Where's Zuck? Facebook CEO silent as data harvesting scandal unfolds; Guardian, March 19, 2018

Julia Carrie Wong, Guardian; Where's Zuck? Facebook CEO silent as data harvesting scandal unfolds

[Kip Currier: Scott Galloway, clinical professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, made some strong statements about the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal on MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle show yesterday.

Regarding Facebook's handling of the revelations to date:

"This is a textbook example of how not to handle a crisis."

He referred to Facebook's leadership as "tone-deaf management" that initially denied a breach had occurred, and then subsequently deleted Tweets saying that it was wrong to call what had occurred a breach.

Galloway also said that "Facebook has embraced celebrity but refused to embrace its responsibilities". He contrasted Facebook's ineffectual current crisis management to how Johnson & Johnson demonstrated decisive leadership and accountability during the "tampered Tylenol bottles" crisis the latter faced in the 1980's.]

"The chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has remained silent over the more than 48 hours since the Observer revealed the harvesting of 50 million users’ personal data, even as his company is buffeted by mounting calls for investigation and regulation, falling stock prices, and a social media campaign to #DeleteFacebook...

Also on Monday, the New York Times reported that Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, would be leaving the company following disagreements with other executives over the handling of the investigation into the Russian influence operation...

Stamos is one of a small handful of Facebook executives who addressed the data harvesting scandal on Twitter over the weekend while Zuckerberg and Facebook’s chief operating officer, Shery Sandberg, said nothing."

The big problem for Uber now: Attracting talent; Washington Post, June 14, 2017

Elizabeth Dwoskin and Todd C. Frankel, Washington Post; The big problem for Uber now: Attracting talent


[Kip Currier: Uber's ongoing travails provide an illustrative case study for the critical importance of organizational culture and core values. For an upstart start-up company betting the corporate house on developing paradigm-shifting self-driving technology, there's an ironic sense that the leadership and Board were asleep at the steering wheel (or revved up on too many Red Bulls!) for a very long time. Whether Uber can now shift out of "off-roading" bro-culture mode, institute tangible "cultural guardrails", and make lasting transformational change is anyone's guess.]


"Last year, software engineer Elizabeth Ford got what many young engineers in Silicon Valley once considered the dream job pitch: Would she be interested in working at Uber?

Ford was blunt with the Uber recruiter, telling her the company was immoral and asking not to be contacted again. “As an engineer in the Bay Area, I feel we’ve pretty much turned on Uber,” Ford, 27, who works at restaurant start-up Eatsa, said.

On Tuesday, Uber said it would be taking 47 wide-reaching steps to address a recent string of controversies about its anything-goes, cutthroat corporate culture, including allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior — accusations that have made Ford and many other tech workers, particularly women, skeptical of joining the company.

Ford said Tuesday’s actions did not change her views.

“The company still has so much toxicity,” Ford said by e-mail Tuesday evening. “They would need to change everything about their culture and how they operate to make me want to work there."