The Man Who Invented Facebook Ad Tracking Is Not Sorry
Note to Self
WNYC Studios
4.7 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 22 March 2017
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After building the social network’s ad system, Antonio García Martínez tried to set his career on fire with a tell-all. An inside view on Face-versaries, terrifying emails from Zuck, and the cult of changing the world. Turns out, it takes a lot to get shunned in the Valley. Especially when you write a bestseller. The author of Chaos Monkeys, on the fallout from his attempt to commit career suicide.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You know what I did at Facebook? You know how you go browse the internet or you even buy things in stores and then you see products like that inside Facebook? I built that |
| 0:08.4 | That's actually what I built |
| 0:11.3 | It's note to self the tech show about being human. I'm a new summer Odie that was Antonio Garcia Martinez |
| 0:20.3 | Antonio is a former Goldman Sachs strategist turned tech entrepreneur turned Facebook ads guy |
| 0:26.6 | In fact, Antonio helped design and build how Facebook delivers ads to us |
| 0:31.4 | Something we've talked and felt a little uncomfortable about very recently here |
| 0:35.9 | We never stopped to think whether this was moral or not the only thing we stopped to think about is whether we could get it passed |
| 0:41.1 | privacy law and pass the users |
| 0:45.8 | But there's something I love about Antonio when he left his job as a product manager at Facebook |
| 0:51.8 | He went and wrote a tell all his book is called chaos monkeys obscene fortune and random failure in Silicon Valley |
| 1:00.0 | It is educational and hilarious |
| 1:03.1 | The book came out last summer |
| 1:05.2 | But I actually wanted to wait to talk to Antonio because I wanted to see how Silicon Valley would react |
| 1:11.1 | Would Antonio get blacklisted was this book the end of his career as a techie or maybe just the beginning of life |
| 1:18.6 | Is a lone truth sayer on how the tech economic industrial complex all works? |
| 1:24.8 | Yeah, neither of those quite happened |
| 1:27.6 | But it does turn out it takes a lot to get the cold shoulder in Silicon Valley |
| 1:32.9 | Especially when your book is the best seller |
| 1:37.4 | You know, I was at Facebook for a good couple of years right on the time of the IPO and because frankly the company was desperate for revenue at the time |
| 1:44.6 | They were willing to put up with my obnoxious behavior, but as soon as the political wind shifted |
| 1:48.6 | I was no longer useful to them and so I was fired and so literally I got escorted out the door |
| 1:54.3 | Despite the fact that the product I built is actually very successful and what was going through your mind as you were escorted out of Facebook headquarters |
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