Brad has created so many incredible projects (MogileFS, Memcached, Perlbal, LiveJournal, OpenID) with many of them being OSS. He's a really bright guy with a good head on his shoulders. Whatever company he goes to will be a lucky one.
I've got several friends that were on the LJ dev/abuse/support teams (all volunteers; none were paid employees). Brad is a good hacker, but a terrible manager. He makes all the mistakes that novice technical managers tend to make: not trusting underlings, micromanaging technical details, solving the most interesting technical problems himself, belittling workers, and getting defensive when he screws up.
Google or Facebook would do well to hire him in a technical capacity, but I can understand some of the "watch out Google employees; you don't want this guy as your manager" comments on the Valleywag article.
I never want to manage employees. I think that model is broken and perpetuates wage slavery. Similarly, I think the concept of "leadership" is primitive -- why is it a given that someone else is going to make our decisions for us? Or, being a leader, why should I want to be "in charge of" other thinking, autonomous human beings?
So I'm not surprised when I hear yet another "bad manager" story. The organizational structure itself is the problem. Almost all innovation comes instead from individuals or small groups of co-equals; the startup model of equals cooperating is the source of practically all progress.
When founders try to turn that into a big company, they choose a model for stagnation -- trying to preserve things as they are. (This is akin to the folly of the Elves in LOTR.) That is, they start out with some actual innovation, but then they try to hold onto a worldview in which it remains at the top, even as the world is changing around them. In trying to sell it as long as possible, even when it is no longer new or cutting-edge, they will fight to stop change, including progress -- competition -- by controlling markets or channels rather than continuing to innovate.
I am going to keep my startup small, human-wise, and automate instead of employ.
Except there has to be someone, or a small group, to make overall design decisions as the organization gets bigger. I doubt the iPhone would be recognizable if Apple were a design democracy.
He seemed to do alright when he was running it himself and most of his staff were really peers. It can be hard to work with people you would never have hired. He probably doesn't respect a lot of the people at SixApart. He might do better at Google where high competence is a prerequisite and there's less hierarchy.
Not to mention that most great leaders have had lots of people who hated them. So that's not necessarily a bad sign.
Facebook strikes me as a force for evil. They want real names, real background info, real explanations of relationships, all of which they will data-mine ruthlessly to the extermination of your privacy. They even ask for your e-mail and IM passwords so they can mine all your contacts and information!
I prefer to think of it from the other angle. Humanity is evolving to the point where you can contact anyone. Old friends, super-intelligent people you've heard of, band singers, anyone. As long as the government stays out of the way, the next twenty years are going to be a ride.
