Tales of Silicon Valley Management Method: Perceived Cruelty
February 21, 2025
A dinobaby post. No smart software involved.
I read an interesting write up. Is it representative? A social media confection? A suggestion that one of the 21st centuries masters of the universe harbors a Vlad the Impaler behavior? I don’t know. But the article “Laid-Off Meta Employees Blast Zuckerberg for Running the Cruelest Tech Company Out There As Some Claim They Were Blindsided after Parental Leave” caught my attention. Note: This is a paywalled write up and you have to pay up.
Straight away I want to point out:
- AI does not have organic carbon based babies — at least not yet
- AI does not require health care — routine maintenance but the down time should be less than a year
- AI does not complain on social media about its gradient descents and Bayesian drift — hey, some do like the new “I remember” AI from Google.
Now back to the write up. I noted this passage:
Over on Blind, an anonymous app for verified employees often used in the tech space, employees are noting that an unseasonable chill has come over Silicon Valley. Besides allegations of the company misusing the low-performer label, some also claimed that Meta laid them off while they were taking approved leave.
Yep, a social media business story.
There are other tech giants in the story, but one is cited as a source of an anonymous post:
A Microsoft employee wrote on Blind that a friend from Meta was told to “find someone” to let go even though everyone was performing at or above expectations. “All of these layoffs this year are payback for 2021–2022,” they wrote. “Execs were terrified of the power workers had [at] that time and saw the offers and pay at that time [are] unsustainable. Best way to stop that is put the fear of god back in the workers.”
I think that a big time, mainstream business publication has found a new source of business news: Employee complaint forums.
In the 1970s I worked with a fellow who was a big time reporter for Fortune. He ended up at the blue chip consulting firm helping partners communicate. He communicated with me. He explained how he tracked down humans, interviewed them, and followed up with experts to crank out enjoyable fact-based feature stories. He seemed troubled that the approach at a big time consulting firm was different from that of a big time magazine in Manhattan. He had an attitude, and he liked spending months working on a business story.
I recall him because he liked explaining his process.
I am not sure the story about the cruel Zuckster would have been one that he would have written. What’s changed? I suppose I could answer the question if I prowled social media employee grousing sites. But we are working on a monograph about Telegram, and we are taking a different approach. I suppose my method is closer to what my former colleague did in his Fortune days reduced like a French sauce by the approach I learned at the blue chip consulting firm.
Maybe I should give social media research, anonymous sources, and something snappy like cruelty to enliven our work? Nah, probably not.
Stephen E Arnold, February 21, 2025
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