Mark Zuckerberg ‘visibly frustrated’ over worker’s vacation question | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg ‘visibly frustrated’ over worker’s vacation question

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43 pointsoumua_don1783 comments

Tangentially, I've never attended a company-wide Q&A session that has gone well. It's always obvious that the C-suite wants the questions to be about company growth and strategy, but the employee questions are always about benefits, vacation time, and company policy, which the C-suites are not equipped to answer well. The Meta example in the article just further cements this opinion of mine.

I've heard so many times "We'll get back to you on that." And then at my current company, I heard that, and later on in the day we received an email response with all the questions they weren't able to answer live at the meeting. It was a refreshing change.

The weekly Q&A at Google with Larry and Sergey was good. They're long gone now though.

Which honestly kind of frustrates me. The old q and a's at least attempted to answer the questions. Now it's just flowery answers that conveniently don't answer anything. But I might also be looking through rose tinted glasses

This is really interesting to me because it would be so easy to have handled this better.

Yes the question is somewhat insensitive given the circumstances. On the other hand if you do any meeting you have to deal with the things the other people in the meeting care about. You can't only deal with the things you care about.

If you only want to make it about one-to-many one-way information flow, send an email. Or have the meeting but don't take questions, say you'll deal with questions 1-to-1 or something. If you have a meeting and decide to take open questions but you don't want to deal with certain questions have someone you trust moderate the questions.

I'm interested to know why you feel the question is insensitive. One of the biggest perks I look for in any position is the time off and how it's handled. If a company wants me working hard and giving them my best I want my time off to reflect that.

They are most likely going to clamp down on vacation time or deny it altogether when the times comes so I see the question as completely fair.

I mean I agree. If a restaurant I am eating at is on fire and the manager instead of making sure my fries are crisp and well seasoned is busy with other things, I will be totally pissed off.

One of the perk of eating good burger is great side of fries. If a restaurant manager can't even ensure that, then the place probably deserves what its getting.

Well it depends a lot on context I suppose. I thought it insensitive because it could come across as "I know you've just said you're going to lay a bunch of folks off, but since I'm on the lifeboat, can we talk a little bit about my time off..."

The questions were pre-recorded. It said so in the linked article. Nobody knew what Zuck was going to say when they asked their questions.

Which I interpret to mean that Zuck was acting here. Do we think that they present unreviewed questions to the boss in front of the company?

This was for show.

I misunderstood that. Then the questioner is 100% not to blame in my view.

I look at it like this. When I signed up for the job you promised me this thing, we're in a bit of a downturn, am I still able to get that thing you promised me?

Very interesting to see all these CEOs delivering very similar messages to their employees with VERY different tones (Shopify, Klarna).

Definitely making some notes for future employment choices.

Yes, very much this. I had never considered working for Shopify, but I would, even at under market rates, because they’ve publicly demonstrated they treat their team humanely. This is invaluable, from a corporate culture perspective.

This would also be a good time for CEOs to be paying very close attention on what works and what doesn't work so well.

The economy's suffering a whiplash of missed expectations and that's going to cause pain. How pain gets spread around is what differentiates companies in times like these.

There are companies still growing in this economy and who are actively hiring.

It was a really boneheaded question to be sure. I feel really bad for “Gary” who is getting dragged in the media left and right now however. Can you imagine? I’d be mortified.

It wasn't a boneheaded question at all. As an executive in an all-hands situation, with thousands of employees and their concerns, you'll get questions that are uncomfortable (because they're repetitive, touch on grey areas, etc. etc.). Mark is partially a billionaire because he should be able to handle these softballs more gracefully.

Mark not being able to empathize and give a more human answer is a fault, not some logical depth and honesty revealed like some of his employees saw it.

Edit here's an example:

We've talked a lot today about the headwinds and economic conditions we're expecting for this year and the following few years. In that same vein, we'll reevaluate meta days. Right now I expect them to be reduced both to save costs and because we're transitioning to a more hybrid working environment.

I pulled that out of my butt in 5 seconds. There's no need to be a big baby at a fluff event.

Well I guess we disagree then. As always with these things, it’s more nuanced. The timing of that question was the part that I think was pretty poorly thought out. That wasn’t even the point of my post though. I was expressing sympathy for the poster. Poor guys probably having a rough go with all the media attention. Sucks.

Fwiw. I’m seeing other comments saying that it was pre recorded which if true means the timing wasn’t even “Gary’s” fault.

It is my understanding that the question was pre-recorded and submitted in advance, the 'fault' seems to lie with the moderator who selected that one to be answered.

This is correct. It was pre-recorded.

If that’s the case that really sucks.

Honestly, it's a solid and fair question of labor to management. If they're going to be changing incentives, an employee is in the right to ask about related incentives so that they can make the educated decision sooner rather than later that "this place isn't for you," which was Zuckerberg's stated goal in the Q&A.

The door swings both ways, and if Meta can't exist without making people work harder for less compensation, maybe Meta doesn't need to be in the market. More information shared earlier can optimize everyone's time.

What is boneheaded about it?

So let me get this straight... by making the workplace more hostile, Facebook plans on retaining top talent?

Yeah, that's how it works alright. Spot on.

They may weed out a few at the bottom, but it's going to cost them just as many from the top. Turns out, the workers you want all have options. Doing anything to make them unhappy just shoots your company in the foot.

Must be a slow news day to recycle events that happened a month ago.

Seems like most "news" on HN has gone down hill in favor of a stream of constantly updating news. I've been thinking that HN should update their algorithm to punish people that post links that don't get comments; so you are incentivized to only post a link if you think it'll actually be interesting. Maybe just give -100 karma for every link you post, and then you get karma back based on the percentage of points in comments on the post.

I've also notice the number of duplicate/triplicate+++ submissions seems to be increasing also. Guess no one has time to check if the story has already been added. This would also be fixed by giving an initial -100 points per post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

A site that is meant to foster discussion about interesting topics, and your solution is to punish the people who post things they found interesting?

Yeah, no thanks from me.

It takes less than a second for me to see a duplicate and ignore it. Many times a duplicate is actually my first encounter (I'm not on here 24/7, reading every single post).

There's also a pattern of visibility problems with some posts, otherwise there wouldn't be a second-chance pool -- good quality posts that are posted at the wrong time or whatever -- and you want to punish those users? For having a good post that didn't get lucky enough or wasn't posted at the right time?

I guess if you want to massively reduce the number of submissions (including many engaging and topical posts) this would be one way to do it... Not sure it'd bring the results you're after.

it works exactly like the startup culture which I think is a big thing with Ycombinator? You don't create your startup for free; you pay money to get it running. You have to take a risk if you think your idea is worth it. No risk no payout (karma)

Also, I'm running negative karma on this comment already because I posted what I thought was an interesting idea, and instead of just useful/interesting comments, ziddoap for example and the other people that replied, It just got voted down. So Based on that I'd say hacker news is already using this model for comments, they just need to move it to submissions.

It's kind of weird, each downvote on this post, is actually a vote for this model.

>it works exactly like the startup culture which I think a big thing with Ycombinator? You don't create your startup for free; you pay money to get it running. You have to take a risk if you think your idea is worth it. No risk no payout (karma)

The risk/reward balance is not the same as an actual startup, though. I spend money on a startup because I think that I will get multiple times returned. When I post on HN, I do so because I found something interesting and want to share that with others, not because I want karma.

One of my favorite things about HN is finding some really niche/obscure post that I would never have come across. Many times those posts have low engagement because they are niche/obscure. Your proposal would be sure to eliminate many of these types of posts.

>Also, I'm running negative karma on this comment already because I posted what I thought was an interesting idea,

While very frustrating (I've had the same happen, low engagement in comments but lots of votes), I'm sure you posted the idea because you thought it would be helpful and/or to start a discussion about it, rather than posting it to increase your overall karma. So I think the startup comparison again falls a bit flat.

I don't think your prescribed solution will work.

I haven't done formal research (and actually, that might be a fun exercise for someone to do... Scrape HN and categorize keywords in low-comment articles vs. high-comment articles), but the interesting stuff seems to tend to be technical and generate low engagement (because the only people who could add to the technical content would be those with focused knowledge in the field), while the "TMZ but for Silicon Valley"-type stories tend to be high engagement (because everyone's got an opinion on Zuckerberg, or Bezos, or Pichai, and they're more than happy to share it).

As any site becomes popular, regression to the mean is a predictable outcome.

As in incentivize users to post things that will engage best, which is known to be posts that incite outrage/anger? You’d turn HN into everything else that is bad about social media.

Conflating popular with good is an all too common error.

If you are going to offer "unlimited vacation days" as part of compensation you better be prepared to honor it.

I tell people to take at LEAST 4 weeks a year because 2-3 weeks is what you'd typically get at any other job.

In Australia, 4 weeks is the legal minimum for any full-time employee, regardless of the job.

I hate to say it (because I've worked at more companies that have it than don't), but "unlimited vacation days" is a trap. In practice, it turns too many vacations into a per-event negotiation with one's boss instead of "I have days accumulated, this is an average work week, I'm out" being a simple process.

I prefer a setup where the company has employees accumulate vacation days but also has a flexible policy about "going into debt" so that if something significant comes up, it's easy to deal with.

Yeah, having employees decide how much vacation to take based on their own personal guilt and their boss' discretion is an uncomfortable dynamic.

Especially if you have a moody boss where you find yourself tip-toeing around them until they're in a good mood to put in the request.

I used to hear this but after being at two companies with unlimited vacation, which were even poorly managed, the unlimited vacation was great. It was super easy to say you were going to be out certain days, and it was never an issue. It was great never having to worry about having enough days. Being back at a place with limited vacation feels stifling. It means I gotta weigh stuff like really wanting a Friday or two off to do something but then worrying about having enough vacation saved up or accrued for Christmas or whatever.

In my opinion, the only way to do it “classically” is have employees immediately “accrue” something like 6 weeks vacation every year and prevent very little if no carry over. The only issue with that is the cash on hand requirement problem.

“Unlimited” PTO is an accounting trick. If your company has a system where you earn PTO, then the PTO each worker has earned counts as money owed on the books.

A quick hack to make your numbers look better is to eliminate that whole PTO thing. If it’s “unlimited” then there’s no fixed number on the books that you owe.

Possibly naive question, but why does accrued PTO count as money owed? You were going to have to pay salary if the person worked. If they leave/are exited, you were going to pay them notice which presumably is more than the amount of PTO they would have accrued.

I don't know the history of how it came to be, but the literal answer is "It counts as such because states regulate it." https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/payroll/pto-payout-laws...

This also means that if you're a multi-state company, you're under different legal regulations for how PTO works and multi-state compliance increases the cost of offering that perk in the first place.

I think it’s at least in part because it’s owed as cash (in some US states) when an employee is fired/quits.

I'm also quite fond of the "forced shutdown days" idea. Shutdown the entire place the week of Christmas and the 4th of July (or whatever holidays, except a skeleton crew to handle emergencies and compensate them with time elsewhere) on top of giving out 15-20 days of discretionary time. That way everyone gets a guilt-free break twice a year and you don't have a hundred thousand emails to come back to.

This is de facto like what the week around Christmas is at many companies. No one expects any work to get done, no one schedules meetings, and no one really audits vacation days being taken either.

100% agree, it is BS the way it has played out.

Which is why default to 4 weeks - this is a bare minimum. Anything on top (i.e taking personal days off every few Fridays, etc.) is the additional benefit.

Original source: https://www.theverge.com/23277797/mark-zuckerberg-meta-faceb...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32246799 (87 comments)

NY Post: "according to a recording obtained by The Verge"

Sometimes it's hard to believe this kind of thing even happens in tech. In many ways, I feel shielded from the "real world" of Silicon Valley having been working at an employee friendly company for almost seven years.

If the CEO of a company I worked for said this, I'd have a lot of anxiety, straight up.

Why would anyone work here anymore. Bad work life balance, executives blaming everyone but themselves, obsolete product.

Their only hope is a gamble on a 3d virtual experience which sounds interesting but far fetched.

Mostly because "pay and benefits aren't as good as they were before this downturn" is still a salary of $160k a year on average, which is triple the national average. There may be other, better software companies, but (a) people can get very comfortable with the devil they know and (b) right this second, the belt-tightening isn't just at Meta, it's everywhere; it may not be the best time to change employers.

>it may not be the best time to change employers.

Literally the lowest unemployment rate since the '90s Internet Boom.

In general yes. Specifically in this short span of time, the expectations violated due to inflation have spooked a lot of companies and triggered hiring freezes.

https://news.yahoo.com/tesla-apple-microsoft-peloton-all-of-...

You can make $160K at almost any US company as a software guy...

yea and you wouldnt have to live/pay bay area costs

Among the traditional FAANG, Facebook is the most remote friendly of them, with a large proportion of the company being fulltime remote.

Based on Zuck's attitude, I doubt remote will stay

I make significantly less than 160k and live in the bay area, 160k is still a large amount of money, even living here.

Dunno where that guy is getting that figure from. Comp at Meta is still much higher than that, especially for senior SWE and up.

Unfortunately I wouldn't be so sure this will remain the case next year

Jokes aside, why does Mark look so strange? He really does have this... I wanna say Alien franchise android feel about him. I can't think of anyone else who has this quality. It seems to be his skin mostly.

Reminds me of Data from Star Trek playing the role of Julius Caesar

Perfection

Isn't he simply a redhead with dark hair? He does not seem any different from a lot of people I have met in real life.

Here are some more candid photos of him: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Mark_Zuc...

https://assets.entrepreneur.com/content/3x2/2000/20150316195...

He was much younger in those photos I believe.

His current look draws ridicule likely because of his shorter hair and hairline, and very pale skin look.

It's the haircut he sports these days. He looks much better in these photos. Just my personal opinion, YMMV.

He just has a really high hairline which frames his face in a way that makes it look very large. He'd probably look a lot better with a Bezos.

He's a geek who wound up running one of the most valuable companies on Earth. They made a movie about it.

Max Headroom?

Birth->Grow->Work->Die

Yes - startup, growth, maturity and renewal/rebirth or decline

What was wrong with the question? There is no bad time to ask about your worker rights, especially when layoffs are in question. Seems to me like mark can't read the room, even when he's the one controlling it

Regardless of what you think about the question, just think about the narcissism required to be one of the richest people on the planet and even in the history of mankind but yet respond to questions like this.

Like, there's not one iota of empathy in any of his recent statements. These people treat their corporation like it's a machine and that the people are completely expendable.

For example, look at his recent statement about people being at Facebook that probably shouldn't be there. Well, Mark, you're the CEO. Why is Facebook hiring people that shouldn't be there or not putting them on performance plans prior to the announcement of "turning up the heat"? The fact that he needs to make that statement reflects poorly on him and the leadership, and the fact that he actually made the statement shows that he has contempt for his own employees.

This is a classic CEO temperature-shift. Not sure if there's a name for the tactic, but I've seen it before and suspect many others here have. It signals a shift from expansion to contraction.

You naturally also see this tactic around layoffs. My first experience was after about 25% of the startup I was working for went away. At the "after" all-hands, the CEO went from friendly optimist to angry boss, using notable lines about how if people want cushy jobs, they should go work for the post office.

The logic is clearly that, when the pie is shrinking, inducing more fear makes employees more pliable. You're going to lose the good ones, of course.

Ignoring the pop-pysch correlation of CEO's to sociopaths, I think that seeing your business going through a contraction would be pretty stressful for a CEO. It's a moment where you actually have to not just fly at cruising settings but actually do stuff and hustle.

This is a moment for facebook where things could just start to slide and slide away. Zuck strikes me as a guy who whilst smart, is also kinda lucky and benefiting greatly from the other smart people who work for him. But facebook is causing many social problems and hard working people who do sit back in their chair's probably have the 'are we the baddies' moment pretty often. If a critical peer group of his leave, he'll start to feel a stranger in his own company.

It's going to be an interesting time for us in the cheap seats.

It's quite a note about a CEO that, when faced with actually having to do his job, he gets mad at his employees.

You earn millions of dollars for essentially keeping the trains running on time by instructing your minions to keep the trains on time, and then the market says we need new tracks and new trains and everyone's getting off your trains.

You'd be grumpy too, when the minions look at you and ask for a spec and a strategy and you realize your going to have to do work for the first time ever.

Consider MSFT, not the biggest fan but, they make stuff and can change and improve your life with it. They have a revenue of ~200bn, Meta is ~80bn, but what do they actually make?

It's not a totally worthless company but it's been trading on the fact it got to be the first decent social graph company for the last two decades.

And you still shouldn't get mad at your employees. It's part of your job (not to mention basic human decency) to not get mad at your employees for something that isn't remotely their fault.

Oh I totally agree, I just think Zuck is feeling the pressure for real this time.

If the company was doin' a heckin' success he'd probably be a less grumpy boi.

But as it stands the company is flailing publicly in a very noticeable way with the Metaverse and Oculus and the (frankly insane and ridiculous) push for VR. Their main brand is now such a joke that they are trying to change the name of the company (unsuccessfully; I've seen FAANG used more than once here in the last couple days).

I think it is possible that the stench of failure from the Metaverse is going to start to infect their remaining successful brand: IG.

No wonder Mark is a grumpy boi.

> I think it is possible that the stench of failure from the Metaverse is going to start to infect their remaining successful brand: IG.

A quick search on Twitter shows the current feeling towards IG. That tone deaf "we're shifting to video" (meaning, "we're trying to be TikTok") announcement yesterday(?) went down terribly.

And that Axios article yesterday(?) - FB trying to pivot everything into seeing less of the friends/people you choose to follow and more 'content creators'. But honestly, pausing to watch a man smashing melons on his head because it's been pushed in your face is worth about as much as the native ads with a scandalous picture on them - super high click through rate, nobody backs out on the offer. Everyone ends up unhappy.

It is this weird move that is probably going to eat at people who are insecure about their own productivity. Is this an environment where employees can really lock in and focus on their tasks at hand?

I don't like Zuck. But a couple of things to consider here:

1. Lacking apparent empathy is not narcissism. It doesn't even mean he doesn't have empathy, in fact.

2. If he admitted that management had made mistakes it would affect the stock price.

Lacking empathy is one of the major characteristics or symptoms of narcissistic personality disorders.

I think it is a weird semantical argument to say someone could have empathy but never showcase it.

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