Why work at Facebook’s clone factory?
By Eric Newcomer
Product Hunt’s Niv Dror tweeted that not everybody can innovate at two large companies simultaneously. Working some emoji magic, Dror points out that Steve Jobs had Apple and Pixar; Elon Musk has Tesla and SpaceX; Jack Dorsey has Square and Twitter; and Evan Spiegel has Snap … and Facebook.
It was a riff on an incontrovertible meme: Facebook is spending a lot of its time copying Snapchat. Now, Facebook Messenger has a version of Snapchat’s Stories. Facebook-owned WhatsApp already had its own version of Stories. AND Facebook’s Instagram was the first to copy the feature. (Stories are basically clickable slideshows of screen-filling photos with filters. Here’s a handy timeline of Facebook’s Snapchat clones.)
Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said at the time that Snap “deserve all the credit.” Systrom told TechCrunch, “When you are an innovator, that’s awesome. Just like Instagram deserves all the credit for bringing filters to the forefront.” (Editor’s note: Hipstamatic is widely credited with pioneering filters. Instagram clearly won that battle, though.) Systrom continues: “This isn’t about who invented something. This is about a format and how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it.”
They’re spending their time creating knockoffs of somebody else’s work.
Facebook and its billion- and multi-billion-dollar acquisitions have become professional forgers. I’m reluctant to compare Snapchat to a piece of art. I think it’s somewhere between the canvas and painting. The app offers people a unique set of tools with which to express themselves creatively, but those tools themselves seem to be more artfully constructed than a paintbrush. My point is this: I don’t think Facebook is just copycatting metaphorical canvas designs here. They’re spending their time creating knockoffs of somebody else’s work.
Is that particularly satisfying? Why do Facebook’s product managers, designers and software engineers want to spend their time ripping off Snapchat? Go work at Snap. Go somewhere else.
I realize that Facebook has a lot going for it — great food and on-site laundry service. The Glassdoor reviews are glowing. But if I had to spend most of my time chasing after other people’s stories and rewriting them, I’d get sick of that. I’m tempted to list out a bunch of my scoops, but I’m above that. (Editor’s note: He’s not.)
In the spirit of stealing good ideas, I should mention that my colleague Sarah Frier suggested this topic. There are two real reasons we should care about this friendly copying. One, I think it reflects Snap’s core approach. In the company’s S-1, Snap articulates what it thinks is its opportunity thusly:
Our strategy is to invest in product innovation and take risks to improve our camera platform. We do this in an effort to drive user engagement, which we can then monetize through advertising. We use the revenue we generate to fund future product innovation to grow our business.
Basically, Snap needs to keep innovating, or it’ll stop growing. Meanwhile, Facebook seems to have concluded that it needs to be everything to everybody in order to maintain the dominance it already has.
The second reason this matters is that software developers and product managers hold more and more power. Silicon Valley technology companies have to keep their employees happy for fear that they defect to their competitors or to a startup that will one-day unseat them. The way to do that is to keep the challenge interesting. In 2014, Facebook was trying to sell a vision of connecting the world. Now it seems content to copy Snapchat (and to construct a vaguely dystopian community). The necessity of keeping top talent happy is part of the reason why Alphabet’s moonshot factory was so smart, albeit expensive. It keeps the smartest engineers in its orbit and away from its competitors. This is why Uber’s HR troubles could affect the bottom line. This was supposed to be the “year of the engineer” at Uber. Now, its engineering organization is in turmoil. Employees are questioning why they should work at a company that some of their friends and family compare to the Dark Side.
“There are a lot of designers out there that have a lot of angst about how Facebook goes about its product design,” said Josh Williams, who was a Facebook product manager in 2013 and is a serial app developer. “You may not like it as a designer or product manager. You may look and say, ‘I don’t want to work in that environment. It’s not for me.’ But in the context of where Facebook and Snapchat are, it’s just the game. You’re either comfortable with that or not.”
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