Noah Kagan, an early Facebook employee, may have only worked for Mark Zuckerberg for nine months, but he says that brief stint taught him a lot about Zuckerberg’s management style.
“I was employee #30 at Facebook. Then I was fired,” Kagan wrote in a statement. an X post Tuesday, before launching into what he called the “10 non-obvious lessons” he learned from Zuckerberg.
Kagan joined Facebook as a product manager in 2005, the same year Zuckerberg left Harvard University to run the company full time. Since then, Zuckerberg has established himself as one of the most successful technology executives in the world.
I was employee #30 at Facebook. Then I got fired.
Today, I am the CEO of a $100 million company.
10 Non-Obvious Lessons I Learned Working Directly Under Mark Zuckerberg: pic.twitter.com/uPGrc5aq6V
– Noah Kagan (@noahkagan) May 7, 2024
But if Kagan’s account is to be believed, Zuckerberg already had a pretty clear idea of what his management style should be.
The Facebook founder, Kagan said, was very obsessed with recruiting “A players” to work for him at Facebook, from the early days.
“Mark would only hire people he would be happy to work for,” Kagan wrote. “Even our customer support team was made up of Harvard Ph.D.s”
In fact, Zuckerberg’s fixation on maintaining a strong talent pipeline meant that he was just as quick to get rid of those who didn’t meet his expectations.
“Hire faster, fire faster,” Kagan said of Zuckerberg’s approach to talent management.
“My boss was fired the day I started. My next boss was fired a month later. I was fired after 9 months,” Kagan continued. “Mark was keen to keep only the A players.”
A stint on Facebook from November 2005 to June 2006 is listed on Kagan’s LinkedIn profile, and he also wrote about his firing on his blog and in an ebook.
In his ebook, Kagan said he was fired after making several mistakes, including leaking Facebook’s expansion plans to a TechCrunch reporter and turning in poor work.
Representatives for Kagan and Zuckerberg did not immediately respond to a BI request for comment sent outside of normal business hours.
Kagan’s experience shows how remarkably consistent Zuckerberg has been when it comes to leading the social media giant.
For starters, Zuckerberg continues to do everything in his power to recruit top talent for Meta.
Last March, The Information reported that Zuckerberg was recruiting artificial intelligence researchers for Meta with personal emails.
And it’s not just about recruiting. Zuckerberg is still willing to downsize Meta in an attempt to make it a leaner, more agile organization.
In November 2022, Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees, with Zuckerberg declaring a few months later that 2023 would be an “efficiency year” for the company.
“I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managers managing, managers managing, managing the people who do the work,” Zuckerberg told employees in January 2023.
businessinsider
