> ”By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang writes in a memo seen by Axios.
That's kinda wild. I'm kinda shocked they put it in writing.
My leadership is currently promoting "better to ask forgiveness", or put another way: "a bias towards action". There are definitely limits on this, but it's been helpful when dealing with various internal negotiations. I don't spend as much time looking to "align with stakeholders", I just go ahead and do things my decades of experience have taught me are the right paths (while also using my experience to know when I can't just push things through).
You can't innovate without taking career-ending risks. You need people who are confident to take career-ending risks repeatedly. There are people out there who do and keep winning. At least on the innovation/tech front. These people need to be in the driver seat.
Its not the job of employees to bear this burden - if you have visionary leadership at the helm, they should be the ones absorbing this pressure. And thats what is missing.
The reality is folks like Zuck were never visionaries. Lets not derail the thread but a) he stole the idea for facebook b) the continued success of Meta comes from its numerous acquisitions and copying its competitors, and not from organic product innovation. Zuckerberg and Musk share a lot more in common than both would like to admit.
It depends what you want to optimize for.