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Taking responsibility is more than just admitting reponsibility. It is also about bearing the consequences. Such as, if you broke something, you fix it. If you lost something, you pay up to replace it. Or similar. A manager usually can't fix a problem themselves though. But unless they pay a cost for their mistakes, they are not really taking responsibility. Then they just pay lip service to the word.

What do you suggest?

Cutting bonuses, for example?

Agreed. If I fuck up and fire people, I'm not taking home a bonus.

Wouldn't that mostly impact just the executives and not Mark Zuckerberg himself? He did seem to get a 23 million dollar bonus last year, but that's peanuts compared to his net worth.

Compared with his net worth, or compared with the reduction in his net worth?

Both, I think. 23 million would be .023% or 100 billion and like .08% of 30 billion

Zuck already doesn't get any salary or bonus.

He gets $1 in salary but his total comp is in the tens of millions.

There was a time when investors/the board could fire a CEO making terrible decisions (like sinking billions into white whale VR projects), but no longer.

AFAIK Facebook ownership has been setup in a way that nobody can fire Zuck, and investors were fully aware of it when investing.

> There was a time when investors/the board could fire a CEO making terrible decisions

This is still by far the most common case, and in fact it is probably becoming more common because large index funds have recently increased requirements related to ownership share structuring (https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/08/05/sp-and-ftse-russe...).

In this specific case though, the investors knew that Zuck had complete control and they decided to invest regardless, so I do not have any sympathy for their complaints.

Does this mean Facebook wouldn’t be allowed to list in this index if it tried today?

Taking responsibility would be putting himself on the chopping block. I don't blame him for not doing so, but that's what that word means to me.

Have you ever quit your job over a mistake you made - say a bug you introduced in your code? That would also be taking responsibility.

Life is a lot more nuanced than, "If bug in code, then lose job". Your hypothetical depends on the severity of the bug in the code.

Edit: In this instance, the "bug" led to 11,000 people losing their jobs.

If a mistake I made resulted in thousands of people losing their jobs who wouldn’t consider it? At the very least I wouldn’t lie about “taking responsibility” if I had no intention.

The only mistake was hiring too many people in the first place, way way beyond what was really necessary. I suppose that gave them false hopes of being forever employed by Fb, aka millionaires in the making. I know being fired stings like hell, but it just a job, a limited time contract. Hopefully some good startups will come out of this whole situation.

Ironically the only people who can hope to be forever employed are the execs running the ship into the ground.

What does zuck losing his job look like? He just stops collecting a salary? His stock stops vesting? Does he have to relinquish all his ownership? I can’t imagine anything short of that would affect him in any appreciable way, and that doesn’t seem like a reasonable result of “getting fired.” If I got fired today, all my stock would still belong to me.

Admit that you either no longer know how to steer the ship, or you don't know which direction to go, and then let someone else do it.

> Admit that you either no longer know how to steer the ship

This makes the assumption that the current path was the only, and best, path, and that the CEO doesn't see a better path in the distance, or some danger immediately ahead.

Most of the big tech companies were made by people who ignored the crowds yelling at them to keep going straight. And, many of the failed behemoths of today did just that.

I dunno, think Zuck losing however may billions of dollars of net worth is a pretty stiff consequence. He didn’t have to take responsibility but did. He also literally paid for the consequences.

Is it, though? On paper, I've lost about 35% of my net worth in the recent market downturn, and it hasn't affected my life even the slightest. Maybe it's different if it's your own company and your ego is tied up in the stock price, but some numbers in a brokerage account going down doesn't feel like a "stiff consequence" to me.

A billionaire that looses half their net-worth is still a billionaire. They still hold more money than you can dream of, they still hold more power then you can imagine.

It is not the same for a billionaire to loose money as it is for you or me. To take a concrete example. Elon Musk could just close down Twitter right now, and waste away his 44 bn USD he spent on it. After that squander, he would still be the richest man on the planet.

True, but what should happen instead? If losing lots of billions won't be enough, what would be?

idk. If this many people were to loose their jobs under my authority, I think I would at the very least loose my job. But perhaps there also ought to be a class action law suite, workers should be able to sue a negligent business leaders that costs them their jobs, similar how a shareholder can sue for lost profits.

But honestly a business leader that screws up so bad, should probably loose all their wealth, like 100%.

Such a policy would mean that the consequences of a risk going wrong vastly outweigh the benefits of success.

That would incentivize extremely risk-averse decisions by business leaders and lead to society-wide stagnation. The result would be far more suffering overall.

I think that doesn’t need to be a bad thing. This all depends on what risk behavior does in a societal context and how much a particular leader is actually contributing to the business.

We actually have a reason to believe that the standard risk attracted business is a net-negative for society. These businesses tend to rely on government bailouts when their risky behavior doesn’t work out, or they lay off a large number of people, or they cause massive environmental damage, etc. I much prefer a business that plays it safe and doesn’t risk our environment and our economy while maximizing the profits they give to their shareholders.

Secondly, there is no reason to believe that a CEO is any sort of supreme decision maker of a company. Perhaps a democratized workplace—where the workers have a say in whether the business should engage in a risky behavior—is better at evaluating the risk. If that is the case then a CEO dictator might not want to lead the business into a risky endeavor at since they might get sued if it goes wrong, but workers who have only their jobs to loose might vote to do exactly that.

I find the society-wide stagnation prediction lacking in imagination.

> If this many people were to loose their jobs under my authority, I think I would at the very least loose my job.

This doesn't seem logical. Companies aren't some static things. Especially social media companies, which usually have very short lives. A corrective, appropriate, action, in response to a changing market, could very easily be a reduction in headcount.

All evidence suggests Facebook has no future [1].

> But honestly a business leader that screws up so bad

What's your metric for screwing up? Is it short, medium, or long term? Should short term goals/profits be the only goal of a company?

1. https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/11/teens-abandoned-facebook-p...

> What's your metric for screwing up? Is it short, medium, or long term? Should short term goals/profits be the only goal of a company?

As a worker my metric is first and foremost about the worker. A company screws up if it fails to bring profits to the workers. Laying off 11,000 workers certainly falls under a big screw up by that metric. I know companies—such as charity/non-profits exists who have humanitarian goals, or even amusement, as their goals, however I don’t see Facebook there.

But we live in a capitalist society and most companies’ goals are profits for their shareholders. Facebook seems to have screwed that goal up as well. And instead of letting the person who lead the company into this failure pay the price of failing, they take it down on the workers... This seems quite unfair, and is even illegal in many (most?) countries.

> As a worker my metric is first and foremost about the worker.

I can't extract any meaning from this. Could you be more specific?

Maybe a scenario will help. What if the company becomes not profitable enough (there can be reason's that don't require leadership fault), and it will fail unless workers are let go? Do you let it fail, causing all to lose their jobs, or do you trim the fat, allowing some to continue?

I would assume you would want to look at the whole, more than the individual.

Please note the above happened to a company I worked for, during the last recession, and it was, very objectively, not the fault of the leadership.

In Facebooks case their owner is worth so much, he could give every layed of worker a million USD and it would only cost him a fraction of what he’s net worth. I don’t know your scenario but the recession was for sure a special time. Now companies are seeing record profits and are blundering it in stupid endeavors like the Metaverse, so I don’t think your case applies at all. But in any case, other countries—outside of a global recession—have laws against mass layoffs, companies usually declare bankruptcy if they are at this point, and their respective governments starts a salary insurance program where they pay the workers that lost their jobs for a set amount of time. If the bankruptcy is bad, and the leaders manage to take some money from it, they will go to court for the damages the bankruptcy causes.

If I try very hard to tease out the answer to my question, it seems that you're suggesting that bankruptcy would be preferred to layoffs, with the government providing temporary relief after everyone loses their jobs. This seems like a net negative, compared to some people losing their jobs, and the company possibly moving on to great success, with those remaining, and future, employees.

I apologize if I interpreted your response incorrectly, but it was, again, very indirect.

The purpose of my question was to help me understand your perspective, and to help you present some meaning to your statement "As a worker my metric is first and foremost about the worker."

The workers don’t vanish with the business. If the government provides enough relief these workers can organize around a new business that provides a similar service (maybe even buying the intellectual property and/or branding from the bankrupt estate) under a completely new leadership. Or if the business isn’t actually providing anything useful (like many on this thread are suggesting is the case with facebook) then these workers are probably better off finding new jobs (after being compensated from the failing business).

Facebook is extremely rich, facebook can afford to break apart their business and give part of it to those 11,000 workers. Heck facebook can even afford to keep those 11,000 workers earning 6 digits while being tasked with doing nothing. In either case, it would be in the interest of the worker. What is not in the interest of a worker is having a leadership that makes bad decisions, wastes the time of the workers, and then lays them off. This kind of behavior should not be rewarded.

I can only, as charitably as possible, interpret that as a confirmation that bankruptcy is preferred.

> The workers don’t vanish with the business. If the government provides enough relief these workers can organize around a new business

Starting from scratch is rarely an efficient, or possible, solution, especially anything with IP involved.

> after being compensated from the failing business

Were they not compensated for their time during employment? Wouldn't being compensated for the failing business require knowing the future? I'm not asking this negatively, I'm just trying to understand perspective. Have you ever worked for a startup, or been involved in a small/medium business that's not-yet profitable?

I think you would find extreme risk aversion in a system implemented like you describe, if the only option were continuous success or quick failure. Are there any areas of the world that prefer bankruptcy over headcount reduction, where we could look at the statistics?

You'd have to prove negligence, which is practically impossible in this case - he bet on some technology, it didn't work out, that happens thousands of times all over. Also, I know this is not something you'd like to hear, but you are not entitled to be employed at any particular firm, and company owner does not owe you a fiduciary duty to continue your employment. Also, FB employees hardly could complain about being treated poorly - I heard 500k+ compensation packages for engineers aren't out of the ordinary there. Tell it to somebody who works in a factory for 50k and see if they would think you were mistreated, after earning more in you short while than some earn in their whole life.

> similar how a shareholder can sue for lost profits.

Only if there's negligence or fraud, which you have about zero chance to prove in this case.

> But honestly a business leader that screws up so bad, should probably loose all their wealth, like 100%.

Would you agree to lose 100% of you money each time you make a mistake? If not, why should he?

Right but that’s got nothing to with consequences. You’re annoyed that the consequence is… the consequence. Instead of what? Some abstract punitive ideal?

I mean if you have one billion and you lose half you are not a billionaire any more?

You are correct on technicality, but you know I was speaking generally. Even so, a millionaire that still has 500 millions after they seriously screw up, still has a ton of money and power. The consequence is still minuscule next to me loosing half my money.

A real consequence would be them loosing everything except 5000 USD

What specific consequence would you expect him to bear? It's not like there's any meaningful financial consequence that he would actually feel. He ain't gonna know what food insecurity or the specter of medical bankruptcy feels like. Should he impose some consequence on himself, like he only gets to spend $1 million on leisure over the next year?

Maybe he could see that these people all receive the same salary they did at Facebook until they can find another job? No idea how the math would work out on that, but that seems to be the kind of "taking responsibility" that would actually be meaningful.

In a case like this, I don't think the point should be whether Zuckerberg "would actually feel" a consequence: it should be whether the people getting laid off—as in, the ones who were wronged—can feel it.

I’m not really sure what you mean. If Facebook keeps paying them indefinitely that’s just…not doing a layoff.

> Maybe he could see that these people all receive the same salary they did at Facebook until they can find another job?

If you mean unlimited, this seems like an unreasonable expectation. FB employees receive a 4 month severance package, 4 months should be plenty of time to find a job for a developer/office worker.

I read 4 months of severance, plus 2 weeks per year of service (likely up to a maximum?), 6 months of health insurance paid, plus job placement services from a 3rd-party vendor.

That's more than fair.

Actually they explicitly said uncapped re years of service.

Very generous I'd say.

Extremely generous compared to typical severance packages

The article says 4 months of severance (+2wks/yrs worked) is being paid and medical is covered for 6mo.

>What specific consequence would you expect him to bear?

If your decisions lead to 11,000 people losing their jobs, and you "take responsibility for that", then you should be 11,001.

Edit: Happy to take the down votes, but also happy to have a dialogue around why this might be a flawed take.

I'm no fan of Zuck, but what did he do in this case but create a company that provided a lot of jobs, then made some bad forecasting decisions that resulted in losing some of those jobs?

Plenty of CEOs have blamed the economy, the pipeline, the customers, the competition, the weather, etc. He's accepting he made some decisions that over-extended the company and as a result they have to make difficult layoffs. (Which has happened at every company I've been a part of and is happening at many other companies just in the past week.)

There is always employee turnover in business, this is normal and employees are never guaranteed lifetime employment or the CEO quits too, that's silly. Standard part of all contracts with US companies is an at will clause stating that employees can be terminated at will without reason except for an illegal one. The people losing their jobs should thank Zuck for the time he did employ them, the chance he took on them, and also for the generous severance packages he's giving them during a general economic downturn.

Why? What if your decisions lead to hiring 100k, and -10k in a downturn. Is that a net good or not?

What if you want to hang on, and hope to hire more in the future?

Perhaps instead of Meta paying the severances, Zuck could dip into his massive bank account.

You don't want that, because for market capitalism to work, Meta has to suffer some consequences too.

In theory, by losing 11k jobs, it is.

Perhaps hand over his job to someone that may do a better job out of it.

Responsibility actually is just admitting fault, IMHO. It's accountability that's all about paying the cost for the fault.

Thank you. Saying “my bad” is the first step. Fixing it afterwards is what good people do.

When someone is accused of a crime, they can plead innocent or guilty. That is step one.

There are more steps after that…

For a CEO, the next step is trying to get the business back on track and restore stock price. I think that his crazy to think Zuckerberg will not try to do that.

I've called this the public apology ritual. In the minds of the angry mob, the person is irredeemable and should suffer the worst fate (in our society that might entail being "canceled"... shunned).

They don't WANT to forgive them, or provide them with any redemption. Regardless of the apology, you will use it to push back further. Look for any hole in the apology to point to. If that fails, criticize the apology for being too late, or only to save face... in any case, make sure to proclaim that you're even more angry after the apology.

I'm not saying people should never apologize, but I get sick of this whole routine and all the acting. People will always just do what they want and it will just be based on a knee jerk sense of how much they like you.

I think people are forgetting that a severance package is not a legal requirement, and that this one is actually pretty generous. "I fucked up, here's what I can offer" is more or less what this letter is saying, but it's just not drawing the connection between the two parts in a way that makes sense to people.

People can disagree about whether the package is satisfactory, but that's completely beside the point. The severance package is the make good Zuckerberg is offering: it is an expense his company is paying when they do not have to.

It is the implied answer to the question "Oh yeah? How is he taking responsibility?" Argue about whether it's good enough, but it is an answer.

> Remember a few years ago when people were asking "Why can't people just say they made a mistake and own up to it instead of shifting blame?" Now that people are taking responsibility for mistakes publicly

But they aren't, this isn't “taking responsibility”, this is just following the latest spin doctor trend in public communication.

Taking responsibility for a failure means stepping down.

Admitting mistakes and taking responsibility are two different things. People were calling for the first, not the second.

What they're complaining about is that Zuckerberg can't take responsibility here, it's too late (being responsible would have been gambling less), but he is claiming he will which is more obvious marketing speak (sounds good, doesn't make any sense).

Apologizing means you won't do it again. What steps are being taken so that the situation being apologized for doesn't happen again?

It sounds like you should pay more for developers because we don't have an issue retaining top talent over in the financial space.

> Financial space

Real numbers here: $250k for a mid-level UX designer and $575k (base comp) for an Angular dev. That's expensive. And, depending on the candidate, not worth it.

There's a lot of reality outside of FAANG and finance.

Nothing short of seppuku streamed live via Oculus will redeem the honor of a business guy putting his honest level best effort behind some business things that didn't make as much money as he hoped.