Mark Zuckerberg messages Facebook engineer

[ohjeez]

Also posted at https://bsky.app/profile/techemails.bsky.social/post/3lhox2p...

[LeoPanthera]

This should be the URL in the post, Twitter requires a login, Bluesky doesn't.

[raviisoccupied]

Thank you for linking this

[buildbot]

Seems like Zuckerberg had already made up his mind and needed an engineer to positively confirm his desired path through a very power imbalanced chat...

No shade towards the engineer at all, but besides the very first "My instinct is” comment the engineer literally could have just been ChatGPT and Zuck would have gotten a similar convo.

[pinkmuffinere]

I don't feel that the engineer answered poorly at all. They're answering a really broad strategic question, with no / very little hard data to go off of -- of course their answer is vague, there's very little certainty about anything in the question (not even price of acquisition!). I think they accurately call out the benefits and risks of the different paths. IMO this is as much as can be expected. Before "pulling trigger" on any of these decisions, there will have to be a lot more analysis, negotiation, etc, that they're just not going to get to in a dm. If the engineer was the kind of person to give a single definitive answer in this situation, I don't think they would be trusted with this kind of conversation.

[NoboruWataya]

In fairness if the founder and CEO pings me and asks me who the company should buy, you can bet I'm giving a similarly hand wavy bullshit answer.

[ysofunny]

if this cartoon [1] is a reliable source, then maybe it's not (or possibly didn't used to be) such a strange thing at facebook

[1] https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts

[s1mplicissimus]

I had the same thought, this sounds like ChatGPT! Then again, doesn't most corporate communication? Or maybe it's the other way round and ChatGPT sounds like corporate fluff because it was trained like that?

[brookst]

From the perspective of the “engineer”’s responses, I’m guessing by this is a VERY senior engineer, maybe a technical fellow or whatever Facebook calls them.

[lumost]

Also possible that he pinged a random junior engineer for a fresh perspective. Social media trends tend to start with a younger audience. However the engineers’s comment on team assets implies seniority.

[buildbot]

Yeah, like just below the CTO or whoever probably. Even then they just quickly switch to just kinda bouncing the whatever Zuck comes up with back at them.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

[Discussing Instagram prior to Facebook acquisition.]

"Mark: Hmm. Engagement metrics?

Engineer: 23 mins daily per user. Teens. 94% return weekly. But here's the kicker: Their EXIF scraper tags locations silently. Imagine layering that with FB's graph. Hyper-local ads without asking.

Mark: Go on.

Engineer: They're a Trojan horse."

[axiologist]

https://xcancel.com/TechEmails/status/1888313183024074910

[hiyer]

So who was the engineer?

[oldgradstudent]

From Zuckerberg's messages, it appears that an important motivation for buying Instagram was to limit the competition facing Facebook.

Thanks Obama for enforcing the Sherman Antitrust Act:

> SECTION 1. Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on con-viction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

[ripped_britches]

Title needs a date on it

[sidcool]

Why what happened?

[almosthere]

Do we need to continue placing MZ at God Status?

[colordrops]

No, how about lord or duke.

[sk11001]

Pretty cool. Stuff like this doesn't happen enough at non-tech companies.

[fujinghg]

It does. They just usually don't have cash on hand to get out of the fuck ups from doing zero rational financial analysis and disappear in a puff of smoke 6 months down the line.

[yapyap]

nothing really happened here either tbf, mark was kinda talkin to himself // bouncing ideas off a wall

[spydum]

Yeah I would strongly disagree it does happen just sometimes those senior engineers are not as enlightened as the executives think.