Facebook Plans to Boost Staff 50% This Year, Zuckerberg Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a5U0NPzBl0EI

by trader • 17 years ago

23 7 17 years ago

mdasen• 17 years ago

That's ambitious. Especially considering that they aren't making money right now. One would think that Facebook would be looking to cut costs rather than take on new costs.

Facebook has some really impressive technology behind them, but they keep expanding in a way that doesn't generate positive revenue. As Facebook becomes more popular, it's likely to need more staff, but at some point it's also just losing more money.

lacker• 17 years ago

they keep expanding in a way that doesn't generate positive revenue

Well, they are looking at $500 million in revenue this year. Sure, their costs are the same order of magnitude, but it's a far cry from not generating revenue.

omouse• 17 years ago

They're generating revenue but have no profit. I think that's what he meant to say :S

mmt• 17 years ago

It will also make them even bigger a company, with even lower talent density.

They have, already, for example, turned into the kind of company where the recruiters are asked to bring in technical candidates with fresh ideas but where the technical interviewers make it clear that conformity is key.

wave• 17 years ago

Is there anyone would like to share his or her experience working at Facebook? Do they have a hacker friendly environment?

timcederman• 17 years ago

I have a friend who works on the sales team, and he loves it there. Says the energy and culture in the company is amazing (I specifically asked him about it a while ago, since it was when there was a lot of talent moving back and forth between Facebook and Google)

Looking at their hiring practices, it appears they are trying to get serious hackers there. Unfortunately I haven't heard great things about the engineering team from other folks, but none directly from an engineer, so treat that as Valleywag level gossip.

9oliYQjP• 17 years ago

I'm still in my 20s, so take my limited business experience with a grain of salt. But every time I've witnessed a company pre-announce an aggressive hiring binge like this, what happened was a hiring surge followed by an equally precipitous exodus less than 18 months after the announcement. It's funny that the article mentions cash flow because the exoduses I have seen have been precisely because cash flow got out of hand with the implementation of the strategy. It's not just salaries that increase. People need places to work so new office space needs to be acquired; the IT infrastructure needs to be updated to accommodate the new hires; people get promoted into positions overseeing the new hires where they prove to be incompetent and this results in wasted labour and duplicated effort; etc. One of the reasons I think such a hiring binge is terrible is because it usually causes forward momentum of the company to slow drastically if not stop entirely. The 12 month transition period where the company is trying to come to terms with everything is a prime opportunity for competitors to pounce and steal away revenue, resulting in cash flow to slow.

Facebook Plans to Boost Staff 50% This Year, Zuckerberg Says

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