Mark Zuckerberg messages Facebook engineer | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg messages Facebook engineer

twitter.com

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

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

I prefer the Nitter mirror

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

Why support a workaround-hack for a dying platform instead of a well working alternative that many shift towards already?

Because some people don't agree with your biased characterization.

The workaround service is called "xcancel.com", I think the characterization is there already.

Is it biased to call him a racist? A Neo-Nazi? Personally, I don't want to be associated with or provide help to that.

I prefer the nitter.net instance, it doesn't have any JS-only captchas.

I dislike twitter just as much as the next guy, but i was able to read the conversation without logging in. EU exit point here. Maybe that plays a role?

having to click through each single image is quiet the turn-off though. not missing the platform

I want to reward people for posting on Bluesky instead. If they get more engagement on Bluesky, it'll motivate them to move.

From the EU here, I had to login to read everything.

I can see the first post on Twitter, but nothing else. Also in the EU. It seems to be fairly random, really. Probably best to go with a fully working social network where available for this sort of post.

nevermind. turns out someone else had logged into twitter and forgot to log out. i didn't notice because i haven't been using the site in ages. please ignore my initial comment

As much as I hate Twitter I was unable to read this @ Bluesky at my iPhone 13 Mini because left/right arrows covered words, this is a mobile design straight from the mid 00s. So bad.

Thank you for linking this

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.

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

Yeah, I've seen this one before but it never ceases to amuse me.

i think it was more a reference to their (old) welcome page https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-facebook-social-network-in...

I dont think one could reason that. Maybe some insight: The author is an engineer and had worked at Google and published the Goomics strip internally. It is also available at https://goomics.net/62

PS: Later he worked at Twitter and commented that also: https://twittoons.com/

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.

Oh yeah 100%, me too!

that's so weird, I would be honest; it wouldn't even occur to me not to be. maybe that's why I never get involved in any internal politics.

I'm not sure it's a bullshit answer at all. They present pros and cons. Zuck can then take them into consideration, given wider strategic consideration.

Much more useful than "this one".

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.

I completely agree, they answered as you or I would have, or even better; if we were in the same situation!

It’s more interesting that Zuckerberg would ask this, at least to me.

Ah I see — ya I do see the strangeness of a CEO such a big question with so little context

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?

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.

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.

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.

[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."

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

So who was the engineer?

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.

Title needs a date on it

Do we need to continue placing MZ at God Status?

No, how about lord or duke.

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

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.

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

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

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