cubicle-culture

Facebook less like a college dorm than you'd think

Owen Thomas · 11/19/08 08:00PM

One imagines Facebook as a geek utopia, where hackers who dropped out of college play Rock Band all day, then stay up all night coding. The reality: It's as depressingly Dilbertian as any other company — and COO Sheryl "No-Fun" Sandberg is making sure it keeps getting more boring every day. Take the latest tiff we happened to hear about — in the social network's business-development department, the home of glad-handing charmers who negotiate deals. You'd think they'd be experts at sucking up to each other. Tim Kendall (shown left), the company's director of monetization — Valleyspeak for "guy who comes up with ideas to make money" — was left fuming after his boss, VP Dan Rose, instructed him in the art of time management."Every day, you need to create a to-do list," Rose told Kendall. "You put the items you need to do on the list, and you need to review the list with me every day. As you do them, you need to cross them off." Kendall's retort, which he delivered not to Rose but to friends within and without Facebook: "No shit Sherlock, I didn't get to where I am today without knowing how to manage a to-do list!" What's odd about this rumor: Rose doesn't have a reputation as a micromanager, and the two both worked at Amazon.com before joining Facebook. They put on a convincing buddy act for the New York Times recently, too. Anyone care to play Encyclopedia Brown and help piece together this puzzle? My only conclusion: The best algorithms can't predict what will break a friendship. (Photo by Chris Pan)

The rotten manager behind Google Book Search

Owen Thomas · 10/28/08 01:40PM

A coalition of book publishers and authors have extracted $125 million from Google in settling a copyright lawsuit they filed in 2005. The agreement should make Google Book Search vastly more useful, as millions of books get added to Google's index. The team at Google which deals with publishers should be busier than ever. Too bad it's run by a sexist tyrant who's seen 7 of his 13-person team — all women — leave in a year's time. Googlers who formerly worked under Ramsey Allington, the head of Google's book operations, say he's a terrible manager who has actively discriminated against women in his employ.Bad managers are everywhere in corporate America. But Google's supposed to be different — a new model of management, driven from the bottom up, where ideas, not rank or hierarchy, are what matter. Ramsey Allington never got that memo, according to his employees. Google's famous for its 360-degree reviews, where ratings from underlings matter as much as bosses. But Allington's employees say they were never asked to review him until very recently this year — and the negative results of that lone review process were ignored. His job was not easy. Online sales and operations, the area in which Allington worked, was famously called a "toilet" by top Google executive Shona Brown when Sheryl Sandberg, now Facebook's COO, ran it. Sandberg, Brown suggested, flushed people through the system. Eager young graduates from top schools who wanted to add Google to their resume signed up to answer email and field phone calls, in the hopes that they'd be able to transfer to other departments. Allington's job, more or less, was to keep them down on the farm, doing customer support. But Allington went too far, his employees say, in blocking their efforts to move up or transfer within Google. He may even have broken the law: He's said to have demoted one woman after a pregnancy leave, moving her from an account-management job into an entry-level position answering email — an allegation which may be a violation of the Family Medical Leave Act, which generally requires that employees who take leave be allowed to return to their same job. Several employees under Allington have taken medical leave for stress because of the hostile work environment they say he has created. They also say he demonstrated a pattern of retaliating against employees for expressing their concerns about the workplace, punishing them in employment reviews as showing a negative attitude. Allington is what they call an "IPO lottery winner"; he joined Google in 2002, two years before it went public, allowing him to make a tidy profit on stock options. Though he only holds the title of manager, he's well-connected in the company. He's said to have the favor of top executive Jonathan Rosenberg — who's something of a tyrant himself. Allington is also married to Shaluinn Fullove, a high-profile Googler recently written up in Fortune. Connections in the tight-knit Googleplex may well have let him escape scrutiny for years. He was close friends with his immediate supervisor, Laura DeBonis. By the time his employees raised concerns about Allington with her, DeBonis had a foot out the door; she left in early 2008. Her replacement, Doug Cook, responded to the complaints by ordering, for the first time, reviews from Allington's employees — but ended up backing him. Employees finally complained to David Fischer, the online sales and operation executive who oversees Book Search, who started a formal investigation. Turnover in HR slowed the process. One HR staffer told an employee that Google's human-resources department was ill-equipped to deal with complaints of discrimination because it was "such a young department." Google recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. But it's understandable that Google's management is ill equipped to deal with bad Googlers. People at the Googleplex take it as a matter of faith that their coworkers and superiors share the company's "Don't be evil" values; if you're a Googler, you're good by definition. There are processes in place that, in theory, route around dysfunctional managers like Allington. In practice, those processes are easy to game. And why not game them? Those in the tight-knit coterie of IPO lottery winners, like Allington, have convinced themselves not just of its goodness, but of its superiority; Googlers who joined the company too late to make a fortune must just not be as smart as them. Their bank accounts prove it. Why not discriminate against them? the market already has. At any well-run company, Allington would have been long gone, I believe. But the question isn't whether Allington should have been fired for sexual discrimination. It's how many Ramsey Allingtons there are at the Googleplex. And how long it will take us to find them.

LinkedIn recommendation = you're fired

Owen Thomas · 10/27/08 04:00PM

The old way to tell you're about to be fired: Your boss comes up to you, claps you on the shoulder, and acts all chummy. The new way to tell you're about to be fired: Your boss leaves a glowing recommendation for you. Revision3's Damon Berger got one from CEO Jim Louderback five days before he was laid off from the online-video startup. Damon, you should have gotten a clue when Louderback wrote that you could be "a great front-person for any organization."

Triumph of the sysadmin's will

Owen Thomas · 10/24/08 01:40PM

Wall Street Journal writer Ben Worthen's summary of a new survey of IT employees: "Forty-eight percent were confident in their ability to find a new job, even though they don't believe anyone is hiring." Of course, Ben: Tech workers are Ron Paul-voting, Ayn Rand-reading rugged-individualist übermenschen who believe they can create their own reality through sheer individual brilliance and force of will. Did you need to read a survey to know that?

Financial apocalypse leads Google to lay off a cafe

Owen Thomas · 10/23/08 02:40AM

Food is at the center of Google's corporate culture, a sign of the company's Pollyanna worldview and the outsized financial success which enables this largesse. So why is Google is closing a café? Off The Grid, one of Google's 18 in-house eateries at its headquarters, abruptly shut its doors this week. Employees are being told the cut is "temporary," but workers are removing the café's fixtures, which suggests a permanent closure. What this means: Despite CEO Eric Schmidt's protestations, Google is being hit by the recession. And the blows are harder than the company has admitted to shareholders or employees.Off The Grid's closure is the harbinger of more cuts, a source within Google's kitchens we've nicknamed "Deep Fried" tells us. The building, 2350 Bayshore, is also having its "micro kitchen" snack stations closed. A large number of workers in the building were contractors, Deep Fried says, some of whom are losing their temporary jobs at Google. The closure also leaves a large area of Google's campus without breakfast service. Food is just one area where Google is slashing costs; under recently hired CFO Patrick Pichette, Google has been having a series of meetings about eliminating expenses, and Googlers have been implementing the cuts with the same slapdash speed with which it rolls out new websites. Google executives gave food-service operator Bon Appétit sharp budget cuts this year, which has only worsened the already troubled relationship between the companies. Google eliminated dinner at one café earlier this year. But the closure of Off The Grid was sudden, coming after a meeting between Bon Appétit executives and Derek Rupp, the café's executive chef, Deep Fried writes:

Yahoo's state of delusion

Owen Thomas · 10/17/08 03:00AM

When will Yahoos get real? The global economy is seizing up. Management is planning layoffs in the thousands. The stock sank below $12 this week, with only the prospect of a takeover lifting it. BusinessWeek, we're told, is preparing a devastating story on CEO Jerry Yang, calling for the board to fire him. Yet the mood at the Sunnyvale headquarters is perversely sunny. Thursday, Yahoo spent some of its shareholders' money to hire the Elvis impersonator pictured here. This is the sickness of Yahoo's purple-with-pride culture: It has emphasized self-celebration at the expense of having something to celebrate. "Funness" is prized above all — above excellence, focus, and achievement.

Google throws a party for new Austin office

Owen Thomas · 10/16/08 03:20PM

Click to viewGoogle shareholders, here's something to watch as you wait for the company to announce its earnings: Your investment dollars at work throwing a party for the opening of Google's downtown Austin office. "The Googletinis were flowing and the buffet featured Hill Country rattlesnake cakes with pistachio nut crust and lobster risotto stuffed mushrooms," reports the Austin American-Statesman. Then again, it does house some engineers working on AdWords, the only thing at Google actually generating enough revenue to be worth mentioning in a quarterly earnings call.

Everyone slacks off at work

Alaska Miller · 09/29/08 12:00PM

In a survey, workers revealed that they spend a fourth of their time online on personal matters. Of the emails they sent at work, 80 percent were personal. Popular sites for goofing off are online trading sites, chatting services, and file-sharing sites. Scandalous! They should be reading blogs instead. [New Zealand Herald]

Googlers' free-food privileges slashed

Owen Thomas · 09/24/08 03:40PM

Food is part of the Google myth: All you can eat, three meals a day, with plenty of room for your friends and family. No more. Following the curtailment of dinner service, Google is now restricting employees to two guest meals a month. Contractors and temps will not be allowed any guests at all. Google HR chief Laszlo Bock announced this change in a memo obtained by Valleywag. Some Googlers, we've heard, treated their families to free dinner every night; others took large amounts of food home with them on Friday nights, to last the weekend. The move is consistent with Google management's war on abuse of the company's perks; cofounder Sergey Brin, especially, has complained about Googlers' sense of entitlement. Yet it's likely to spark grousing. Googlers outside engineering are often poorly paid, and sneaking food home amounts to part of their salary. Google seems caught in a vicious circle of worsening morale: Discontent sparks abuse of perks; crackdowns on perk abuse sparks discontent. Read the memo to see Google's latest schoolmarmish turn:

Microsoft minions made to punch in, punch out for lunch, meetings

Nicholas Carlson · 09/23/08 10:20AM

A company tipster tells us Microsoft is cutting costs in its Online Services group, which sells businesses productivity and CRM software as well as exchange-hosted services. "We just learned today that the company is transitioning a decent chunk of the group (100+ ppl) to hourly compensation, from our current salaried gigs," writes our tipster.

What to know before Facebook recruiting comes to your campus

Nicholas Carlson · 09/18/08 09:00PM

In the next year, Facebook plans to visit 20 universities and 5 business schools as it looks to staff up its already swelling operations. Students graduating from these institutions need to be prepared. In a post to announce the tour, Facebook recruiter Marcia Velencia writes that the company is "looking for people that are passionate," who, like Facebook, "value working hard, smart, and fast, and following that up with some good fun." Velencia and Facebook will almost certainly find these types of candidates and successfully lure them into the company. They will do so by allowing the candidates to believe — not explicitly promising them — that working at Facebook will make them rich, allow them to change the world, and put them on a fast track toward an exciting career in tech. Here's what graduating students entertaining a career at Facebook should actually expect.Facebook will not make you rich. On a job board for University candidates, Facebook says its hiring engineers, product managers and customer service reps. That means unless you're an engineer or you've started your own business during school, Facebook probably plans to hire you into customer service. Its where the company needs bodies as it staffs its ad sales operations and grows its user base. It's also the area Facebook COO and former Googler Sheryl Sandberg knows best. Working Facebook customer service will not make you rich. The job only pays $18.75 per hour. You are not going to change the world. At some point during the interview process, Velencia and Facebook HR will expect you to say that one reason you want to work for the company is that like Mark Zuckerberg, you want to change the world by connecting people. It's fine to say this in order to get the job. Just don't believe it. If you want to change the world go work for Teach for America. You will not be technically challenged. Code will not iterate quickly. I interviewed then Facebook CTO Adam D'Angelo in 2006 and I asked him what he liked most about working there. He said he loved how fast the company moved, pushing new code and making changes to the site. D'Angelo is gone from Facebook now and soon, so will that ethos. The site redesign that's users are just now moving to in September? It was supposed to launch in April. Minion work at Facebook will be like minion work at Google — awful. Though it could turn you into a champion political in-fighter, which is a crucial talent for a career in tech. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg built Google's customer service operation. She will try to replicate it Facebook. Here is how one Google employee described her division:

Lehman Brothers IT guys still have to work Monday

Nicholas Carlson · 09/14/08 10:37PM

158-year old investment bank Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy Sunday after banks Bank of America and Barclays refused to bail it out without government backing. But that doesn't mean anybody — including the IT guys — is getting the day off Monday. "We are counting on you to be at work on Monday and ready for business as usual," writes Lehman managing director Hari Gopalkrishan in an email obtained by Wall Street gossip blog Dealbreaker that we've copied below. In case your curious, popular lore has it that the last song Titanic's musicians played while the ship went down was "Nearer My God to Thee."

Microsoft goes Googley with its new offices in Seattle

Nicholas Carlson · 09/11/08 12:00PM

Microsoft announced plans for new offices in Seattle's South Lake Union area a year ago. They're open now. According to photos from Microspotting — a PR blog for Microsoft human resources written by Ariel Meadow Stallings, who describes herself as "the person you thought would never work at MSFT" — they look pretty Googley. There's a red room and a blue room, for example. And the Microsofties have one trump card over the Googleplex: Minutes from downtown Seattle, South Lake Union is a much better location than an office park off 101. Check out the slide show below.Click to view

Architect got rich from Google campus Eric Schmidt hates

Nicholas Carlson · 08/29/08 10:40AM

Architect Clive Wilkinson just finished building his own home in southern California. In a profile, the New York Times calls it "the house that Google built." Wilkinson is best known for his $15 million renovation in 2006 of the company's Mountain View headquarters, which a curator Paola Antonelli at the Museum of Modern Art calls "not offices," but "memorable places for people to work in new ways.” If by "new ways" Antonelli means "grumpily," then it seems Googlers would agree.Wilkinson himself only considers the Googleplex redesign “partially successful.” The Times reports:

Yahoo's new cost-cutting plan: Move operations to Nebraska

Nicholas Carlson · 08/28/08 09:00AM

Yahoo is considering moving some of its operations to Omaha, Nebraska. Big Purple has "applied for the biggest slate of state tax breaks" reports the AP. The news has Nebraska state officials giddy. Yahoo told them it would invest $100 million in the area and create at least 50 jobs with an average salary of $68,700, which is quite a lot in Nebraska. Yahoo is specifically looking at a piece of property in an Omaha suburb, says the AP, confusing us. Doesn't there have to be an urban area for there to be a suburban area? We thought the city outskirts around Omaha had a simpler name: farmland.(Photo by andy54321)

Googleplex cafes staffed by illegal workers

Owen Thomas · 08/26/08 03:20PM

One of our sources with Google's ready-to-boil kitchens, whom we've nicknamed "Deep Fried," tells us that the employee-coddling search giant has a much bigger food problem than cutbacks on dinner — and a much bigger labor problem than a lack of work visas for its programmers. More than half of the contract workers who prepare and serve Googler's vast quantities of free food, our source claims, lack documentation that proves they have a legal right to live and work in the United States. Are they illegal aliens? The point is that Bon Appétit, the management company which runs Google's cafes, has turned a blind eye — as has Google, until recently. A former chef tells us Google would frequently let workers who didn't have proper credentials return to work with fresh documents, under new names.Undocumented workers chop vegetables and wash dishes throughout the food industry; why would Google's cafes be any different? The hypocrisy of America's immigration rules isn't the issue, though; it's the foolishness of Google's management. Even if everybody does it, Google executives claim that it runs its business differently — and better. Claiming the moral high ground may prove harder now. Google's chief people officer, Laszlo Bock, has lobbied Congress vigorously to expand the number of H-1B visas the company gets. Getting caught with an undocumented nanny has torpedoed many political careers. The next time he appears in Washington, D.C., don't you think Bock will get pointed questions from self-righteously huffy Congressmen why he doesn't think American citizens are fit to serve his employees' meals? Google, which has been feuding with Bon Appétit over the running of its kitchens for months, may be addressing the problem. "There are rampant rumors in all the kitchens that Guggenheim [sic] will be taking over the account come December," Deep Fried tells us — actually referring to Guckenheimer, a less highfalutin' food-service competitor to Bon Appétit. "Everyone is paranoid that when [Guckenheimer] comes in all the undocumented workers will get the can." If that happens, who will serve Googlers the free meals they've become accustomed to? We suggest Larry, Sergey, and Eric don hairnets and gloves. (Photo by midom)

Facebook holds toga party to celebrate 100 million users

Owen Thomas · 08/26/08 03:00PM

To celebrate the company reaching 100 million users, Facebook employees are holding an impromptu toga party at a park near the company's office on Waverly in downtown Palo Alto, a tipster reports. (Dave Morin, Facebook's ubiquitous evangelist, also Twittered about the party, so it must be true!) Is this the last hurrah for the collegiate youth culture 24-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg created, before COO Sheryl "No Fun" Sandberg moves the company to an anonymous office complex next year? It's hard to imagine Facebookers donning sheets and running around the manicured lawns of the bland former Hewlett-Packard building. Here, Sheryl — somehow we can't picture you taking part in toga parties even when you were in college. For you, from eHow, some step-by-step instructions for holding a toga party. Bonus points to any reader who sends in a photo of Zuckerberg in a toga. (Photo by andyfitz)