Name: Watch Facebook’s Head of People At Fortune’s MPW NextGen Summit
Uploaded: 2016-12-01
Duration: 14 min 51 s
Description: Lori Goler explains how she got to Facebook.

[ MUSIC ] Thank you for being here, Laurie. Thank you for having me. I had the pleasure of interviewing Laurie for the first time here, at this conference, last year. But not on stage, so I'm excited to do it in front of all these people and share your story. She's the head of people at Facebook, that is a huge job. She oversees 15, 000 employees across 30 countries. The company has grown 25x since you started. And one of the things that her colleague, Carolyn Everson told me at Fortune MPW is you cannot get complacent. So we'll get to that in a moment. But let's talk about how you ended up at Facebook. You picked up the phone [ UNKNOWN ] And [ UNKNOWN ] called Sheryl Sandberg. Who says that? Betsy. [ LAUGH ] So at the time I was [ UNKNOWN ] consumer marketing at eBay, I was really happy at eBay, which was also the role I [ UNKNOWN ] done before. And one day, I was [ UNKNOWN ] to work and heard Mark interviewed on NPR. He was talking about the social mission of Facebook, to make the world more open and connected. And of course, I knew Facebook because I was in marketing, and I knew that that was the way that I was able to reach the, at that time, the college audience really well. And I thought that's kind of interesting, I loved the social mission If I ever had an opportunity I kind tucked it away in the back of my head. And then a few months later Sheryl announced that she was leaving Google to join Facebook as COO. And I thought, that's so interesting. That must mean that they're building up the business side or something's going on there. So I called here and just said I'm really excited by the Social mission at Facebook. What's your biggest problem, it is something that I can help you with? That's important. Her question wasn't will you hire me? It was what's your biggest problem and how can I help you? I've always been most interested in being in a role that has real impact, that matters to the company where i'm working at the time that I'm there. That can be lots of different things over time. And so I was most interested in knowing what Facebook needed at that time. I knew they didn't need marketing at the time. But you looked surprised when she said I need help hiring great people. I was very surprised, so she, almost without hesitation said, recruiting, can you help us lead recruiting? And I thought, That's not what I thought you were going to say. [ LAUGH ] So, you've talked about, you've written about this in your Lead in post, you talk about your career as a jungle gym, not a ladder and that struck me when I first read it. You've also talked about the fact of moving down can be a springboard. What's a lesson for all of us in that? I think that a lot people are very focused in their careers, they know exactly where they want to go, exactly what they want to do and very often that includes following a particular path. And I've been fortunate to work at places where I didn't have to follow a particular path and I had an opportunity to try new things. And of one the things, Facebook is a strength based organization which that means we really believe in putting people in roles that play to their strengths, doing work that they enjoy and what that means, you know could be something different for someone at any point in time. And I just think that if you want to try something new, you're not moving up necessarily. You might be moving laterally, or you might even be moving down. I moved down to come to Facebook. And look where you are now. It worked out. There was a Wall Street Journal article about a year ago. And that headline was at Facebook boss is a dirty word, and we talked about this last time we sat down. But I'm interested in how you translate that for us when it comes to what you guys call personalization at scale. I mean you're the first Fortune 500 company run, started by a millennial, run by a millennial. And we millennials, I'm old millennial. [ LAUGH ] But we millennials are, we're different to work with. So what is personalization scale and how can you prove that it works? Sure so I think the millennial but particularly the next generation that's in college now that we're just starting to meet as interns really in our work force grew up in a world where they had personal devices. They all had personal feeds on whatever platform they were on. And to them, the whole world has been personalized. So they're coming to the workforce and they're expecting personalization in the same way. And I think it's something that we're gonna have to figure out how to deliver. They're expecting work to cater to them. They're expecting it to Exactly! One size fits one .->> How do you do that ?>> I think there are lots of said, I'll tell you the way we're doing it in Facebook, which is that we're trying to create something for everyone. We are trying to really help people play their strength which is one way of making sure that your career is personalized to you. What that means is that when we hire people we're trying to put them in jobs that they're gonna love. Where they're going to outperform, they're playing to their strengths. And then over time we're training managers to, as they're managing a team of people, to talk to each of those people about what their strengths are. What are you doing when you lose track of time? When are you in the flow? On very best day at work, when you go home, you think, I have the best job ever. When did you do that day? What did you do that day? And then you're managing a team, so it's hard to change someone's job entirely. Maybe they've moved to a new role. But you can tweak things around the margin when you know you might have six or eight people reporting to you. You know what people's strengths are. You can kind of move them around. Tweak work a little bit, to be sure that people are spending more time doing things they love. At the same time, Laurie wrote a really interesting, fascinating piece on why Facebook decided to keep performance ratings, when so many companies are getting rid of them, or saying what's the value in them. You guys did some focus groups. 87 % of the respondents Wanted to keep them. You quoted in your piece Winston Churchill saying, democracy's the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. But you said you don't love them, they can be a pain in the ****, but why are they worth it? When it comes to dealing with and managing millennials? Yeah, so one of the first things in this role at Facebook I did was I went around. There were 500 people in the company at the time. So- 500 to 15, 000. So I could have a lot of coffee over the course of a week and talk to a lot of people. I could talk to a big part of the company despite sitting down and having coffee with them and when I first arrived, I went and talked to some of the folks that were pointed out to me as sort of the very best, strongest performers, just to say What's going well, what do you love, what do want more of, what can we do better? Just trying to get a sense of the place, and they almost to a person said, these were people who were pointed out to me to be some of the strongest people we had, said I feel every day like I could get fired. I never know how I'm doing. No one ever tells me, I don't get any feedback. I really, like were you sent to talk to me because it's not going well. And it was actually just the opposite. And you know when I went and talked to all the managers. And they all said, every day is a new day for someone to ask for a raise or to get promoted. Couldn't you help us by just giving us a moment in time when we think about everybody at the same time and we're able to calibrate carefully across? And it's the exact same thing that some of our strongest individual contributors were asking for, was give me a moment in time when my manager has to tell me how it's going. Let me know how I'm doing. So that's how we got this This whole process in the first place. And, as we've gone around over the year, every two or three years we go back to the organization and get a sense of whether what's working, what isn't working. And what people say they love about it is the transparency of the process They love the fairness, because it is calibrated, and it's a very open process. And they love that it's focused on development, they like that it's not focused on identifying poor performers, it's focused on helping people grow in their roles, get new opportunities, it's a time when other people are thinking about them and their career I wanna open it up for questions in a minute. So if you have a question, raise your hand, the mic runner will come around to you, and we'll call on you in just a moment. I wanna talk about something I care deeply about, and it pains me that it hasn't gotten better. And that is diversity. Across corporate America, but especially in Silicon Valley, you guys have a unique challenge there. I'm not Quite sure why it's not getting better. Some of the numbers, you've even said to me, we have a long way to go. Some of the numbers at Facebook, 33 % of Facebook employees globally are women. 17 % of tech jobs are women. 27 % of senior leadership are women. You've said companies are just stealing share from one another in the valley. You need to grow the pie. And you've said, this has been incredibly hard for us to do. You've admitted that Facebook Yes it's been hard. Why and what can say the next administration do to help with that. If it is about the pipe and the pipe line, what needs to be done? Well I see for women in particular in 1985 35 % of computer science degrees went to women. It's gotten worse now. This year, I think it's 17 %. It's cut in half. Cut in half. Really the wrong direction. So, the first thing we need to do is get more women, underrepresented people into computer science. Does that mean mandating it in public schools? I mean, I really think that there is a lot more we can do about education in the United States. I really do. And there's a huge shortage actually. There's a mix match of supply and demand in engineers in the United States, and if you just had as many women pursuing computer science in college as you have men, That mismatch almost goes away. So [ UNKNOWN ] wrote an open letter to President- elect Trump and called for a push for new collar jobs. I find it fascinating, you know she spoke at this conference, the Fortune 500 Women's Conference weeks ago about this apprenticeship program. Looking at some of the stats that Facebook has. Only one in four U. S. high- schools teach computer science. If you're speaking to the incoming administration, there's a new education secretary coming in, should this be in the form of a mandate? You have to have coding. You have to have some computer science. I would love to see coding taught the way we teach math and science and history and reading In writing. It's just part of the basic education today. It just is, no matter what job you are going to be in. Even if you are not the engineer, you'll be working with engineers, or you will somehow be working with technology. I think it's just part of a basic foundational education. It's the job, or these new collar jobs That is the way we should be treating it. Questions? Right here Yeah. Thank you, it was really fascinating. So you touched a little bit on the generation Z and I wanted to ask a question for a generation that hasn't been named. I'm the mother of a four year old and a two year old, and so What are the skill sets, coding aside, which I already agree with, that you often emphasize in educating our youngest generation, and what would you see as priorities for those skills? Right, so, I actually think one of the most important things for our young people to learn, is how to learn. And how to become a lifelong learner. Because the reality is that the world is becoming more complicated. It's different, it'll be different tomorrow than it is today. There's always something new or different to learn or to do. And I think that the people who will be able to most impact the future will be those who are continually learning. We don't think that learning ends when you leave school or when the school day ends. But we're sort of always interested in sort of that intellectual curiosity, I think is actually the most important thing. One thing I think of is I would have taken Arabic in college. I went to Columbia. I started in September 2001. Right before 9 / 11. And I didn't take Arabic because I thought I'd get a bad grade. And it's my biggest regret when I was a journalist, just thinking if I did this just for the love of learning, what an asset that would be right now. So I think about that often with grades. It's not too late. [ LAUGH ] Other questions, do we have? As you think of them, we'll bring the mic around. Obviously in the news right now with Facebook is the issue of Fake news, it's something that everyone's grappling with, news organizations, Facebook, etcetera. Mark Zuckerberg posted about this earlier this month and he said, the problems here are complex, both technically and philosophically. We don't want to be the arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties. As the head of people, I know Facebook employs journalists Where is your head at on that in terms of bringing in more journalists into the fold, the role that they could play as everyone grapples with this? Well, as Mark said, we've been working on it for a long time. And we're in this place where we're here to give everyone voice. And so identifying things is really important. Identifying things that aren't right is really important. And there are a lot of ways that we're doing that. And there are a lot of other things that we're considering. And so we do have journalists that work at Facebook, which is great and very helpful. And I think we'll continue to look at new ways to tackle it over time. I have a eight- month- old at home. And really struggled a lot with maternity leave and what I was gonna take for leave. I felt Ashamed that I didn't know if I wanted to take the full three months that CNN offers us because if I didn't take it then I was a bad mother. So it's something that I grappled with a lot. You led the charge at Facebook. And you wrote a post that meant a lot to me reading it about why you give four months off to all parents. Mark Zuckerberg took two months off Can you talk to us anecdotally or with figures that you've gained on what that has meant for the company and for employees? Sure, it's been almost exactly a year actually since we implemented it globally. We had it for women but for men as well. It's interesting we did it for several reasons. One is that we really are trying to be the best place for families. We really want for families to For people who have families to feel comfortable and like they can do both and bring their authentic selves to work. And sort of make it easier for families. And the other reason we did it is that when you give men parental leave, it normalizes it for women. So it makes it so that women can take it without feeling bad about it because all the guys are doing it, too. Are they? The men love it. [ LAUGH ] Laugh, laugh. And one of the things that I think is that they say has been, one of the things that they like about the most is that, it gives them a chance to help their partner ease back into work. And so it's been great and sort of Keeping families in a place where they want to be without feeling bad or guilty. And sort of gives the guys a way to help their partners return to work successfully as well. All right, we're out of time, thanks everyone. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Lori Goler explains how she got to Facebook.