I've been blown away by the thoughtfulness on this thread. For those who are interested, here is the first in a series of follow up posts about the same period of time in my life that gets into some of the very fair issues raised in this thread (namely, that Dustin really should have given me this feedback long before it got to the point of nearly getting fired)
The Golden Rule (treating others as you want to be treated) isn't actually very good. I prefer the Platinum Rule (treat others as THEY want to be treated)
I'm going to write a follow up about how I wasn't mad about the feedback as much as I was mad nobody had told me sooner. We were a young company and didn't really have a management or mentorship skillset yet. We would all develop that together in the ensuing years and this was a major part of my motivation for pushing for it.
Yup, this post is about the start of a journey that is still ongoing for me. It still takes work and I still lose focus and do poorly and tried to call that out at the end.
To your specific point, I probably was even worse in 2008 than what you experienced in 2010. That's probably true at every point since. I'm getting better, but I am sure you can find people even in the last year who would say this post doesn't reflect the Boz they met. I believe those people are getting fewer and their experiences less bad, but I am definitely not great at this yet so the post should be taken as a belief I hold and a behavior I aspire to.
For what it is worth, I do think Dustin could have been a little more gracious in how he approached it and I mention in my note that it isn't meant to be an excuse to be rude. I actually think it was fine for him to do this to me not because he was my boss but because we had a good relationship. Still, when this happens to me, I usually say something like "I'm in the middle of X right now, can this wait until Y?" -- this tells them what I am doing (and thus allows them to say assert that their topic really is more important) and also gives them a time to follow up.
As a manager of a large organization, I have more respect for people on my team who say no and assert stronger ownership over their time, ideally by being transparent about their priorities. At the end of the day, we just look at impact and managing ones own time is a good sign that someone is focused on impact. Still, I'm sure that isn't the case with every manager in every company (or even every manager in my company)
The open space aspect of the FB offices is usually navigated by people putting headphones on to indicate they are heads down. I do it often even though I'm rarely listening to anything. I agree it isn't for everyone though.
http://boz.com/articles/give-hard-feedback-fast.html