Mark Zuckerberg: "Please Resign"
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Subject: Please Resign
From: Mark Zuckerberg
To: Facebook staff
Date: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 11:44am
Confidential—Do Not Share
Hey everyone,
Lots of you saw the TechCrunch story over the weekend claiming that we're building a mobile phone. We're not building a phone and I spoke at length at the Q&A on Friday about what we're actually doing—building ways to make all phones and apps more social.
It is frustrating and destructive that anyone here thought is was okay to say this to anyone outside the company. This was an act of betrayal. The fact that the story was inaccurate doesn't make it any better. I've had to personally spend a lot of time over the last few days—as have a lot of other people—cleaning up the damage from this mess. Even now, we're in a more precarious position with companies in the mobile space who should be our partners because they now think we're competitors. They think we're building a phone to compete with them rather than building integrations to make their phones better.
So I'm asking whoever leaked this to resign immediately. If you believe that it's ever appropriate to leak internal information, you should leave. If you don't resign, we will almost certainly find out who you are anyway.
We are a company that promotes openness and transparency, both in the world at large and here internally at Facebook. That's culturally important to us and I'm committed to keeping it. But the cost of an open culture is that we all have to protect the confidential information we share internally. If we don't, we screw over everyone working their asses off to change the world. And leaks like this make everyone a little less willing to share information more broadly and undermine the culture we're fighting to build, especially as we grow. I want people to continue to be able to ask difficult questions at our Q&As and have a strong dialog because they’re confident those discussions will be kept within Facebook.
Let's commit to maintaining complete confidentiality about the company—no exceptions. If you can't handle that, then just leave. We have too much social good to build to have to deal with this.
Mark
[This document is from Facebook’s Little Red Book (2012).]
Previously: Mark Zuckerberg: "speed and strategy" (February 14, 2008)
Previously: "It's a really big deal that we ship this photos app" (September 11, 2011)
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As head of the company I think Mr. Zuckerberg had every right to send out that memo. I think he makes a valid point about confidentiality. That being said I thought his changing the world comment says a lot about how he sees himself - or wants to.
Interesting that this message was shared considering the contents