Ben Ling to Leave Facebook
Posted by Nick O'Neill on August 12th, 2008 7:14 PMBenjamin Ling will be departing Facebook according to Eric Eldon. Ben Ling joined the company less than a year ago and is already on his way out the door. While the company continues to post record-breaking growth numbers, the company can’t seem to hold on to many of their executives. What’s the source of all the problems? It could simply be that some employees would prefer to take stock options and leave, but that doesn’t appear to be the case for Ling.
Eric Eldon questions the reasoning behind his departure. While many have suggested that the reason for the exits was that the new executives, primarily Cheryl Sandberg, were not getting along with the old execs, that doesn’t appear to be the case. One Facebook employee that I’ve talked to, spoke highly of Cheryl and said that the company is finally getting some order, whereas before there didn’t appear to be much order to the organization.
As the company expands, executives appear to be dropping like flies but that may not be the worst thing. Perhaps the company simply has an effective model for wiping out those that aren’t in it for the long-term. At this point it’s all speculation. Ben Ling has been effective at fostering good relationships outside the company. It will be interesting to see how Facebook’s relationships with external companies change with this new departure.
Facebook issued the following statement:
Facebook confirms that Ben Ling will be leaving the company in the coming weeks to pursue other interests. We wish him well and appreciate his great contributions to the early success of Facebook Platform. Platform is poised for continued growth and success and the company is on track to deliver the range of major initiatives announced last month at f8, including Facebook Connect, fbFund and the Great Apps and Application Verification programs. Each of these programs have a strong team of professionals focused on attracting the best developers to Facebook Platform, helping developers succeed on Platform, and helping users find and enjoy great applications on Facebook.
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