[quocanh]

Do people on social media believe that all employees should freely share confidential internal information? Or is it that this is an email from a frustrated person and no one should ever share "bad feelings"? Or is it that CEOs should never be aggressive and "how dare he punish someone who broke the rules"?

Am I crazy for thinking that this is completely reasonable in context?

[oconnor663]

I worked there at the time and got this email when it went out. It was completely reasonable in context. I assume these days, everyone just knows that you can't openly share something within a tech company without it getting leaked, but that change was just starting to happen in 2010 (at least at FB), and everyone could tell something nice was getting lost. C'est la vie.

[mlyle]

> It was completely reasonable in context.

Lighting up everyone's notifications with "From: Mark Zuckerberg Subject: Please resign" has a cost to everyone's quality of life, IMO.

[enahs-sf]

Open rate and read through was probably close to 100% on this one.

[7e]

It’s well known that Zuck is a first class douche.

[p1necone]

The content of the email seems fine to me. The title, which everyone will see first with no context is horrendous though.

[cuteboy19]

I thought it was a mail to Zuckerberg initially

[Eji1700]

The email reads like a tantrum, mostly because of one unneeded paragraph. The employee should be fired but the CEO sending a company wide email blast that boils down to "Quit or we'll find you and fire you" is just....bizarre and immature?

If you change the subject line and cut the 3rd paragraph it comes across as pointless but standard corporate nonsense where they feel the need to reiterate common sense stuff and ignore the fact that most people work for money not ideals, but having such a petty line reeks of playground bullshit.

[busterarm]

It wasn't really "Quit or we'll find you and fire you."

The real threat went unmentioned because it's illegal. It was "Quit or we'll find you and fire you and every other company/startup in SV will know why we fired you."

[User23]

Why would that be illegal in the USA? It's not slander or libel if it's true.

There are plenty of good reasons for companies to not honestly describe bad behavior of former employees, but I don't see that one of them is that it's illegal.

[kimixa]

I don't think it'd be illegal at all.

I think a number of people misunderstand that the reason why a lot of companies have a "Don't talk about why someone left" de-facto policy is because if there's any ambiguity it's probably not worth the cost of having to defend yourself from a possible libel lawsuit, and not that it's against any law.

The cost/benefit of that changes if there's no ambiguity, evidence of truth is after all a good defense against libel charges (in most sane jurisdictions...), and if the reason is "big" enough they may feel obliged to make it known.

[roundandround]

Defamation that questions someone's ability to do their profession is in a special class. You don't want to be the slightest bit wrong about anything in that, i.e. were they misquoted or overheard instead of talking directly to a reporter? Might some employer somewhere who would hire them view any such distinction as different?

Similarly, they leaked data but didn't or he lied and they were entering the phone market? Details wrong could be a long civil case, all the details right could still be a long case.. The only reason to engage in that kind of behavior is to sabotage yourself.

[busterarm]

It's intentional blacklisting.

[ok_computer]

The sentiment is totally ok to think and feel. But it makes you look like an insecure loser to blast the entire directory with you latest grievance.

If you want to project power as a ceo you have the communication task delegated to someone who specializes in company communications and information security.

[dzikimarian]

Honestly I cannot express how much I don't understand this idea.

He has some extremely important message to pass to entire company (failed projects due to lost trust in mobile sector can easily shake company).

Why on earth delegate that and have yet another canned corporate email that will be forgotten 20 minutes later? You can always run content by someone experienced if you want to round up the edges, but if you have something to say to people usually it's best to just say it.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Agree 100%. When I read this sentence "If you want to project power as a ceo you have the communication task delegated to someone who specializes in company communications and information security" I literally had to read it like three times because it seemed so obviously backwards to me I thought I must be missing a negative somewhere.

I hear on HN 99% of the time how folks don't like corporate speak and that they wish leaders were more forthcoming and honest, and here someone is arguing that they just want the corporate-speak version of it. It is completely baffling to me.

[crazygringo]

I don't know.

Corporate leaks are pretty serious, and maintaining a culture of no leaks is a CEO-level priority.

Handling these at the CEO level feels far more appropriate and effective than delegating it to a security specialist nobody's heard of before and whose e-mail will mostly just be ignored.

I don't see "insecure loser" at all, I see a CEO acting correctly to nip a problem in the bud.

Except for the "please resign" subject line which is a bit hyperbolic.

[Nullabillity]

Corporations aren't people and don't (or shouldn't, anyway) have privacy rights.

[crazygringo]

None of this has anything to do with privacy rights.

This is private enforcement of secrets with employees. If you leak company secrets, your in opposition to what you were hired for, and you get fired.

Nobody's arguing the journalist who published the story shouldn't have been legally permitted to.

[yunohn]

Privacy? I’m not sure what you think that means in this context.

[corbulo]

If Corporations weren't people you wouldn't be able to sue them. Read more.

[majormajor]

Corporations aren't the only non-individual entity you can sue, and the ability to sue could be extended separately from other person-like rights or responsibilities (see, for instance, that corporations can't vote).

[red-iron-pine]

The government isn't a person, but I can sue them.

Hell, I could sue companies before the supreme court determined they're people for election campaign fund purposes.

[underwater]

I was at Facebook shortly after this. Zuck was very present in internal comms, regularly posting on the internal Facebook and holding a weekly Q&A. To me it felt transparent and authentic, and I felt aligned with company strategy.

This email was famous, the clickbait subject gave some people a fright, but overwhelmingly people were strongly aligned with the sentiment and spoke about it in a positive way.

Now at another big tech co and I hear from my CEO and CVPs via mainstream news instead of internal channels. I feel very little connection to the culture and have no idea what our strategic direction is.

[ghaff]

Yeah. The head of corporate comms or someone in that chain of command would be very justified in sending something along of the lines of:

This was shared externally from our internal company meeting. I'd like to remind everyone that keeping the information shared in these meetings confidential allows us to be more open with all our employees. etc.

There may be times for the CEO to send the message but, especially at a high visibility company, it's probably inevitable it will become more of a personal thing.

[disgruntledphd2]

Facebook was a much, much, much smaller (like 30-60x) smaller company back then.

[ghaff]

Facebook was still a big company in 2010.

(But I agree that this sort of communication, if not its exact wording, is more appropriate at a smaller company.)

[disgruntledphd2]

Sure, according to Statista (https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-faceboo...) they had 2k employees in 2010.

They now have 70k, so they were 3% of the size back then.

I stand by my point.

[ipaddr]

68k extra employees and facebook of 2010 was better than today.

[ghaff]

Fair enough. I didn't realize they were that relatively small. So I guess my objection is mostly with some of the wording.

[kazinator]

We could discuss whether it is reasonable for an actual leak: information which is accurate in its details, so as for to be vanishingly improbable that it's anything but a leak.

Information that is false isn't a leak; it's rumor anyone could have started, pretending to be a Facebook insider. Someone could have forged an e-mail, which someone else believed and so it goes.

You can't simultaneously say that it's a fabrication, and imply that it's a real leak by calling for someone to be let go.

Everyone who received the e-mail would have first seen the subject line "Please Resign" and that it's from Zuckerberg, before seeing that it has many recipients. That doesn't seem very reasonable, even in case of an actual leak.

[klyrs]

My line is drawn at bona fide business concerns. Sharing details about an upcoming product is a hard no in my book, unless that product is illegal to the point that whistleblower protections would apply. But this response where Zuck is flipping out (and sent everybody an email with the heart-stopping subject line of "please resign")? It's borderline, in my mind -- I wouldn't share it, personally, but it doesn't seem particularly wrong that it was shared.

[barrysteve]

It makes sense to address information leaks in an a cc:all email. And it makes sense to give the leaker a polite way out of an awkward and difficult position by suggesting they resign quietly. The email tries to command the employee to leave or face consequences. Offering the employee the option to leave (as a way to avoid implied consequence) is better.

The CEO calling it 'an act of betrayal', appealing to the social good and appealing to building a company culture, is an admission to my ears that company structure and his authority is not his primary concern.

The CEO already has the authority to remove someone/everyone for this behaviour, so the appeals to the good and to not betray a personal relationship with Mark Zuckerberg himself or cultural connection that Mark wants, just ring hollow. If the leaker-employee sees benefit in revealing secrets to the public, losing the relationship to a billionaire he's never going to meet, or cutting down a company culture he is willing to lose, is not a deterrent.

Setting up a tone and example for future leakers, is better done by establishing the reaction authority will have to the behaviour in the future.

[happytoexplain]

You're using a lot of absolutes ("all", "ever", "never"). You're implying there are a few absolute positions, but, as commenters have pointed out, that's not the case (it never really is).

You're not crazy for thinking it's reasonable in context, but it's also not crazy to disagree with you.

[yowzadave]

> Let's commit to maintaining complete confidentiality about the company—no exceptions. If you can't handle that, then just leave.

It's like a teacher dressing down the entire class for something one student did. A single person at the company made this fireable offense. Why is he treating the rest of them like naughty children? Especially since he's so sure he'll be able to catch the guilty party. Catch the person who did it, send a professional email to the rest of the company reminding them that leaking confidential info will get you fired. Treat the adults in your company like adults.

[woodruffw]

It’s reasonable to not want your employees to share internal information. It’s perhaps less reasonable to put an entire company on blast because one person violated that expectation.

[mi_lk]

I also would like to know what's interesting about this email that makes OP want to share?

[baxtr]

No you’re not. I also think it’s not ok to share confidential internal info.

[kadoban]

It's not too bad of an email. It probably could be done a lot better, but whatever.

It's a shitty, insensitive, email subject line though. Many people are going to see that and have a very negative reaction.

[DiggyJohnson]

What would you suggest the subject line should have been?

[happytoexplain]

I'm not sure what you're getting at. It's only the subject line the parent is referring to. There are practically infinite possible choices for a relevant subject line on any topic, with varying degrees of specificity and tone. Zuckerberg chose super-low-specificity, super-high-negativity. It reads to varying degrees as impetuous, petty, vindictive, ominous, drunk on power, and emotionally retarded (in my personal opinion). It's also unfortunately not terribly surprising/rare in situations like these.

[kadoban]

Even something as crap as "to the leaker: please resign" would be infinitely better. At least that won't give the entire recipient list a heart attack.

[ravagat]

General population/society has become soft and promotes freely sharing confidential internal information to solicit outrage and/or support. Back then this wasn't the case

[coding123]

Not a bad email at all in my opinion. I don't see how it's much different for other companies and leaks.

I think the snowflakes probably arrived, what 2015?

[happytoexplain]

Just because certain behaviors are common among CEOs, doesn't mean those behaviors have no elements that can be criticized (i.e. "everybody does it" does not equate to "good"). Also, "snowflake" is pretty meaningless by now. In most cases, it's simply used as a synonym for, "people I hate."

[Nullabillity]

You're off by about a decade, Zuckerberg was there from the start.

[stephc_int13]

I think this is ridiculous and borderline sociopathic.

The signal Mark Zuckerberg is sending is that it is OK for a manager to be a bully "in the interest of the company".

No it is not.

[capitalsigma]

We're not talking here about being overly critical in a code review, or even criticizing someone who pushed bugs to prod. This is someone who intentionally violated company policy in a way that harms everyone who works there. It is not business as usual. Getting mad about this sort of thing is like getting mad about somebody keying your car or spreading false rumors about you: entirely reasonable and justified and not an interaction where professionalism is expected.

[stephc_int13]

I disagree.

The lack of professionalism, in this example, is the menacing email.

Of course there are rules to follow when working for a company, and some degree of loyalty is naturally expected.

But this kind of email is completely unwarranted, there is no need for this tone.

[deltree7]

If this triggers you, Please resign.

Sometimes corporations face tough intense competition, where margins are pressured and products need to be shipped or media/government/bad actors go on a propaganda. If you can't handle that please join a steady, stable electric company or join the government.

[stephc_int13]

I would clearly not work for a FAANG, ever, for many reasons, including the risk of awful bosses/managers.

Last time I had an awful boss I triggered him on purpose to get fired.

As they used to say in the Mafia, the fish rots from the head, I think that Facebook/Meta is such an horrible company because of Zuck.