Leaving Facebook

In this lesson, Philip explains why he chose to leave Facebook despite having a successful career at the company. Part of his decision came from wanting to focus his energy on broader societal challenges, including income inequality and his early concerns about technology-driven unemployment.

• Your value to an organization can change as the company grows. Philip’s generalist skill set allowed him to make an outsized contribution when Facebook was smaller, but as the company scaled to thousands of engineers, he felt his particular strengths were becoming less differentiated.
• Generalists can have an advantage in smaller companies. Startups frequently have work that doesn't justify a dedicated full-time role, making people who can move between engineering, product, hiring, operations, and other responsibilities particularly valuable.
• Scale creates greater demand for specialization. As organizations grow, previously fractional responsibilities become full-time jobs. At that point, deep specialists can provide more value in a particular domain, while some of a generalist’s broader skill set may go unused.