Facebook was started six years ago. It’s hopes to reach the stock market or a public offering are a long ways away. Some employee of Facebook are giving things like job stability, free food, and the laundry services provided up to branch off and start their own businesses. Of these individuals they are leaving early with big checking accounts. Dustin Moskovitz who was a co-creator of facebook with his roommate has resigned his position at Facebook to start a company called Asana, that assists workers calloboration with new and advanced software. Chris Hughes has also left to start Jumo, which is a social network for “people who want to change the world.” Other employees are leaving to create companies such as Path which is a secret venture and Quora which is a question and answer sight. There are about half a dozen start up internet websites or companies that can be connected to an origin of facebook. This accumulation of funds and starting your own venture after has also occurred with Yahoo, eBay, and Google. The newly formed Facebook society is different from older retirees. These earlier men and women cashed out before resigning their positions. These ex Facebook employees leave before any Initial Public Offering of that companies shares. There is a start exchanges like the Second Market and SharesPost that have allowed shareholders in private companies to trade more easily. The markets are surprisingly liquid. A Russian company bought up to one hundred million dollars in stock from employees and retirees to up its existing stake in facebook. Mr. Moskovitz owns about six percent or about 1.8 billion dollars of facebook. This only consists of a few employees and not a mass exodus. This company also has grown significantly from a few hundred to 1700 today. This makes people want to return to that small business feel as well. Mr. Jacobson was the head of International Business at facebook. He resigned and is now starting a game helping website called PlayHopper. He at 40 is taking a huge risk in opening this company. He and his wife feel it might be a financial suicide. This is a big worry for older employees keeping them with their existing jobs. Many of the young Facebook employees have the potential to work as hard as they can to make their company reach full potential. Many men like Mr. Morin express that almost everyone working at facebook shows potential or advanced entrepreneurial skills. He is currently working on a program called path with twelve other employees. Former and current facebook employees help to set up a network to aid each other with problems and obstacles they may come encounter with. This network is a vas form of resources they can all tap into. Quora created by a former employee launched, but with facebooks power, money, and experience created a similar program that was added to their site a month later. Facebook has tried to limit these conflicts by having employees agree to no-poaching agreements when they resign. “The stakes are higher if you fail” said Mr. Jacobson. This is true because you are going up against a company that can develop that you take two years to develop and develop it in a month. This increases competition and makes their entrepreneurial pursuits very challenging. In the end starting your own company only promotes the growth of our country. Also an idea can take off as facebook has and make you a genius instead of a flop.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/technology/03facebook.html?pagewanted=1&ref=technology
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After reading this blog and its related article, I found it very interesting to hear that a company as large and successful as Facebook was losing employees. After researching a little more about Facebook and its employees, I found that it is rare for employees to stay at a “tech startup” for more than four years, and since Facebook has been in business for more than 6 years now, it isn’t all that unusual that many of its employees are moving on to start their own companies (Gannes). Still, it seems strange that people would not want to continue working for such an evolving technological company that is getting tons of attention from the media as well as everyday users. According to Liz Gannes from gigaom.com, Facebook is an unusual employer because of its ability to stay away from public markets. She notes that employees who leave the company often walk away with confidence from their experience working on “such an influential and widely used product” and therefore, like Mike mentioned, they want to start their own companies. On the contrary, she notes, “others are burned out” whereas some are not happy with the overall management structure.
A past Facebook employee in his low twenties estimated that “about half of the people who joined [Facebook] prior to that employee’s hire date have left the company” (Gannes). Many people noted that Mark Zuckerberg and Kevin Colleran, the company’s first ad sales person, are the longest-tenured Facebookers, while employees who came up with the ideas for tagging photos, Facebook Video, blog posting, and Facebook news feed have all left the company. Many of these people are currently traveling and relaxing, while others are working on new ideas at other companies.
One trait that makes Facebook unique, and could be the reason why most of its employees did not leave immediately after working at the company for only the typical four years, is the fact that many of their employees started there after college and have grown up together. Some of Facebook’s employees, who left college to join the company, are only 24 years old and they are 4-year veterans. Therefore many of them are getting married and have outgrown their old lifestyles, and are ready to move onto another job.
Another reason that some employees leave Facebook is because of their “limited upward mobility as Facebook matured” (Gannes). Most of Facebook’s management team consists of outside hires from companies like Google. Although it was thought that some employees left after Facebook offered them the opportunity to cash out up to $1 million worth of stock options, so there wouldn’t be as much pressure toward an IPO, some insiders have said that “a million dollars…is not the kind of thing a young person could retire on, especially compared to what he or she might be able to receive after an IPO” (Gannes). Therefore, cashing out may not have been the only reason for many employees to leave Facebook.
Although Facebook employees have various reasons to leave the company, it is very rare that they leave to work for the competition (Google or Twitter). It may also be noted that Facebook’s software engineers are paid about $108,800 on average (glassdoor.com), which is way above the average wage of a typical software engineer, who might make anywhere from $52,000-$77,000 (payscale.com). So unless employees are upset about their lack of moving up in the ranks of management, employee salaries are most likely not the only reason they would leave the company.
Technology in general requires a massive amount of change and innovation and it is not uncommon to see this change in their employment as well. Facebook is certainly a prime example of a company that is constantly undergoing this kind of change.
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Facebook-Salaries-E40772.htm
http://gigaom.com/2010/08/16/the-early-facebook-employee-exodus/
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2F_Developer_%2F_Programmer/Salary
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