- Mark Zuckerberg shared advice that a former Yahoo COO gave him as he was launching Facebook.
- Dan Rosensweig said, "every organization sucks, but you get to choose the ways in which your organization sucks."
- Zuckerberg shared the advice with podcaster Tim Ferriss during a chat about Meta's core values.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently shared advice that ex-Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig gave him when he was growing Facebook and first learning how to run a company.
"He told me this thing that will always stick with me, which is that, 'every organization sucks, but you get to choose the ways in which your organization sucks,' which is maybe the most negative possible way of putting it, but I think it's basically, if you want to move fast on certain dimensions, you can, but you only get a few things like that," Zuckerberg told author and podcaster Tim Ferriss during his program, "The Tim Ferriss Show."
Zuckerberg interpreted that advice to mean that he could choose only about five areas, such as core values like "build awesome things," to prioritize and focus the business around.
Zuckerberg described Rosensweig, who left Yahoo in early 2007 and is now the CEO of Chegg, as a "great person."
Ferriss' hour-and-a-half-long interview with the Meta exec spanned a wide range of topics, including the company's metaverse vision and its revamped core values, like "move fast" — a shortened version of its infamous "move fast and break things" motto.
Other updated values include "Live in the Future," an apparent nod to the rise of decentralized technologies, and "Meta, Metamates, and Me," a reference to a naval adage meaning to put your company and coworkers before yourself.
Zuckerberg unveiled the new values in February and said it was famed scholar Douglas Hofstadter who came up with the term metamates after an employee emailed him for ideas following the company's rebrand to Meta.
"So internally I felt like if Douglas Hofstadter thinks we should be Metamates, then who am I to disagree with that?" Zuckerberg told Ferriss during his show.