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A SNAPSHOT VIEW OF…
THE AMAZING TALENT MANAGEMENT
PRACTICES AT FACEBOOK
ERE Chicago September 18, 2013
© Dr John Sullivan
1www.drjohnsullivan.com v2
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I’m from the Silicon Valley…
so I will move fast
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Why pay attention to Facebook?
6 quick reasons
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#1 - Realize that you must keep up with the shift in talent management strategy!
PwC 16th annual global CEO survey
So to remain competitive… if must update your current strategy
#2 - Simply the best employer
Ranked the # 1 employer by Glassdoor.com (2013)
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Which firms have the most productive workforce?
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Who’s employees in this industry produce the most?IBM HP AmazonFacebookMicrosoft Google Apple
#3 – How productive are Facebook employees?
Comparing employee productivity (rev. per employee) Average $208,000IBM $221,100 (22% above the average)HP $348,300 (66% above the average)Amazon $756,200 (3.5 times the average)Microsoft $808,600 (4 times the average)Google $1,014,600 (5 times the average)Facebook $1,325,000 (6 times the average)Apple $2,327,000 (11 times the average)Key learning - It takes 5 X more employees at IBM… to produce the same revenue as Facebook (Calculated using 7/2013 data from http:// www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+revenue+per+employee ) 7
#4 - The top rated CEO
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#1 CEO with 99% of employees agreeing with the way he is leading the firm
Source Glassdoor.com 9 / 13
#5 - Amazing business results
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An amazing business track record They gained 1 billion global customers Maintained a dominant market share (competitors?) Produce continuing profitability And recently, a well performing stock price They made the shift from a web PC platform to
a mobile platform in less than 2 years They have maintained these results despite CEO
without a lack of a college degree, not a single course in leadership or a year of experience as an executive
#6 – The world’s most compelling business case
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Whether you agree with spending the money on all of these unique benefits and programs or not… see if after the end of this presentation if you don’t agree with my premise that…
Facebook’s (along with Google) talent managers put together a world class business case to get funding for all of these features
Most get it wrong… their benefits and offerings are not recruiting features
All of these features, programs and benefits are designed for one of these 6 reasons:1. Allowing employees to do the best work of their life2. For more uninterrupted time for innovation3. To increase employee & firm impact on the world4. Increased collaboration by serendipitous meetings5. To provide a story a day6. For retentionThese features are not expensive… but failing tooffer them would be!
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WOW features that give their employees choices
A new employee is trusted
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6 week on-boarding boot camp with a choice They send new hires key paperwork to complete
before they start Every new hire goes through 6 weeks before they
are placed They get a mentor The entire time they work on real team projects
with access to the complete computer code “Bootcampers choose the team they will join at
the end”
Self-directed internal movement
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Hackamonth self-directed movement Getting approval to move to a new job at most
firms is a complex and drawn out process Their Hackamonth process is a self-directed
process It allows employees that have worked on a project
for 1 year to select their own next project team and after working with them for a month
If they like it, they can stay This frequent movement between teams
increases… best practice sharing, learning and facilitates cross-team cooperation
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WOW features: They don’t just have free food,
they have amazing food
What is required to increase innovation?
Facebook matches Google’s formula for increasing innovation
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Innovation = Discovery + Collaboration +Fun!
Source: K M World Magazine Webinar 2008
Some quick examples of Facebook fun and collaboration >
Amazing food builds their employer brand
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Free ice cream is a life-changing experience Google is famous for it’s free food, however
Facebook has the most compelling food What could be more attractive than a free ice
cream store and a bakery. A dozen varieties of ice cream, low-fat yogurt, milkshakes, sundays, as well as cakes, pies and the absolutely essential cookies, all unlimited and for free
After only one visit, I classified this as the #1 most compelling employee feature on the planet!
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Game over! – Can you compete with this?
Amazing food builds their employer brand
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Free barbecue Facebook’s open-pit barbecue is compelling
because the smoke from the barbecue waffles throughout the campus
A global array of food keeps employees on campus for 3 meals a day (Fresh-baked bread, taco bar, salad bar, pizza, juice bar, sushi bar, espresso bar, burgers and French and vegan food)
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Food – Can you match a BBQ smokehouse?
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Food – 24/7 snacks and junk food in every building
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Can you match Facebook on it’s number of bars?
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Their physical space encourages openness,
collaboration and innovation
The campus design encourages collaboration and innovation
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The campus design encourages collaboration
No meeting Wednesday provides uninterrupted timeThe firm informally emphasizes avoiding
meetings on WednesdayThis midweek break assures that engineers have
at least one complete day where their stream of thought won’t be interrupted
And to add flexibility, many employees use Wednesday as a work at home day when they need it
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The campus design encourages collaboration and innovation
The open floor plan encourages collaborationTheir campus design may even surpass Google’s in
creating openness, collaboration and innovationBecause the message is clearly openness, you
won’t find a lot of keep out signs or locked doors
Rather than offices or cubicles, simple tables There are treadmill desks alsoStanding desks are now standard issue, and their
openness allows everyone to easily see and hear a dozen coworkers > 26
A standing desk
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The campus design encourages collaboration
Despite being a social media firm, Facebook is a “come to work” cultureWith a 100% online product, you would think
Facebook would encourage work from homeBut like Google, Apple, Yahoo they say… “come
to work”In a culture where continuous rapid innovation is
the lifeblood…. the data simply shows that face-to-face interaction is the driver of collaboration
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Is your employee commute collaborative and productive?
Free Wi-Fi shuttle up to 60 miles each wayThe firm also offers free train passes, van pools
and of course auto parking29
They love bikes
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Few firms treat bicyclists better than Facebook because it has a bike commuting program and a manned full-service bike shop on campus!
The campus design encourages collaboration
Working out and play are both easyAn on-site fitness centerAlso a videogame room, a movie theater, a
skateboard course and free bicyclesThe campus is located right on San Francisco
bay, so it has a beautiful walking and biking path with a breathtaking view >
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Video games for collaboration and fun
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Why do they and Google both have full woodshops?
To get employees in the habit of building things
The campus design encourages a focus on work
No need to leave campus for personal needsEmployees enjoy free wash-and-fold laundry
services and dry cleaningAn on-site doctor’s office, acupuncturist and
chiropractorA 1950’s style barbershop
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Working late is easy at Facebook with 24/7 technology access
Every building has it’s own IT supply and repair
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Their corporate culture focuses on speed and risk-
taking
Speed is essential quotes
Speed means… “Move fast and break things” Because speed is critical to being first to
market, management proactively encourages speed
Facebook’s most prominent slogans is “move fast and break things”
“If you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough”
“We’re less afraid of making mistakes than we are of losing opportunities”
“Done is Better than Prefect”38
Facebook says move fast
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Boldness is part of the culture
“Be Bold” and take risks
“The riskiest thing is to take no risks”
“In a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks”
They also tell their employees to “Fail harder”
And “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
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A focus on excellence in recruiting
WOW recruiting
Quantifying the value of recruiting top employees Facebook has determined that when recruiting,
“Engineers are worth…half a million to one million” (each) (Vaughan
Smith) When a single engineer is worth $1 million, you
strongly invest in recruiting and you certainly don’t focus on the relatively miniscule cost per hire that it takes to hire them
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WOW recruiting
Acqui-hiring is a unique corporate practice I haven’t found a single firm that can match
Facebook’s signature practice of acqui-hiring
Acquiring the firm may be the only way to capture “startup / hacker mentality talent” and “intact teams” where the captured employees wouldn’t normally consider applying at a large corporation
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WOW recruiting
Obviously they can’t require a college degreeBecause their obviously successful CEO is a
college dropout, “It would be weird for us to require a college degree”
So instead their recruiting focus is “If you can build awesome stuff and have big impact, that’s all we’re really looking for”
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WOW recruiting
Contest recruiting reveals “what you can build” Facebook relies heavily on anonymous Internet
technical contests to find hidden or “nonobvious” talent from around the world
Contests like the “Facebook hacker cup” allows them to hire the “winners” “based on the problems they can solve and what they can build”
They also participate in external coding contests including TopCoder and Kaggle
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WOW recruiting
Hackathon college recruitingEach year Facebook visits more than a dozen
college campuses where they challenge self-selected teams to come up with solutions to real technical problems
The finalists are brought to the Facebook headquarters for “Camp Hackathon”… where their solutions are judged and the winners get a small prize and an offer of a summer internship
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WOW recruiting
Employee referral “Ninja Hunts” Facebook, like most other Silicon Valley firms,
relies heavily on employee referrals
Ninja is their name for an exceptional engineer
For generating names, they use “Ninja Hunts”, which are sessions where recruiters ask Facebook employees to think about all their friends
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WOW recruiting
Their CEO as their chief recruiter Most organizations dream of having their CEO
occasionally involved in recruiting but Mark Zuckerberg takes it to the next level
He assumes the role of chief recruiter by periodically publicly talking about the firm and visiting college campuses in order to directly attract potential recruits
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WOW recruiting
Overall recruiting and retention successMark Zuckerberg recently stated that “We're
doing really well against the hiring goals that we have”
My sources also tell me that Facebook has been able to protect their staff from raiding, resulting in a low single digit turnover rate
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Unique economic rewards and employee benefits
Their rewards and perks get your attention
Rewards are based on performance Employee rewards are differentiated, based on
performance and the feedback results from their comprehensive 360° process
The reward differential can be up to 300% between a bottom and top performer at the same level
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Their rewards and perks get your attention
An opportunity for wealth Although they offer competitive salaries, their
prime economic incentive is offering restricted stock units (RSU’s)
These keep employees focused on producing business results
However the opportunity for wealth still exists because the stock now exceeds the IPO level and it’s value has been growing at a rapid rate (the firm is now valued at over $100 billion)
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Their rewards and perks get your attention
Amazing benefits for new parents Facebook offers close-in reserved parking
spaces for those that are pregnant
Also “four months paid parental leave”
Reimbursement for some daycare and adoption
fees
And $4,000 of “baby cash” for a new arrival”
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Their rewards and perks get your attention
Facebook offers unlimited sick days There is no better way to demonstrate your trust
in your employees than to offer them unlimited sick days
Facebook also offers 21 days of paid time off each year
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Unique approaches for managing employees
Their management approaches are unique
Employees are motivated by having an impactEmployees at Facebook are motivated by knowing
that they can have a high-impact
So engineering staffing levels are purposely set to maximize the direct impact that an individual engineer has on customers (over 1 million customers per engineer)
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Their management approaches are unique
A manager job is not a promotion At most technology firms, engineers strive to
become managers primarily because they desire the added pay and prestige
However at Facebook, becoming a manager is a lateral transfer and not a promotion
The only incentive is if you really desire to become a manager in order to make a difference for your team
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Their management approaches are unique
Every new manager gets a mentor and coachTo increase new manager success among mostly
engineers that may have weak people skillsEach new manager is given an internal mentor
for 4 months And an external “strength coach” for 3 monthsFacebook also as an extremely comprehensive
employee feedback program for all managers, team leaders and employees
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Their management approaches are unique
Metric driven decision-making over statusIn many firms, decisions are made based on a
combination of emotions, tenure and rankHowever, because their CEO is a college dropout
who had no formal management experience and training, the title or the education level of the person with the idea means little at Facebook
Instead they pride themselves on data-driven decision-making where “code wins arguments” (i.e. whether something works well) and metrics are the basis for most decisions 59
Their management approaches are unique
A project and team based organization is fluidThis is a 100% team environment where most of
the teams are small (usually around 6 but they can be larger up to 30)
Almost everything is done on a project basisAs a result, over a three-year period, an engineer
may work on 3 different teams and have as many as 5 different managers
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Their management approaches are unique
The most casual dress code anywhereIn an organization where the CEO is famous for
wearing only hoodies or t-shirts, if there were to be a dress code, it would be one that discourages “over dressing”
It is obvious that if you are going to impress a coworker, it won’t be through your clothes… so it will have to be through your work
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Transparency and openness are emphasized
Their management approaches are unique
“Be open” Facebook believes that a more open world is a
better worldSo they also believe that openness should also
apply to their company cultureIf you believe that informed people make better
decisions and have a greater impact, it makes sense to ensure that everyone at Facebook… “has access to as much information about the company as possible”
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Their management approaches are unique
Weekly all-hands meetings encourage opennessTheir openness is put to the test each Friday
afternoon when the CEO makes himself available in an open to all employees meeting
During it, the CEO listens to ideas and he answers all questions from the employees
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Unique practices for solving major corporate problems
Unique approaches for solving corporate problems
Hackathon problem solving sessionsThe goal of Hackathons is to build something
that is not your “day job”Which are 8 hour employee driven large group
problem-solving sessions that begin in the mid-evening and don’t end till the wee morning hours
They aren’t just brainstorming sessions, they are required to end with a rough prototype
Products and features including the Like thumb, comment tagging, timeline, chat, Facebook videos and their photo product came initially from these sessions 66
Unique approaches for solving corporate problems
"Project Mayhem" When Facebook realized that Hackathons didn’t
provide enough time to solve the complex problems found on the mobile platform… they experimented with “Project Mayhem” sessions
Which begin at 11 a.m. one day and continue until 2 p.m. the next day (27 hrs.)
At its conclusion, engineers get three minutes to pitch their ideas on stage at a prototype forum
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Unique approaches for solving corporate problems
War rooms for the sprint to the shipping dateFor teams that are entering the “sprint to ship”
phase of a significant project, a dedicated war room can be set up for them
Some even have a countdown clock, so that everyone knows that they must deliver
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