More hackers, fewer marketers: Are you ready for the Facebook Way?

You might remember this scene from the 2010 Oscar-award winning film “The Social Network.” Four young coders tap away at their laptops, face-off style. Every few seconds, or so it seems, one of the combatants downs a potent shot of cheap booze then resumes tapping away. Around them the cheering hits a fever pitch until… breakthrough! Code cracked. “Welcome to Facebook,” the Mark Zuckerberg character greets the victor.

I’m reminded of this scene as I scroll through Facebook’s impressive S1 this morning. The company is not only more profitable than many had believed, it’s soared into the black in a remarkably quick period. Basically, its fortunes turned when it turned on Like in 2009, and began integrating it into the fabric of the web in the following months. A lot of the focus over the next few months will be paid to Facebook’s numbers and what it means for the future of the social media sector. (Yes, it’s time to give social it’s own industry sector designation now). But what’s more impressive to me is Facebook’s management and recruitment philosophy, what it calls the “Hacker Way.” This comes from Facebook’s S1:

We value our “hacker culture,” which we define as a work environment that rewards creative problem solving and rapid decision making. We try to move fast in developing new products and then continually iterate and optimize to further improve our products. We seek employees who are motivated by the ability to have a direct impact on how hundreds of millions of people around the world connect, discover, and express themselves.

We encourage our employees to think boldly. We also have posted the phrase “this journey is 1% finished” across many of our office walls, to remind employees that we believe that we have only begun fulfilling our mission to make the world more open and connected.

Zuckerberg, the Harvard dropout, goes on to explain his unorthodox anti-business approach, that, it turns out, is very good for business. “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services,” he writes. As Reuters notes, this is a company “grounded in an engineering culture.” One that just happens to be more profitable than Google at the time of its IPO.  Zuckerberg’s musings on his own success to date happen to neatly coincide with new research from this week that says it is engineers, and not MBAs, who are more likely to build and run successful new companies. To this, I say, nurture and channel your inner geek. Stealing a line from Zuckerberg: Your journey is 1% finished.

Stepping away from Facebook IPO mania for one moment, I want to remind you of a quick programming note: SMI is once again offering its popular Social Media Crisis Communications workshop on Feb. 29 in London. We will be teaming with Neil Chapman, who lead communications efforts for BP during the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, for this instructional workshop.

- Bernhard Warner
co-founder, SMI

Follow us on Twitter at: @socialinfluence and @bernhardwarner… And on Facebook.