Why an ex-employee says being a product manager at Facebook was more stressful than being a startup CEO
Photo by Jeremiah Rogers
In his new book "Chaos Monkeys" he details his experience bouncing from Wall Street to the tech world, where he was founder and CEO of a YCombinator-backed ad-tech startup which he eventually sold to Twitter.
But instead of joining his cofounders there, he ditched for Facebook, where he became its first ads targeting product manager.
It was spring 2011, about a year before the company's IPO. He stayed for roughly two years before getting let go in 2013.
"Working at Facebook at the time was more stressful than being at a startup," Martínez said during a recent Q&A session following a book reading in San Francisco.
"At a startup, you raise money once, and you do your thing for a year, and you succeed or fail. At Facebook, you're raising money every week. Every week I had to convince [my boss] that my project was worth doing. And if it wasn't, it got killed. It was actually more stressful."
In his book, Martínez highlighted the particular toughness of being an ads guy during a period where Facebook didn't really know what it was doing. In that division, Facebook's enormous scale worked against you.
"It was clear from [my boss's] management ethos, which was essentially 'Go big or go home,' that we were being tasked with finding the one breakout product, À la Google AdWords, that would completely change Facebook's fortunes," he writes.
"Given Facebook's revenues, which were already huge (remember: a billion times anything . . .), it was very difficult to make a dent in the income statement with any product."
If he, or another teammate, suggested an idea that would generate $20 million in revenue, no one would be impressed.
"That would be an awesome sum in a startup, as again would be fifty million users for your product right out of the gate," he writes. "But it was nothing in a scheme of $2 billion in annual revenues, and not worth the effort to get off the ground."
You can find Martínez's book here.
- I got a $40K raise using this 30-second strategy. It made me realize loud work, not hard work, always wins.
- Qatar Airways' new CEO explains why it's sticking with the Airbus A380 as other airlines retire the costly superjumbo
- Prince Harry and Meghan found out about Kate Middleton's cancer diagnosis on TV like everyone else, report says
- Fresh photographs of Milky Way’s black hole Sgr A* reveal strong, twisted magnetic field similar to M87*
- 8 Lesser-known places to explore in Himachal Pradesh
- Markets end FY24 on buoyant note amid positive global cues
- SRM Contractors IPO allotment – How to check allotment, GMP, listing date and more
- Rupee falls 6 paise to settle at 83.39 against US dollar