It appears to me from afar that Facebook has forgotten one of the most important rules of the Valley. When you start ignoring the contributions of developers the better ones leave.

http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart...

There's nothing wrong with having private events -- sometimes, you really don't have room for everybody at the party.

Whatever you do, though, don't host a public event with a separate area for the VIPs.

A private party is just that -- a private party. The only people that know about it are the invitees, and I certainly wouldn't feel excluded if I wasn't given an invite to a small gathering because I wasn't in-group.

I'd be damned insulted if you hold a public hoo-hah with some big names on the playbill, and then whisk said big names away to some sort of private, exclusive party, where I can't go, because I'm not one of the cool kids. Not because the exclusive gathering was, well, exclusive, but because the open-to-the-public side of things had some massively false pretenses.

Small non-exclusive company rails against big companies who shield their developers / have become exclusive, news at 7.

I'm all for companies that can keep developers and engineers up at the front, being deeply technical involved and interacting with their communities. But that's not going to be all companies, and Facebook in particular is one of those companies that is by their nature a closed system that builds itself not out in public (ala, say Mozilla), but through the proxy of press releases and new features dropped onto users' and 3rd partys' laps.

The other big factor I'd pitch would be consistency: how much technical content is there, and what amount is appropriate for a developer to be showing off? If the event is not inherently a technical event, a fifteen or thirty minute segment from a developer might seem really out of place. Developers are to be respected, but Facebook isn't a technical company, it's a networking company.

I have never had any desire to go to any conference, ever. What I tend to find is that talking gets very little done, and often not much is learned beyond a few truisms. If I want to talk to people I do it online, it is just more time-effective. At a conference, I don't necessarily know who a given person is, but online I have full access to their information (typically), and I only talk to the people I want to.

If I want to get into a good party (which is seldom), I go to whatever club is the current flavor of the month and shove a filthy wad of cash in the bouncer's hand. I could give two shits about an "exclusive" SV party, and I would hope most Facebook employees feel the same way.

There are quite a few hacker events with more of a flat-hierarchy, open-to-all-comers ethos, but yeah, you probably won't find them attached to these more high-profile media events (there are exclusive sponsored after-parties associated with events like WWDC and GDC as well, to add more examples). There's fortunately the whole other parallel world of stuff like Noisebridge, DevHouse, etc...

How much of this kind of thing is a by-product of marketers as well? I've seen more then a few events where the people who actually did the development were excluded to accommodate business partners and clients. It's not that marketing necessarily wants to exclude developers, but space and resources are limited, and socializing is an important tool in the marketer tool kit. Not that I condone this (having been on both sides of this equation), but it does speak to the shifting sands of prioritizing the goals of these kinds of events (is it a company celebration to thank employees, or a marketing event?)

This guy has obviously never worked for Facebook, and so has no idea how Facebook treats its engineers. Not getting invited to a particular f8 afterparty (which sounds like it was Spotify's deal and not Facebook's), is peanuts compared to the level of respect and power they are given within the company every day.

Facebook hardly represents all of Bay Area tech.

And it certainly doesn't represent startups (at all).

I've never been to Silicon valley, in fact I've never been to the US but I personally feel that this picture the author draws of "old" SV is very idealized. This rant contains high amounts of nostalgia and therefore does not seem to be entirely rational. I would love to know if SV used to be like O'Neill describes it in his article.

"Why All Employees Should Be VIPs At Your Company"

Been visiting Lake Wobegon recently I see.

The reality of the situation is that a party with 10, 100, 1000, 10000, and 100000 people feel completely different. With social dynamics being what they are it's difficult to invite everyone and still retain the atmosphere sought by the planner. I have no insight into the mindsets of the planners but I have a feeling the situation is probably the result of the realities of party planning rather than a desire to exclude certain individuals, or a class of individuals.

The situation with the B-list party could probably have been handled better with regard to musical talent and an obvious discrepancy between the talent invited.

I skimmed the headline at first and thought it said "How The "IT Crowd" Hijacked Silicon Valley". Boy was I in for a disappointment.