Exclusive: Facebook Hires New Director of Product, Tom Stocky, From Google
Longtime Googler Tom Stocky is Facebook's newest director of product, AllThingsD has learned. — Stocky posted about the move on his online profiles and Facebook confirmed he'd been hired.
Context & Ripple Effects
Tom Stocky's move lands squarely in the open Google–Facebook talent war: he follows [[a:1189408|Google researcher Paul Adams, who joined Facebook last December after publicly critiquing the company]], making him the second high-profile Googler Facebook has pulled across in under a year. The hire also extends a pattern Facebook set earlier — it hired an ex-AOL executive as marketing chief back in July 2007 — showing the company has long staffed senior roles from outside.
Timing sharpens the point: Google launched Google+ weeks ago, a top executive has acknowledged heavy criticism of the product, and Google confirmed it plans changes this week in response. Losing a longtime product director to its chief social rival at exactly that moment compounds the pressure on Google's social push.
First-order effects
- Facebook gains a director of product with deep Google product experience just as Google+ competes directly against it; Google loses senior product leadership mid-criticism-cycle on its own social launch.
Second-order effects
- Each confirmed Google-to-Facebook defection raises retention pressure inside Google — expect counteroffers and tighter scrutiny of departing product staff — while signaling to other Googlers that Facebook is a viable landing spot.
Third-order effects
- If the raiding pattern holds, senior social-product talent becomes a contested resource between the two platforms, with compensation and title inflation following wherever the next launch demands experienced operators.
The trend: The Facebook–Google rivalry is increasingly fought through senior-talent poaching, with each social push on either side triggering cross-hires from the other.