Facebook is like North Korea, says ex-Facebooker

Technically Incorrect: In his new book, former Facebook product manager Antonio García Martinez says Facebook management got upset if women's skirts were too short.

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

Many younger types imagine Facebook as a nirvana where you skateboard down corridors, code all night long and wait for the money to start rolling in.

The former (and fired) Facebook product manager today released a book called "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley."

A snippet or two had already dribbled out: Martinez describing CEO Mark Zuckerberg as having a near-psychopathic stare, for example.

But now several publications have offered excerpts and interviews with the author that describe Facebook as, oh, let's leave it to his own words.

"We had slogans on the walls, we were all wearing a uniform," he told CBS This Morning. "It all felt very North Korean or Cuban, almost. And so in that moment, I just realized...the motive force in history, which is one egomaniac's twitchy drive and then the common man's desire to be part of a compelling story -- which is what we were, we just were bit players in Zuckerberg's story."

I fancy skateboards are in shorter supply in Kim Jong-un's fiefdom. I also fancy that even gray T-shirts with discreet logos would be frowned upon.

Still, Martinez, who worked for the company between 2011 and 2013, wants to draw your attention to the similarities between Facebook and repressive regimes.

Another article from the Daily Mail that gives a few more details.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3666501/Mark-Zuckerberg-s-hostile-emails-Sheryl-Sandberg-s-Good-News-conference-room-s-wanted-hear-Dress-codes-no-booty-shorts-women-Life-Facebook-exposed.html

A few points:

Antonio Garcia Martinez, a former Facebook advertising manager was fired two years ago.

Martinez says that Facebook's Human Resources told them that the policy on asking co-workers out was that you got one try and if they said no you had to leave it.

(Not an unusual policy at most companies – in fact it is rather tolerant as some companies do not allow employees to ask out or date each other at all. I don’t see anything wrong with a policy that says, “you can ask a co-worker out on a date but if she (or he) says no, let it go.”)

Our male HR authority, with occasional backup from his female counterpart, launched into a speech about avoiding clothing that ‘distracted’ coworkers. “I’d later learn that manager did in fact pull aside female employees and read them the riot act. One such example happened in (advertising) when an intern who looked about 16 coming in regularly in booty shorts.’

(Gee, the horrors! I’ve worked at a few companies with very, very casual dress policies including a tech company. But there are always limits. But let’s be honest – the guys, while they may cross the line into sloppiness (sloppy sweat clothes or gym attire, tee shirts with questionable not work appropriate sayings and logos, etc.) they are usually not the ones dressing sexually provocatively. A gal who comes to work in “booty shorts” or extremely short skirts or with their boobs hanging out, she should be pulled aside and told to dress more appropriately).

Martinez, a former Goldman Sachs trader who had an on-off relationship with the mother of his three children, has his own chauvinistic issues. Martinez admits that he once tried to have sex in a closet on the Facebook campus after getting drunk in the bar on site called ‘Shady Lady’….

(Wow. And Facebook fired him? I wonder why?)

He admits that he had his ‘fair share of scares’ with women nearly getting pregnant after having unprotected sex with many women.

Martinez writes: ‘I was on season four of the show where a tear-filled woman X shows up two weeks after the shag saying she had ‘missed her period’ (sort of in the same way I'd say I ‘missed my bus’).

‘Nothing had ever come of it and after the third showing you just wanted to say: ‘Look, woman, unless you've got a screaming infant in your arms and it looks like me, we have nothing to talk about’.

(What a standup sort of guy. And we are to take his word about what a terrible place Facebook is to work for? /s)

Not every initiative was a success though and when Zuckerberg asked staff to paint the walls of their new office he was furious because after two days the place was covered with obscene drawings. Martinez says the gist of the email Zuckerberg sent round to staff was that ‘I trusted you to create art and what you f*****g did was vandalize the place’.

(And Zuckerberg was wrong here - why?)

According to Martinez Zuckerberg was obsessed with secrecy. When one employee leaked details about a new product launch Zuckerberg responded by sending a chilling email round to every single worker with the subject line: ‘Please resign’.

The email was designed to cause alarm to anyone who received it - in this case the whole company.

Zuckerberg was so angry at the employee who leaked details about the new product that he 'excoriated' the individual in the message - attacking the person for his or her 'base moral nature' and how he/she had 'betrayed the team'.

The book says: 'The moral to this story, a parable of a prodigal son but with an unforgiving father, was clear: F*** with Facebook and security guards would be hustling you out the door like a rowdy drunk at a late night Taco Bell'.

(OMG! You mean that if you leak confidential, proprietary company information, trade secrets, details of product launches before they are made public, etc. and you violate the confidentiality agreement that you signed as part of your employment agreement, that you shouldn’t be fired and escorted out by security? How terrible. /s FWIW at just about every company I’ve ever worked for, if I had done that, I’d be fired too and escorted out by security. That’s not an “obsession with secrecy” but rather standard business practices.)

The day that an employee joined Facebook is called their ‘Faceversary’ and is marked by celebrations akin to how Christians celebrate the day they are baptized.

(I could be wrong but I don’t know of any Christian sects that officially recognizes and celebrates the day they are baptized. I have however worked for many companies that recognize employment anniversaries, usually in 5-10-20 year increments, often with a plaque and or a luncheon, a cake, etc. That doesn’t make it cult like environment or akin to North Korea.)

Staff were expected to work 20 hour plus days, Martinez claims, and eat all their meals at the cafeteria, which developed to cater for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

(Not all that unusual in the tech world, especially for startups or a company launch new products or an IPO. Most people going to work for one knows that it is a pressure cooker environment and very long hours is expected and comes with the job. Heck, when I worked for a publically traded pharmaceutical in the Finance department, and it was understood that there would be times when long hours were expected – quarter end, fiscal year end, calendar year end, I put in some near 20 hour days sometimes. And I would have been happy if the company provided us with free meals in a company cafeteria but they didn’t - we were lucky if our boss even ordered in pizza for us.)

you know what I do when I have a job I don’t like???

Be an a-hole, get yourself fired and then hawk a tell all book and compare your former boss to the leader of North Korea?

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