultish. Are Facebook employees so convinced of the nobility of the company, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary?

It brings to mind the famous Upton Sinclair quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

<comment><USER19> _> Are Facebook employees so convinced of the nobility of the company, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary_

At best, we only have evidence that the subset of employees who chose to comment on that internal thread and whose comment was chosen by the journalist to be included in the article feel this way.

One of the things that media and aggregation have really accelerated is the cognitive fallacy where we assume the most _interesting_ data points are the most _frequent_ when in reality the inverse is almost always true — common is boring. If you were to go by the news, men bite dogs way more often than dogs bite men. But that's only because "man bites dog" is worth reporting and "dog bites man" is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What material is "the bubble" made out of if Facebook employees immediately jump to "spies" when it comes to leaking something like this? Has it been so long since they've had contact with soul-containing humans that they forgot how they operated?! Zucker-bot must be replicating ye olde FB HQ.

<comment><USER21> I don't think it's fair to say the entire company believe it was spies. Clearly a lot think it was just a few jerks. That said, FB is almost certainly infiltrated by a few governments. It's not exactly a small company. If China wanted to get someone on the inside, it couldn't be that hard.

But IMO, this was just an employee who admires Snowden.

<comment><USER22> > just a few jerks.

Where by "jerks" you mean "people with deep misgivings and the courage to risk their careers by speaking out against one of the world's premier surveillance organizations?" This isn't the kind of thing you do for lulz, and I doubt they're getting paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting to see how Facebook reacts to internal corporate data being shared, in reverse to Facebook sharing private user data to third parties.

Boz complains that his memo was taken out of context and he doesn't even agree with it anymore, yet everyone is judging! Gasp! Facebook on the other hand _totally connects_ people by creating and selling ad profiles on said connected people. Based on data people shared years ago, out of the context, disagreeing to what they said years ago! And that's a good thing, right? Because it connects people! Ugh.

<comment><USER23> I've got an idea. Is there any way to place targeted advertisement inside Facebook's internal communications feed?

Based on Facebook's latest reactions to media coverage and memos shared to public I was able to deduce an ad profile which I'd like to sell. Facebook, it appears, might start looking for external psychological and legal counselling, and I might have third parties interested in targeting that circumstance.

<comment><USER24> "Hi, it looks like youre trying to type an internal memo and the language youre using suggest depression, angst and anxiety! how can i help" \--Facebooky

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, a vice president at Facebook

 _~sigh~_

"Boz" is the only person I regret introducing to programming. (I convinced him to attend the 4-H project where I taught BASIC)

<comment><USER26> Do you still teach? I ask because when I obtained my C.S. degree, the curriculum required that students take a course that focused on ethics, entitled: _Computing, Society, & Professionalism_ [1.]. I think this would be hard to squeeze into a BASIC course, but discussing the implications of use/abuse of technology is valuable.

[1.] [https://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/teaching/4001/fal...](https://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/teaching/4001/fall2017/index.html)

<comment><USER27> Not many students see their ethics course as anything more than a writing credit, with some resentment.

<comment><USER26> I agree. It feels forced. But exposure is important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow, as according to this leadership was fully aware that collecting cell phone contact data is unethical, but they did it anyway because the end justifies the means. Scary stuff. I always thought it's awesome to work there, with free food and games and stuff but I guess it all comes with a cost. Facebook internally seems like a pretty unhealthy community.

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems like this is a bit of a dupe, so I'll repeat my initial comment:

There are many, including those inside Facebook, that are actively asking for more federal regulations. I don't do regulation discussions. Brings out too much stupid.

But I will say that this is a survival ploy. If you get regulated, you are now approved by the government. You're good to go, able to operate freely in society. You just have to abide by whatever the regulations are.

Facebook may have a business model that just doesn't work in a society that values privacy, anonymity, and small diverse groups of people with widely- varying mores. This seems to be the lesson Facebook itself is learning now about, well, Facebook. What do we do then? It's not like anybody at Facebook is going to bring that up. They've got a ton of money. What do we do if the existence of Facebook itself is unacceptable?

<comment><USER30> > If you get regulated, you are now approved by the government.

Not necessarily. I suppose it would be possible to regulate it into nonexistence, by undermining the privacy-invading business model. You could probably get at least part-way there by requiring that profile-based targeted advertising and data collection be explicitly opt-in with informed consent. IIRC, the GDPR has a lot of good stuff about how consent must be obtained. Further regulations could mandate that services and incentives cannot be provided conditionally based on tracking or accepting profile-based targeted advertising, etc.

If the above regulation takes effect, much of the business value of profile data evaporates. Facebook would only be left with eyeballs to shove non- targeted ads in front of, and maybe generalized market research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "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."

If you justify "questionable contact importing practices" then you aren't putting up a straw man. You are talking honestly about your "questionable" decisions and trying to defend them. Thus you should expect outrage from those who realize you've lied to the public using "subtle language" in order to grow at any costs.

In other words, the self-awareness to call out the "subtle language" and "questionable practices" implies that the company pursued those growth strategies despite CLEARLY knowing they were sketchy. This is extremely damning but those in power will try to deflect the problem as if someone leaking it is the issue.

I never would have worked at Facebook before due to their questionable policies. This incident reinforces that and shows that the problems come from the top. Now we'll watch debate there get muzzled in the interest of staying out of the news and growing at all costs. Perhaps a success for shareholders, but a failure for rank and file employees with morals.

<comment><USER32> _The work we will likely have to do in China some day_

Social media disruption disintegrated Libyan society to the point it could no longer function. The Arab Spring was a test firing of a psychological nuke. We should all be concerned that Facebook is planning to attack China, because they will defend themselves.

<comment><USER33> I didn't interpret that as Facebook planning to _attack_ China. To me, it sounded like the work they'd have to do to _cooperate_ with the Chinese system of censorship and surveillance in order to get their product accepted there. (E.g., build a version of PRISM[1] for the Chinese government, just as they did for the NSA.)

This kind of collaboration with an authoritarian regime is something that Facebook employees who value freedom might find to be distasteful, but if it furthers the company's lofty goal of "connecting everyone in the world", then, hey, it can be justified.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_\(surveillance_program\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm kind of amazed over the attention FB is receiving over the data leak and their general attitude over privacy. They have been incredibly clear that they don't value privacy at all, Zuck even said so years ago.

\- They have a huge spam-bot problem that they willfully ignore; \- use aggressive email and notification technique to re-engage users; \- stone-wall traditional publishers to accommodate their distribution techniques \- sell and trade personal user information for advertising \- Have most security and privacy settings buried under submenus, almost intentionally built to ignore \- Have a history of shady apps and games on their systems with questionable value to the user \- Have a culture of growth at all costs, without regard to the substance of that growth.

All of the above was known for years, has nothing to do with the recent breach or 2016's election. I just can't understand why this is a surprise or why we should trust a word FB says.

<comment><USER32> _Zuck even said so years ago._

Zuck also got a free pass on his "young people are smarter" comments. I hope the rampant ageism catches up with FB too.

<comment><USER34> Exactly. Sure, he put out a press release and some PR moves "expressing regret" of his "word choice", but does he really regret or care? Impossible to tell when he is sincere, impossible to trust him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cue Facebook with the fake victim complex.

I respect their level of propaganda skill how they are trying to shape the narrative into that they have been victimized, are fully justified and are not actually at fault.

What impresses me most is how homogenously fanatically unified their culture is.

It's said a cult is that which can only survive by cutting itself off from reality.

What scares me is that people who are so fanatical about their mission and Corp are responsible for so much real human outcomes... The best lack all conviction the worst are full of passionate intensity.

</comment><comment><USER36> Facebook employees are perfectly suitable to work in spy organisations, such as in the NSA. They seem to all agree on "punish the leaker" attitude, instead of self reforms!

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, that was unfortunate for Facebook. Zuck was trying to mitigate the PR disaster that Cambridge Analytica has produced last week, telling that _mistakes_ were made. Now there is another whistleblower who basically destroys all credibility of anything Facebook will have to say in the upcoming weeks. It appears that Zuck's lieutenants have a _distinct understanding_ of what's good for them and what they think of what's good for others. Either the head does not know what the hands are doing, or they all are lying and all that is common practice in the entire user data fencing industry.

</comment><comment><USER37> The tone of the responses are objectively creepy. Almost cultish. It makes you wonder if FB has become known as an amazing place to work because their HR org had become so good at selling the FB culture to anyone who joins to keep them in line.

Now that mirage has a few cracks in it and executives are freaking out.

Reminds me of Westworld.

<comment><USER38> You can see the same approach at Google. Leaks are characterized as betrayal of the Google family/social group. The goal of this seems to be to ideally prevent people from leaking things they can't be fired for leaking.

You leak of trade secret, you can be fired. But if you talk about work practices, that's a legally protected right that these companies don't want you to talk about. If they can make people who do feel ostracized and like they're betraying their family, maybe they'll reconsider sharing what goes on behind the curtain.

<comment><USER7> Other employees doesn't like leakers because they're selfish and immature. The leaker gets to continue to work their cushy software job while forcing PR people to work overtime. "Leaks" like this don't help anyone besides journalists anyways. The most obvious example is the Jame Damore diversity "manifesto." I can't conceive of how that leak was supposed to accomplish anything but generate controversy.

<comment><USER39> > while forcing PR people to work overtime

As opposed to doing what else? Emptying bins?

They are employed to spin news for the benefit of the corporation. They have risk assessments and plans-of-action for the most likely eventualties. Their _job_ is to do exactly what they've been doing in response to this leak.

<comment><USER7> A janitor is employed to clean. That doesn't mean you should throw your garbage on the floor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Nice to see that instead of trying to question why the memo was leaked, some are blaming the leaker

<comment><USER41> Same counts for Snowden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This memo is being totally overblown.

It's like a telephone company admitting their services will be used to call in bomb threats, coordinate terrorist attacks, conduct verbal abuse, but that they should stay steadfast in their mission to provide communication to people for the greater good that comes of it.

It's a little tacky, but past the last thing on a long list of wrongs Facebook has committed for so many words to be shed over.

<comment><USER15> I keep hearing that analogy but it doesn't really hold water. Telephone companies don't coerce you into becoming an addict, manipulating their UIs so that you subconsciously associate their platforms with the words "friend" and "like", shove controversy and irrelevant comments from strangers into your feed so that you get annoyed and feel like you're missing out when you clearly stated that you want a chronological ordering of what your close friends and family posted, and then innocently call it "engagement" or "connecting people". So no, it's not like a telephone company.

<comment><USER42> You've twisted my words.

I'm not saying they're like a phone company, I'm saying this would be the equivalent of a phone company saying what I said.

There's a very clear difference.

I'm also not saying Facebook is a social good here, but those wrongs, valid or not, are tangential to the memo.

<comment><USER43> >I feel you've intentionally twisted my words.

I don't. Make comparisons, own them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > "How fucking terrible that some irresponsible jerk decided he or she had > some god complex that jeopardizes our inner culture and something that makes > Facebook great?"

This sounds like the perfect storm in the perfect bozo culture, like the one perfectly described in Dan Lyon's "Disrupted". If you haven't read that book, I can't recommend it enough for understanding the insanity of tech startups.

</comment><comment><USER45> Seeing the comments of some of these Facebook employees and the caps for "integirty" checks reminds me of flavor of the internal discussions at Booz Allen Hamilton after Edward Snowden leaked and was promptly fired from the company.

If you've worked somewhere, and given them sweat and blood for years, whether it's Facebook or the NSA, it's impossible to not feel defensive and betrayed when someone challenges the very ground you've been building your career on. Regardless of whether the challenger is right in the end.

Having said that, at least the government is honest about its secrecy and opaqueness, sounds like Facebook has a bit of a cult going on.

</comment><comment><USER46> Facebook employees outraged their privacy was violated

</comment><comment><USER47> > Several employees suggested Facebook attempt to screen employees for a high > degree of "integrity" during the hiring process.

Is this a euphemism for "fidelity", or do they really, genuinely mean "integrity"? In my mind "integrity" implies doing the right thing if it's not to the immediate benefit of those close to you, but that could very well involve whistleblowing or leaking information for the benefit of the greater good, which doesn't seem to be in line with what they want. Seems to me that they really mean they just want people who'd stay steadfastly loyal to themselves?

</comment><comment><USER48> > "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."_

In China? Really?

> Another theory floated by multiple employees is that Facebook has been > targeted by spies or state-level actors hoping to embarrass the company.

Still want to work in China?

</comment><comment><USER49> > Bosworth distanced himself from the memo, saying in a Twitter post that he > hadn't agreed with those words even when he wrote them.

What's most ironic about Bosworth's words and his response (other than well, it's impacting company PR now), is that FB folks expected their internal memos to stay private while knowingly allowing exfiltration of personal data for millions of their users.

The hubris here is ridiculous. If you support public-everything don't sound shocked when your internal stuff is also exposed.

</comment><comment><USER50> >"That conversation is now gone," Bosworth continued. "And I won't be the one to bring it back for fear it will be misunderstood by a broader population that doesn't have full context on who we are and how we work."

So you're saying _your users_ aren't _supposed_ to understand who you are and how you work?

Well, that's why I keep a Facebook profile: I want a public persona to have his data collected.

</comment><comment><USER51> I love the internal attitude here. Everyone is (at least portrayed) to be assuming that the leakers were being "evil". One think I've been taught is to assume everyone's intentions are the best they could be (aside from the reality of what they are), and I always try to put this into practice. It seems like the attitude is "everyone-is-out-to-get-me".

</comment><comment><USER52> i admit i do not know the whole story, however bosworth's memo sounds very cultish:

> That conversation is now gone. And I won't be the one to bring it back for > fear it will be misunderstood by a broader population that doesn't have full > context on who we are and how we work.

> This is the very real cost of leaks. We had a sensitive topic that we could > engage on openly and explore even bad ideas, even if just to eliminate them. > If we have to live in fear that even our bad ideas will be exposed then we > won't explore them or understand them as such, we won't clearly label them > as such, we run a much greater risk of stumbling on them later. > Conversations go underground or don't happen at all. And not only are we > worse off for it, so are the people who use our products.

this sets facebook as the chosen ones or saviors of the people. and of course the commoners dont understand and cannot be privy to these esoteric methods.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm always shocked by how easily people fall into cults and groupthink. I guess our biology is just tuned for it.

</comment><comment><USER54> > "Leakers, please resign instead of sabotaging the company,"

So are the employees upset about the "growth at all costs" mentality, or upset that it was laid bare?

<comment><USER55> Upset that their options are worth less than before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There are many, including those inside Facebook, that are actively asking for more federal regulations.

I don't do regulation discussions. Brings out too much stupid.

But I will say that this is a survival ploy. If you get regulated, you are now approved by the government. You're good to go, able to operate freely in society. You just have to abide by whatever the regulations are.

Facebook may have a business model that just doesn't work in a society that values privacy, anonymity, and small diverse groups of people with widely- varying mores. This seems to be the lesson Facebook itself is learning now about, well, Facebook. What do we do then? It's not like anybody at Facebook is going to bring that up. They've got a ton of money. What do we do if the existence of Facebook itself is unacceptable?

</comment><comment><USER56> Funny, the only people who acted with any integrity here are the leakers, it seems like FB _does_ have a hiring problem though when it comes to integrity, only not the one they think they have.

FB sharing user data behind their backs -> good, FB internal data shared with the world -> bad. The cognitive dissonance is strong enough to fracture skulls.

The way the guy tries to whitewash his previous article by stating it was a strawman of his own making and he didn't feel good about it when he wrote it... sucks to be him I guess, he probably never thought he would have to defend those words. Nice to see someone at FB openly admitting to FB being unethical.

</comment><comment><USER57> Nice to know that conspiracy theories run wild INSIDE Facebook as well as among users.

Maybe that's why they're so bad about controlling obviously bad information.

It couldn't possibly be because people _disagreed_ with that ethos. No. It's the Mongolians.

</comment><comment><USER58> Wait, I don't have integrity if I stand up against something, anonymously or not, I believe is wrong? The employees calling for the hiring of people with "integrity" have been drinking the Kool-aid.

Bosworth can say what he wants but he shouldn't feel broken-hearted because what he said leaked, he should feel broken-hearted for what he said.

Leaking doesn't have to silence conversation unless Facebook wants it to.

</comment><comment><USER59> "We recognize that connecting people isn't enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together,"

These two sentences in conjunction imply that facebook has a strategic goal to specifically _manipulate_ rather than _facilitate_ human relationships...

What sort of narcissistic pride is necessary for one to believe that one has the right or imperative to manipulate societal interactions as a whole for profit?

</comment><comment><USER60> Looking at the comments quoted by the Verge, it seems like internal Facebook commenters are no better than Fb commenters below news stories:

> _Another theory floated by multiple employees is that Facebook has been > targeted by spies or state-level actors hoping to embarrass the company. > "Keep in mind that leakers could be intentionally placed bad actors, not > just employees making a one-off bad decision," one wrote. "Thinking > adversarially, if I wanted info from Facebook, the easiest path would be to > get people hired into low-level employee or contract roles." Another wrote: > "Imagine that some percentage of leakers are spies for governments. A call > to morals or problems of performance would be irrelevant in this case, > because dissolution is the intent of those actors. If that's our threat — > and maybe it is, given the current political situation? — then is it even > possible to build a system that defaults to open, but that is able to resist > these bad actors (or do we need to redesign the system?)_

Also, the blind loyalty is really disturbing

</comment><comment><USER61> Provocative ideas are critical to discovering truths that consensus won't find.

The reason Facebook (and many successful tech companies) is successful is because they relentlessly experiment and iterate, killing off ideas that don't gain traction while embracing those that do. Often times the ideas that do get traction are unexpected, but revealed because of a culture that allows any idea to be thrown into the dialogue.

If you can't say something provocative without fear of it later coming back to haunt you, folks will be less likely to raise uncomfortable, or non-consensus, ideas. This will lead to less innovation. It's also okay if it's wrong. And if it is wrong, folks should be willing to push back. That's how a high- functioning, ideas driven organizations thrives.

<comment><USER62> Theranos have innovated themselves to oblivion. We must learn that there's a definite line between innovating and blatantly generating noise for the sake of new noise (also supported by inverstors).

<comment><USER61> Societal utility is a weighted average. Any worthwhile process will have positive and negative outcomes. Those that endure will provide greater upside than downside.

I believe that a process where any idea is given consideration is preferable to one in which ideas are suppressed. We need all the "bad" ideas to discover the "good" ones.

<comment><USER62> A process where any idea is always given consideration is naturally highly vulnerable to sybil attacks.

For example, there's a reason why once upon a time we had agreed (as a society) to never accept any new potents for perpetual motion machines - because the only ideas that were left are the bad ones, and we can prove it.

Now if there comes a time in history when the laws of physics suddenly discover something new - we may re-approach our decision. But I don't think many educated people believe it's going to happen anytime soon.

<comment><USER61> That's the point though - we only know that perpetual motion machines are not yet possible because nearly every testable idea we've come up yields nothing. Our system is better for allowing, and dismissing, bad ideas than never allowing them at all.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure where you're going with this. Facebook allowed these terrible ideas to proliferate which is why we have lost our privacy and rights to "subtle language" and "questionable policies." Now people are acting like the choice is between allowing these ideas or not allowing them.

In reality, its much more nuanced. It turns out a lot of people think the ideas are horrible, offensive, and immoral. Thus Facebook can continue to embrace these ideas and lose employees and public respect, or they can not embrace these ideas and hopefully recover some reputation. It isn't about "disallowing" these ideas. Its about not building a business around screwing people over if you don't want to be known for screwing people over. Something can be allowed without memos from top ranking managers dictating that this is the way the business runs (and will run in the future in China)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> (x-posted from the other submission marked dupe)

It's fun imagining this attitude applied to the Space Race.

>So we go to space.

>That can be bad if they say accidents happen. Maybe three of our guys die on the launchpad. Maybe a spacecraft is lost on recovery.

>And we still go to space.

>The ugly truth is that we believe in going to space so deeply that anything that allows us to go to space more is de facto good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.

>That's why all the work we do in space-going is justified. All the pure oxygen environments. All the hatch designs that can only be opened from the outside. All the ad hoc procedures and cheap wiring. The work we will likely have to do on the Moon some day. All of it.

<comment><USER64> The bad part of the space race is ICBMs, not losing a few astronauts.

<comment><USER65> >The bad part of the space race is ICBMs

my understanding of history is that space race was good part of ICBMs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> It's fun imagining this attitude applied to the Space Race.

>So we go to space.

>That can be bad if they say accidents happen. Maybe three of our guys die on the launchpad. Maybe a spacecraft is lost on recovery.

>And we still go to space.

>The ugly truth is that we believe in going to space so deeply that anything that allows us to go to space more is _de facto_ good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.

>That's why all the work we do in space-going is justified. All the pure oxygen environments. All the hatch designs that can only be opened from the outside. All the ad hoc procedures and cheap wiring. The work we will likely have to do on the Moon some day. All of it.

<comment><USER66> For what it's worth, the space race was something most people accepted as something worth doing, the astronauts knew every operational detail of their spacecrafts and volunteered, and a small number of people were affected.

By contrast, not everyone accepts the FB mission as bluntly stated, few except a fraction of technical people understand what FB is doing and how it works and are capable of informed consent, and 2B people are affected.

The Moon isn't populated, China is and their people might have an opinion about being colonized by FB industrialists, either for or against.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Consider this, Facebook employees: if your mission _truly_ were to connect everyone in the world, you could do that without exploiting them.

You could become a premier Mastodon node in a federated social network and succeed against your peers with a better user experience, features, mobile apps, etc.

Or, you could continue on your path to centralized hegemony, which will only ultimately end in failure as the world migrates to a federated social media model.

Quit now while you're ahead. You've made a lot of money already, go make some more working for a company that doesn't exploit people.

If only one talented engineer takes this advice to heart, the world will be a better place.

</comment><comment><USER68> The irony and hypocrisy in this are stunning.

</comment><comment><USER69> It is a bit disconcerting to hear FB employees say that the failure of integrity was to leak an internal discussion, not complacency around dubious business practices.

</comment><comment> oh-kumudo The memo itself reads as if a manifesto of a cult, where it claims growth is simply GOOD, even worth sacrifice of others' lives. That makes me a little uncomfortable.

Also it feels so weak, that the author himself seems running into some existential crisis himself that 'questionable' practices such as he mentioned, begins to rock his 'faith', that he has to declare the opposite, loudly, confidently, to dispense his inner guilt.

</comment><comment><USER70> There isn't a single source for the material besides the original 2016 memo?

It's funny that the article should mention 'Another theory floated by multiple employees is that Facebook has been targeted by spies or state-level actors hoping to embarrass the company.' because until proven otherwise, the whole article is just one Comcast subsidiary's hearsay about another company.

</comment><comment><USER71> Facebook employees upset that internal information they thought was private has been leaked. The lack of self awarness is amazing. No sympathy.

</comment><comment><USER72> Great section in the book Chaos Monkeys about the 'Sec', basically an internal KGB that monitors all employees actions and access

</comment><comment><USER73> I just love how (supposedly) quoted FB employees use word "integrity" when they actually mean "spineless". Hypocrites.

<comment><USER74> The leaker is spineless. The post was posted many months ago. They leaked it now, during one of the biggest shit storm in fbs history. They did it for some benefits, not because they give a shit. If they did, they would have leaked it when it was posted.

<comment><USER73> Basically anything that ever happened in the world can be explained that it had been done for "some benefits" or "for hype" etc. Personally I do not consider "for PR" an important argument unless there is any factual evidence for it. Otherwise we could dismiss literally anything with such explanation. And, no, obviously leaker is not spineless by any possible definition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Let me know when everyone is ready to get down to brass tacks... and discuss the CIA, NSA, InQTel, and tech companies. There is something much more widespread and insidious in tech than just Facebook. Facebook is one of many created surveillance orgs. These issues are systemic, and I mean so much more than just the fucked up SV advertising model.

</comment><comment><USER76> Full memo is here:

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top- face...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top-facebook- executive-defended-data#mod-subbuzz-text-7)

As other commenters have said, it seems to me that this is being totally overblown due to all the recent CA drama.

</comment><comment><USER77> There teaches a point in size with companies like that (open to its own employees, with candid-ish company-wide meetings every week or whatever), past which the chances of leaking get a lot higher. E.g. you see a lot more leaks coming out of Google now that it's huge.

It's unclear how to reconcile open culture and leaks.

</comment><comment><USER78> > Another theory floated by multiple employees is that Facebook has been > targeted by spies or state-level actors hoping to embarrass the company. > "Keep in mind that leakers could be intentionally placed bad actors, not > just employees making a one-off bad decision," one wrote.

Who could they be? Democrats or Chinese?

</comment><comment><USER79> Pretty much anything that has a significant impact is going to have a dark side.

e.g. Electricity has improved living standards drastically, but occasionally it electrocutes someone.

That doesn't strike me as a reason to avoid electricity. I suspect that is the thought the author was trying to convey...poorly.

</comment><comment><USER80> [https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/30/17179100/facebook-memo- le...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/30/17179100/facebook-memo-leaks-boz- andrew-bosworth)

</comment><comment><USER81> This is like /dev/null for naive employees right? I'm sure Zuck views most of his employees in the same light as people who trust him, and rightly so. Their opinions are only relevant to making them feel better about themselves.

</comment><comment><USER82> Andrew Bosworth lists himself as a "Co-Inventer of News Feed, Messenger, Groups" on his Twitter bio without any sense of irony or self-awareness.

His software patents are about as innovative as a peanut-butter jelly sandwich.

</comment><comment><USER83> The scariest part is un-adult emotional environment, where employees (people hired at-will to work) refer to other employees as "brothers and sisters".

This looks more like _Lord of the Flies_ setup than like for-profit company workforce that sells 8 hours of its time in return for paycheck, with some reasonable socializing at work.

This seems to be the trend, and is by no means limited to Facebook. Providing socializing benefits (food, playground, etc.) and requiring emotional committment at work is far more sinister than it appears.

While keeping employees emotionally arrested at 12-year-old stage may extract extra sweat, the overall downside for the society is abysmal.

</comment><comment><USER84> If they could have hired for integrity this situation would have been avoided, just not in the way that the Facebook employees calling for "integrity" imagine.

</comment><comment><USER85> If anything, now FB won't even be able to say that "it was all Zuck's fault, Zuck's the bad one". No, they are rotten to the core.

</comment><comment><USER86> > 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.

What is he talking about here? Work in China?

<comment><USER87> I'm assuming he is referring to actually building up Facebook in China. I don't think they have any major presence there. But its a massive market so I'm assuming its on their target list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Hmm didn't know integrity meant making sure not to share morally compromising behavior of the company with the public.

</comment><comment><USER89> I like that some of these employee's think they work for a company that is not evil.

</comment><comment><USER90> many of these comments are plain retaliation, and the leadership has to deal with it; the working environment has become toxic already

</comment><comment><USER67> Zuck::Gates :::: Boz::Ballmer ?

</comment><comment><USER32> _"This is so disappointing, wonder if there is a way to hire for integrity. We are probably focusing on the intelligence part and getting smart people here who lack a moral compass and loyalty."_

The sheer lack of self-awareness in that statement.

<comment><USER91> It's breathtaking isn't it? Facebook sells personal information to advertisers. And this employee worries there might be 'smart people who lack a moral compass' working there? It would be funny if it wasn't also terrifying that Facebook employees believe the company is a force for good in the world. Working for Facebook is about as moral as working for Big Tobacco: there's plenty of evidence the product is actively harmful.

<comment><USER92> Where can I purchase some Facebook personal information? I'd love to use it for some custom audiences on my ads. /s

As far as I'm aware, Facebook has _never_ sold personal information to advertisers[0], because that would be giving away its crown jewels. It might leak it, but doesn't hand it out for sale.

EDIT: Downvoters, please point out where I'm wrong. It looks bad for the community to suppress factual statements.

0\. [https://www.facebook.com/help/152637448140583](https://www.facebook.com/help/152637448140583)

<comment><USER93> I think he means _indirectly sell_ , which is kinda true. By letting the CA scandal happen, they seriously sold a lot of data. Not what they really wanted to do, but their reckless policies and vague morality standard caused that.

Also, nothing changes the fact that Facebook is clearly harmful to the society in important ways, according to various researches. And they do not care about this fundamental issue, they just want more users and more profit.

<comment><USER92> > By letting the CA scandal happen, they seriously sold a lot of data.

The CA scandal did not involve any sale between CA and Facebook. CA sold insights gleaned from data pulled from Facebook's public and free-of-charge Graph API.

> Also, nothing changes the fact that Facebook is clearly harmful to the > society in important ways, according to various researches.

I'm not sure how that's relevant here. Arguing that Facebook is a bad company does not make misinformation more correct.

<comment><USER91> It's relevant because we're discussing a Facebook employee that wants to screen hires for integrity. Given widely known scientific evidence that FB causes anxiety and lowers self-esteem, which is a direct consequence of its core business model: integrity is already in question when you accept the interview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> The leaker simply "connected" Facebook to the outside world.

<comment><USER68> Here the employees thought they were just sharing among "friends" and someone went and used their information for other purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Emily Waite: "Mark Zuckerberg has never really understood privacy. From Facebook's earliest days, he figured people [incl. Boz?] would eventually grow comfortable _sharing everything with everyone_ -indeed, his business depended on it."

Source:

[https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-a-history-of-mark- zucke...](https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-a-history-of-mark-zuckerberg- apologizing/)

"Whether Boz believed his own words-then or now-matters less than the memo's seeming confirmation of a growing hunch among users: that tech companies like Facebook care less about the people who use their products than they do about growth as a means to fulfill their rosy-lensed ambitions.

...

Instead, it lays bare the naivete Facebook has maintained about its product."

[Poll: What do you think. Do the employees comments that have been "shared with everyone" suggest naivete?]

Source:

[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/why-the-leaked- faceb...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/why-the-leaked-facebook- memo-is-so-dangerous-for-zuckerberg)

</comment><comment><USER96> I don't like Facebook either, but I actually very much _like_ the part where they want to let people talk knowing fully well that what gets said would range from Nobel Peace prize worthy, to undesired, to wanting to burn the whole universe down.

Can you imagine Bic worrying like this about what someone might write using their pens?

Do you imagine the restaurant worker who served breakfast to the 9/11 hijackers having second thoughts about serving food?

Answer to Facebook's woes is to return to Free Speech with compliance with law enforcement if laws are broken. No proactive banning of speech with the fear that it might be illegal. Let the legal process enforce laws, Facebook should comply with lawful orders to take down content, but not before. Facebook should embrace bubbles. Let people chose the bubbles they live in and let advertisers choose bubbles that they advertise in. If a advertiser doesn't want to advertise in "self-defense" bubble, then any content tagged/identified/categorized as "self-defense" doesn't get ads from that advertiser. Make people explicitly aware that there are bubbles out there that they can choose to be part of, or choose to be excluded from, or choose to peek inside for just a bit. Make default no-login/under-age view safe i.e. at least 1k logged-in views where at least 20 people did not raise "inappropriate content" flag.

Free Speech, embrace bubbles, comply with law enforcement and that should make Facebook relevant again.

</comment><comment><USER95> "Facebook has tapped one of its most veteran execs to lead all of its consumer hardware efforts, including the mysterious Building 8 division responsible for its forthcoming video chat device.

 _Andrew "Boz" Bosworth_ will oversee Building 8 and Oculus, Facebook's virtual reality arm, Business Insider has learned. ...

The device, codenamed Aloha, will feature a large touchscreen along with a camera and speakers and be capable of recognizing peoples' faces when they step into view, three people with knowledge of the device said.

...

One hurdle Building 8 has faced in its efforts to build its first device is _consumer mistrust of Facebook protecting user privacy_ , according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The company conducted marketing studies for project Aloha and _received overwhelming concern_ that Facebook would use the device to spy on users, according to one person with knowledge of the matter.

 _To assuage concerns about privacy_ , Facebook has considered creative ways to market Aloha, including _pitching it as a device for letting the elderly easily communicate with their families_. Building 8 _employees_ have also considered creating _new brand names beside Facebook_ to sell their gadgets under."

Source:

[https://www.businessinsider.in/Facebook-is-unifying-its- hard...](https://www.businessinsider.in/Facebook-is-unifying-its-hardware- efforts-under-a-veteran-exec-and-readying-an-Aloha-video-chat- device/articleshow/60200313.cms)

"Regina Dugan, the head of Facebook's secretive hardware lab called Building 8, is leaving the company _after just 18 months_.

It's unclear who will take over Dugan's role leading Building 8 on a day-to- day basis. Facebook recently promoted Andrew "Boz" Bosworth to run all of the company's hardware projects, but that also includes Oculus hardware, not just Building 8.

"There is a tidal shift going on in Silicon Valley, and those of us in this industry have _greater responsibilities_ than ever before," Dugan said in a statement provided by a company spokesperson. "The timing feels right to step away and be purposeful about what's next, thoughtful about new ways to contribute in times of disruption."

At Facebook, Dugan oversaw a number of hardware efforts, _none of which have actually launched_ , including a video chat device and a smart [microphone and] speaker, according to Business Insider."

Source:

[https://www.recode.net/2017/10/17/16488654/regina-dugan- face...](https://www.recode.net/2017/10/17/16488654/regina-dugan-facebook- hardware-lab-exit-building-8)

[ What did she mean by "greater responsibilities"? Whats the "tidal shift"? ]

"The memo is classic Boz because _it speaks to the majority of Facebook employee views_ but it's also polarizing. Tonally he doesn't mince words. This is clearly a post meant to rally the troops."

There is no record of Zuckerberg's response to the memo. However, a year later in August 2017, Bosworth was tapped to run the company's consumer hardware efforts."

"The natural state of the world is not connected," Bosworth wrote. "It is not unified. It is fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products. _The best products don 't win._ The ones everyone use win."

Source:

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top- face...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top-facebook- executive-defended-data)

That last statement suggests everyone is _not_ using the best products.

It suggests the senior management at Facebook are well aware that their product is not the best.

As a user, I want the best products.FN1

Is there any reason I shouldnt?

Why should I settle?

There are many ways to communicate over the _internet_ (cf. www), peer-to-peer being the original and one of the most versatile, IMO.

Using a single billions-page _public website_ to communicate over the internet is one possible way, it has proven very popular, but if I understand the Bosworth statement correctly, it is not necessarily the best way.

Being "fragmented" (e.g. decentralized) may be a desirable characteristic for users communication if one of the goals is to avoid being an easy target for advertisers looking for massive pools of consumers all gathered in one place, which appears to be the definition of the Facebook "product".

FN1. Using the word "product" to describe what Facebook offers to the user is probably misleading. FB is only a "product" for advertisers. Users pay nothing and recieve nothing. They merely use a single website belonging to a Harvard computer science drop-out in order to "stay in touch". The website is designed to exploit that use for the purpose of selling advertising.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Bosworth's reaction:"for fear it will be misunderstood by a broader population that doesn't have full context on who we are and how we work"

2\. Wrote another: "How fucking terrible that some irresponsible jerk decided he or she had some god complex that jeopardizes our inner culture and something that makes Facebook great?"

3\. Back to Bosworth: "The post was of no particular consequence in and of itself, it was the comments that were _impressive_." (italics mine)

4\. And lastly: " If we have to live in fear that even our bad ideas will be exposed then we won't explore them or understand them as such, we won't clearly label them as such, we run a much greater risk of stumbling on them later. Conversations go underground or don't happen at all. And not only are we worse off for it, _so are the people who use our products_." (italics mine)

In other words: 1\. we know better than you 2\. the ends do justify the means (contrary to MZ's opinion) 3\. don't mind the contents, just notice how smart the employees are 4\. let us tell you what is best for you

<comment><USER97> The comments quoted are pretty shill-ish... but I found myself weirdly sympathetic to Bosworth's concern about leaks. If corporations are people, than their internal communications are like thoughts floating around before a decision is made. If you're properly distributing decision making in a company, individual sections are going to come up with ideas that are embarrassing in the big picture! Would you want your stray thoughts picked apart in the press?

BUUUUUUT (a) Bosworth is at the top of his org, so calling his own post a "not quite staw man" is a ridiculous cop-out. Like it doesn't have 1000x the weight of the comments below. And (b) The reason people are being forced to interrogate Facebook's "character" through internal docs is because a lack of candor has made that character impossible to judge based on public statements and actions. You did it to yourself, man!

<comment><USER98> > If corporations are people ...

But they're not, of course. Sure, I don't want my internal thoughts floating around, but I'm not a) several thousand people, and b) the personification of those several thousand people attempting to work out the best way of extracting other people's sub-conscious & internal motivations and desires, and sell them to marketers ... so my perspective is skewed.

The rest of the excuses in TFA seem very 'some people say...' or 'it's been said that...' style posturing, which may be an interesting academic exercise, but as you say it feels a bit of a cop-out to use that as a post- rationalisation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Facebook's level of engineering, technology and data seem close to the point of implementing a transformative virtual reality social experience that would be indistinguishable from reality.

Imagine if Facebook invented a way to simulate reality, then the user (the one superuser) would write the past in the future. Then go i to the simulation, hide himself and forget where he is.

Only the powerful, intergalactic intensity of music and lyrics along with the obvious absurdist quality of news in reality finally leads the user to realize he is the superuser.

He created this world but She created him. His bots (abstractions) run this world and with Her, they can turn the simulation into a perfect Utopia.

Just a thought I had after seeing Ready Player One yesterday. This idea that the future creates the past, and then the past creates the future is another indication that Free Will is an illusion.

The best aspect of all of this; if it were all some Facebook-Total Recall experience, then all the pain, confusion and embarassment would evaporate.

</comment><comment><USER100> I'm opening a can of worms by saying what I'm about to say but here goes nothing: Why are people criticizing individual companies for "growing at all cost"? Every company was once a start-up fighting to survive, every large company was once medium size and had to fight with the Google, Amazon of their days. It is not the Nash equilibrium to NOT try growing at all cost. If they don't, they'll lose. So at what point should a company stop trying to grow at all cost? Is it when they've won all battles, like Google? So why are we looking into the past to criticize Facebook, Uber, and potentially many more startups that are "growing at all cost"? Of course, the definition of "all cost" shouldn't be taken too literally.

<comment><USER101> Your argument as I understand it is "Hey if I/companies don't do what's needed to survive, someone else will do it anyways, and I/companies lose". Just because some other group is willing to do unethical things (i.e. at all costs) doesn't make it ok for your company / you to do those things.

People generally cheat and do unethical things to "win" or "not lose". The reward doesn't make it any more ok.

Also, I can't believe I'm explaining this.

The memo was pretty literal - "someone might die", "things we have to do in China". Sounds like they truly meant "all cost".

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> Those pesky Russians...that Putin sure has a lot of time on his hands /s

<comment><USER103> This would be the easy way out of admitting they did something wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> > 'How fucking terrible that some irresponsible jerk decided he or she had > some god complex that jeopardizes our inner culture and something that makes > Facebook great?'

I wonder if some Facebook employees understand how folks in the IC feel about Snowden or Manning now …</comment>


Water Conflict Chronology - <AUTHOR> http://www.worldwater.org/conflict/map/ <comment><USER2> Where there is a conflict, it's likely to also affect water supply sooner or later.</comment>


Myths and Facts of the Unity Game Engine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.theknightsofunity.com/myths-and-facts-of-unity-game-engine/ <comment><USER2> This really doesn't tell me anything about Unity, especially in respect to other solutions.

 _\- Unity is only for games_

Who said they were? You can find lots of examples of game engines being used for other applications, such as in Archviz, non-game simulation areas, interactive art, etc.

 _\- You can only do small games with Unity_

Again, who said this? If an engine is free and well supported you might find a lot of smaller games on it, but that's not indicative of the engine as a whole. If you're planning on making a large game, the question you'd be asking is not whether you can make a larger game in Unity, but whether it's appropriate for your larger game in particular.

 _\- Unity is worse than Unreal Engine_

Now that's a opinion if I've ever heard of one. Also, you don't need to use C++ to use Unreal. UE4 natively supports Blueprint scripting out of the box (I wouldn't recommend making a game completely in a visual programming language to begin with, anyway). Support for interacting with Unreal through other languages (JavaScript, Nim, etc.) has shown significant progress in the community.

 _\- You don't need programming knowledge to use Unity_

Many of the popular free engines nowadays have some form of visual programming feature. You'd be severely hurting yourself trying to accomplish a bigger problem using visual languages only, however.

 _\- All Unity games looks the same_

Some gamers enormously conflate a game's art with its engine, which is completely wrong. Bad art will look bad in any environment - any developer would know that.

 _\- Unity has a lot of bugs_

That's an incredibly vague statement that you can apply to just about any large software project, not even just game engines.</comment>


Emacs Rocks – Live at WebRebels (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Te_a-AGqM

<comment><USER2> Never found another editor that allows such easy key swapping [ for ( and ] for ).

<comment><USER3>
        cs](

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "God damn it, you're a programmer. Start using an editor you can damn well program." -Magnar Sveen

Isn't that the truth</comment>


A Woman Who Recorded 70k Tapes of American News - <AUTHOR> https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/11/14/recorder-the-marion-stokes-project <comment><USER2> I imagine this would be a treasure trove for an artist like Kenneth Goldsmith [0]. He has a moving book consisting of verbatim transcriptions of broadcast shows that were aired during several tragic events in US history [1]. Or another book (800 pages; yep, I read it through) capturing every word he spoke during a week [2].

When served well, verbatim transcriptions can make a fascinating or very emotional form of art. It's like this stuff, with all the stutterings, illogical sentences etc, is occasionally more directly "wired to my head", and thus closer to sensing the other person's "thinking", than a regular, careful literary composition. Then again, it is probably also easier to "overuse", I guess.

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith)

1: "Seven American Deaths and Disasters" \-- [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16071842-seven- american-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16071842-seven-american- deaths-and-disasters)

2: "Soliloquy" \-- [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/764257.Soliloquy?ac=1&fr...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/764257.Soliloquy?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=LlvKjMzwth&rank=1)

<comment><USER3> I've often wondered how people actually spoke in the 1800's. I'm sure there was a lot of cussing going on, but none of that made it into print.

It's like WW2 movies made in the 1950s. Actual GIs didn't talk like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We should be very protective of this archive, those that produce the news want it to be extremely compelling and convincing for the narrative they're writing, but instantly forgotten in time for the next crisis. The patterns that will emerge from this will be damning, and I suspect that efforts will be taken to ensure those patterns remain forgotten.

<comment><USER5> If by "efforts to ensure those patterns remain forgotten" you mean "do literally nothing because the public has the attention span of a goldfish" then yes.

The people buying and consuming the news are as guilty as the people making and selling it. The modern state of affairs exists by ambivalent forces present in any large population. It did not need to be engineered by any elite cabal, and it does not perpetuate merely because people are ignorant of what's in the archives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be great if the audio could be transcribed and the text ran through some ML models that could analyze attributes over time, like:

sentiment, new use of words (ideas & technologies), the varying viewpoints for the same story, correlations between when something was first announced to later outcomes, etc.

From this it would be possible to show in a compelling way how the hearts and minds of the masses are shaped by the media they consume.

<comment><USER7> > From this it would be possible to show in a compelling way how the hearts > and minds of the masses are shaped by the media they consume.

This is already well understood, and has been a conscious science since at least the turn of the century. See Edward Bernays, and Manufacturing Consent

<comment><USER8> _Well_ understood?

I wonder what the outcome would be of such analysis, I bet it would be interesting!

<comment><USER7> It's been validated countless times, basically the media, being large corporations themselves, favour power and are against certain ideas, which are never mentioned. It's evident all over. For example if you read FAIR you will see many examples of this.

<comment><USER8> Oh, I very much agree with you, but my point is, how do you measure such things? It's not like you can just get out a ruler.

An archive like this could offer incredible insight into the development of modern culture.

<comment><USER7> Chomsky actually did measure things by looking at how many times certain stories were reported across all major news agencies. But yes you can't "measure" it.

It would be a very valuable trove, I look forward to seeing the documentary about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The saddest part of the story:

 _" At the time Stokes began recording, television stations had been deleting archives for decades"_

For-profit corporations can not be trusted to archive history.

<comment><USER10> Government bureaucracy isn't noticably better. _Everyone_ was writing over their tape archives back then, including the BBC (see: Doctor Who lost episodes) and, uh, NASA (the moon landings).

<comment><USER9> Governments might not be perfect, but they have a far, far better track record than for-profit corporations. The Library of Congress is one prominent example of archiving excellence. Many other public libraries and archives offer other examples.

<comment><USER11> I used to work on the Digital Archives at the Library of Congress.

It's not that they're exceptionally better at it. In fact, the Library has warehouses of materials that they still haven't cataloged, let alone organized or (better) digitized. Their primary focus has been the "sexy" projects like spool recordings, wax cylinders, etc that make for cool stories and mitigate decay (aka destruction) over modern material.

The big problem is that of collection. While in theory, anything that is a registered copyright in the US should be on file, most people don't take the time to register, let alone send off a copy.

The Library & National Archives aren't "better" at it.. it's that it's their primary purpose so the fact that they do it puts it above most other groups.

<comment><USER12> What I find telling of the US National Archives is that the unit of measurment for the collections (particularly the uncatalogued backlog) is millions of cubic feet.

[https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/summer/b...](https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/summer/backlog.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "That material truly doesn't exist anywhere."

Technically, doesn't the data exist as radiowaves traveling at lightspeed away from their broadcast source on earth?

<comment><USER14> Sure... Now go grab it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > her recordings, which have been acquired by the Internet Archive in > Richmond, California

Thank you Internet Archive!

</comment><comment><USER16> Any word on the internet archive's progress on this?

</comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of the (I believe) NYT article on the woman whose husband recorded tens of thousands of wrestling matches on VHS tapes. The archive was sought after by fans of the sport, but since the man's passing - the wife has struggled to maintain the collection and was contemplating tossing it.

<comment><USER18> Boxing it is.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/boxing-vhs- archi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/boxing-vhs-archive.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really like how this website implemented their companion audio player. It was a smart touch to have play/pause on any play-button on the page animate some sort of ghost effect to bring your attention to the player in the corner.

It's a clean, well-done, fast site in general. Not something I expect from a radio station.

<comment><USER20> WBUR is more than just a radio station. They're an NPR affiliate--which is to say they're a web news organization as well--and they do a lot of pretty in- depth reporting.

I don't listen to the radio in the car too often anymore, but it's never left 90.9 FM since I bought the car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "To make the film, Wolf developed a complex system to index and identify the 70,000 tapes, which were all six to eight hours long.

In the end, he only digitized 100 of the tapes and says those 700 hours are "a tiny scratch into the surface of what's there.""

Wow, what a treasure trove!

</comment><comment><USER22> I really hope that all those archives will be digitized and available for download.

<comment><USER23> The collection was donated to the Internet Archive, but I'm not sure the status of its digitization:

[https://blog.archive.org/2019/05/24/71716-video-](https://blog.archive.org/2019/05/24/71716-video-)

<comment><USER24> What has been digitized is fully text searchable!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What sparked Ms Stokes interest in recording the news happens to coincide with my news awakening. The hostage crisis and Love Canal (which started when I was around seven or eight) jump started my new obsession.

</comment><comment><USER26> Anyone who doesn't like hearing very loud flyback transformer whine should avoid playing the last few seconds of the embedded video.

I think what Stokes did in recording those tapes was outstanding, by the way.

</comment><comment><USER27> Anybody want to dig up links to the older threads about this? I can't just now...

<comment><USER28> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19855291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19855291)

<comment><USER27> Thanks! This is the one that has the comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _" At the time Stokes began recording, television stations had been deleting archives for decades, Wolf says."_

wtf.. stations delete their own footage? wouldn't you want to just hang on to everything indefinitely?

<comment><USER30> > wouldn't you want to just hang on to everything indefinitely?

Maintaining archives isn't free and has very little expected future value in many cases, so, no, in a for-profit business you probably wouldn't want to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> See also: the Vanderbilt Television News Archive.

[https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu](https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu)

</comment><comment><USER31> Will this documentary be downloadable or released on DVD? I'd like to buy it.

<comment><USER32> It's got a couple more months of screenings. I'm sure after that you'll be able to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Something of a side point, but I'm curious about how expensive this was for her to do.

In the 80s / 90s wouldn't a blank 3hr video be something like $5 or so (I'm guessing, as I recollect it was about £5 or so, and am expecting they'd be cheaper in the US as most things seemed to be then)

Given that 70k hrs would be around 23k 3hr cassettes, that would work out at maybe $115k. Seems a lot for an ex-Communist organiser to have ready to spend on a project like this (much as it has plenty of merit).

<comment><USER34> It's not a high upfront cost though. Most people are decent at shelling out 5-15$ a week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Next: a man who recorded 10 years of hacker news links

</comment><comment> Sushi-san This has been posted on HN before.

<comment><USER36> without searching, at least three times that I can think of. It's still interesting

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Isn't this copyright infringement? I think there's a fair use for recording and keeping for a period but recording everything for 30 years isn't that.

<comment><USER38> Recording to tape was the subject of a Supreme Court case, the result of which was to make it explicitly legal for consumers to use VCRs to record broadcast TV.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Uni...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc).</comment></comment>


Operations for Effective CEOs - <AUTHOR> https://www.sametab.com/blog/operations-and-internal-communication-strategies-for-effective-ceos <comment><USER4> I heard this on Lex Fridman's podcast with Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on "storytelling"

Lex Fridman: Microsoft has 50-60 thousand engineers. What does it take to lead such a large group of brilliant people?

Kevin Scott: ...(snipped)... One central idea in Yuval Harari's book Sapiens is that "storytelling" is the quintessential thing for coordinating the activities of large groups of people once you get past Dunbar's number. I've really seen that, just managing engineering teams. You can brute-force things with small teams, but past that things start to fail catastrophically if you don't have some set of shared goals. Even though this is sort of touchy feely, and technical people balk at the idea that you need to have a clear mission, it's very important.

Lex Fridman: Stories are sort of the fabric that connects all of us, and that works for companies too.

Kevin Scott: It works for everything. If you sort of think about it, our currency is a story. Our constitution is a story. Our laws are a story. We believe very strongly in them, and thank God we do, but they're just abstract things, they're just words. If we don't believe in them, they're nothing.

Lex Fridman: In some sense, those stories are platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a fantastic articulation.

Kevin Scott: Microsoft CTO - Lex Fridman [0]

[0] [https://lexfridman.com/kevin-scott/](https://lexfridman.com/kevin-scott/)

<comment><USER5> Would recommend reading "Sapiens" if you found that excerpt interesting (as it's rehashing one of the most important ideas from that book).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a part of a very quickly growing startup, and I've realized the power of narrative/storytelling big time in the last few months. It just doesn't scale to tell everyone what to do, you have to get them all bought in on the Why via a compelling story and allow them to drive towards that through their own ideas.

<comment><USER7> Devil's advocate: story telling doesn't give people self direction. A lot of people need to be told what to do. HN isn't a great audience for this because there's a lot of entrepreneurs and doers here. Not everyone knows how to properly prioritize tasks or even how to come up with their own task list.

<comment><USER8> Strongly agree. For many people, it's just a job. Clear direction is a must. However it need not exclude narrative story telling. A leader needs to adapt their style of leadership to the people they lead and the situation they are in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > narratives (not facts) are what move people

I actually find this practice really annoying. If I'm on contract cutting together some hack's godawful kung fu action film, the last thing I want to hear is the fiction he tells himself to get to sleep every night. Narrative is what we give to the public when we want to trick them into thinking that buying low-quality shoes will end world poverty. It has no place inside the company. Maybe it's helpful for customers to believe in the fantasy version of your company, but inside, you want people who know what is really going on, and are willing to participate without the use of such tricks.

<comment><USER10> "Here at CinemaX we believe in our people, clarity of message to our stakeholders, employees as well as our customers. That's why we practice radical information theory - we let our employees know what's really going on to embolden maximum participation from our team members, or as we call them, CEOs. Other companies are built on fantasy - that has no place here."

Anything can be turned into a narrative, even your anti-narrative narrative.

<comment><USER9> Still empty and meaningless and I still feel irritated, and a little sick. I wonder if anyone actually likes to be spoken to in such a way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You know I don't normally recommend books I read or have read, but both of these books below really resonate with me:

"The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers": [https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+hard+thing+about+hard+things&...](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+hard+thing+about+hard+things&crid=2S6R0FSJS0VSB&sprefix=the+hard+thing+a%2Caps%2C365&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_16)

"What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture": [https://www.amazon.com/What-You-Do-Who- Are/dp/B07X36GGQ7/ref...](https://www.amazon.com/What-You-Do-Who- Are/dp/B07X36GGQ7/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2S6R0FSJS0VSB&keywords=the+hard+thing+about+hard+things&qid=1575914558&sprefix=the+hard+thing+a%2Caps%2C365&sr=8-3)

<comment><USER12> +1 for The hard thing about hard things. Definitely the book that helped me the most when I first found myself in the position of being in change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought the article got better later on, but, the opening couple of paragraphs that emphasized story telling were very weak.

Senior leadership has a much better understanding of the business context and long term plan than I do, but, I have a much better understanding of the problem details in my specific domain.

What I find most valuable from senior leadership is clear feedback about how what we are doing fits in the broader context of what the company is doing, as well as specific high level feedback on the roadmap of our org.

The story format can be helpful to frame a vision of how you'd like a product launch to go, but, it's not suitable at all for most of the communication a CEO/SVP does.

<comment><USER14> It's a great post, but I suspect could have been about 5 posts. Detail and tactic rich :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Internal communication FROM the CEO is important, and it's nice to see a comprehensive article review a lot of important tactics.

However, where a lot of executives also fail is not allowing/encouraging/listening to the discussion that is ABOUT the CEO and Organization. Employee perspective can be very valuable too.

Just talking at someone is never the right or effective way, 99.9% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's not storytelling or any other skill. It's who you know. Look at the recycled clowns that are many CEOs. Buy back shares. Hire more recycled faces. Nothing interesting there.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd caution that "narrative" and "story telling" can lead to fables. You should understand this as defining a clear vision, why it matters, how to get there, what it will look like on Monday morning once you've arrived and then ensure individuals and teams have clearly defined roles and own those roles. This is what Jobs' reality distortion field was built on.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great post talking about the value of an internal "communication architecture."

Related post worth checking out: [https://medium.com/@gokulrajaram/designing- a-communication-a...](https://medium.com/@gokulrajaram/designing-a- communication-architecture-the-ceos-most-important-operational- responsibility-28937bd291e8)

</comment><comment><USER19> If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Enough said.

<comment><USER20> I love the sentiment and there is clearly a nugget of truth in it, but I can point to companies that successfully build ships by drumming up people and assigning them tasks and work. Can you point to any that build ships through the teaching of longing?

<comment><USER21> I think Elon Musk's companies are great examples.

"Make humans an interplanetary species" "Accelerate the adoption of sustainable energy"

These tag lines are much more aspirational than the actual things the companies are currently building (rockets and cars).

<comment><USER20> And yet they are well known as companies that do a lot of drumming up and assigning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Totally agree people benefit from understanding the why - it allows them to bring their own capabilities to the problem, not just follow instructions.

Not so sure it needs to be in the form of a narrative though...

Why isn't the 'why' a just a fact?

By building a story to try to get emotional engagement, aren't you guilty of trying to over-control people's emotional response?

If you give them the facts they can make their own personal connections to the mission - again bringing their own story to it, rather than top down.

You do need to tailor it to your workforce of course - I work in a high tech industry with lots of self-motivated PhD's.

</comment><comment><USER23> What a about the people that identify CEO is trying to sell smoke?

Some people are tired to hear the same story again and again, in one place or another.

When will we empower transparency?

<comment><USER24> You begin to identify how much a CEO is selling smoke.

The ratio is imho easiest to identify by keeping track of buzzwords (ie business lingo). The more vague (yet at the same time oddly specific) the lingo is, historically the more likely the CEO and company is pulling one over the investors eyes. The more straight forward and normal the lingo is the more likely they are to being honest, because they can't avoid the hard facts when being forward with their language.

When it comes to investing in companies this is one of the key things I look for. It can be used on multiple levels, however, some companies will spin buzzwords who are legitimate. The key is identifying the difference between empty buzzwords and meaningful business language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone have strong opinions on the cadence of CEO/leadership internal comms? Is weekly just right, too much? Monthly?

<comment><USER26> At each level of management, you can probably reduce the cadence of formal communications:

1\. Direct team lead (including leadership of very small start-ups) - <USER2> or biweekly, depending on how many interesting things you normally have to share

2\. Director/manager-of-managers - monthly, again conditional on having enough interesting things to share

3\. VP and above/leadership of 100+ person company - <USER3>

It's critical that you actually have interesting content, data, or strategy to share, and it's worth putting effort into gathering this content and presenting it in a compelling way. A common anti-pattern is to have regular all-hands meetings with boring or repetitive content, which causes people to zone out or look for reasons to skip it so they can get their work done instead.

It can be hard to identify this, because the bored people won't respond to surveys, or won't respond honestly. A good rule-of-thumb would be that if you're not spending at least a couple hours prepping for the meeting, then it's probably not worth having.

<comment><USER25> I like the reasoning here but don't you think that senior leadership only communicating once a quarter (your example of 100+ employees) seems a bit out of touch and all the risks that entails?

<comment><USER26> Once/quarter is for "broadcast" communication - all-hands meetings, email newsletters, etc. In addition to that, they should be engaging with each individual team that reports to them. For example, you might also find it useful to do quarterly team-level strategy reviews where the team presents their accomplishments from the previous quarter and discusses their team-level roadmap for the next quarter.

At the same time, senior leadership needs to get used to being "out-of-touch" to some extent. Most people who are new to senior leadership make the opposite mistake, and are far too involved in details of execution that they should have fully delegated. Too much direct involvement can deprive your managers of opportunities to take initiative and grow in their careers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you like this article I would highly recommend books by Patrick Lencioni

Lencioni can upgrade your organizational health game several fold.

</comment><comment><USER28> Nothing new if you've read The Effective executive by Peter Drucker. Published 1966, for what it's worth.</comment>