331–340 of 560 posts
This is really thought provoking, I think I'm going to start asking interviewers if they use their products and see if they squirm.
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Ironically I think Facebook is one example that (at least in the early days) had values that actually had teeth. "Move fast and break things" isn't just a feel-good truism like most values that companies come up with are. It's something that at least some people are going to disagree with, and it's something that can actually be instructive when making a decision at that company. I don't personally agree with it, but…
That was their motto, but didn't they also have a mission statement that was about connecting people?
I have always wondered why (especially junior) software developers glorify Facebook/Google/Netflix/whatever claiming that they are the best places to work and "only the best people work there". What a load of nonsense. Those companies are about making money getting people to look at and click on ads. Nothing else! An activity that provide no real value to society. And (adding insult to injury) are responsible for inc…
Because delivering ads to a few billion people is a hard problem which leads to needing good engineers. They pay _really_ well compared to smaller orgs because it's difficult to hire that talent and ads are _very_ profitable.
Thank God some of them are.
Few comments on this because I think about this quite a bit. 1) I always read these articles and sigh. Seems like they only focus on 2 elite tech companies at the expense of all the others while only interviewing students at the #1 CS school in the country. I feel like a 2nd class citizen in the industry because of it. When will the normal people be heard? 2) I'm kind of surprised they listed a $140k starting pay. Th…
> I'm kind of surprised they listed a $140k starting pay. That's pretty low for new grads in the industry and very low for Facebook. You are living in a Valley bubble if you think $140k is "pretty low" for a new grad in general, and that's as total comp (not just salary).
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From my experience, most of this negativity just appears on HN or on channels who have some strong bias (usually business related) against Facebook. All my acquaintances working in tech, which includes people from very wide sociodemographics ranges, consider Facebook an absolutely prestigious employer, with top talent, top challenges, top compensation and top name for building a personal brand. Hell, I interviewed at…
What other companies do your acquaintances working in tech consider “prestigious”?
Joining these companies in the right teams is literally what makes it possible to have an exciting technical career AND the guarantee of being able to retire (or more generally, gain financial freedom) in your early/mid 40s, if one decides to stay on an individual contributor technical track. Seriously, it's the only decision that makes sense if one has the chops to get into one of those places. Always pay yourself first, with interesting works that keeps you marketable and with liquid cash to put into your retirement savings!
I would have jumped ship myself but, as I said in a few other previous comments, I had crazy luck to join a "very mediocre" startup who is growing a lot, so my appreciated equity prevents me from leaving, otherwise I'd for sure be in FB right now, since the offer they extended me was very generous and the specific work was something I wouldn't be able to do anywhere else.
A close friend of mine was hired for their network traffic team a few months ago. I spoke to him recently and he said: "boy, I thought I knew many things about handling large traffic at scale, but the things I'm seeing here are simply unprecedented". So, to all the people who say FB will go down in history for hiring mediocre people, please recognize how ridiculous your statements are.
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> I mean you could argue that it’s illustrating how silly enterprise software companies are in general, but it is what it is. Enterprise software companies know exactly what they're doing - fleecing the government for every single dime they can. You can't blame them - they're just acting on their natural capitalist instinct to maximize their return to shareholders. Blame the government for its ridiculously bloated pr…
I’d say the same thing for enterprise companies though. It’s not like they bank that money. They use it on project management, sales management, key account management, four layers of testing setup that still lets bugs slip into production, and a whole lot of other useless stuff. I mean, the budget is transparent, they spend less than 20% on actual development and makes less than 10% out as profits, so that’s 70% ine…
They also have to spend a lot on warm bodies/lobbying to get those contracts in the first place.
I'm not letting the enterprise providers off the hook. Just pointing out (as you note) that true responsibility lies with the project managers. Ineffectual project managers mean overblown budgets and undercooked results.
> Ms. Brown said a lot of students criticize Facebook and talk about how they would not work there, but ultimately join. “Everyone cares about ethics in tech before they get a contract,” she said. This describes my what I've observed perfectly. There are very few companies that make new grad offers comparable to Facebook's, and career advancement opportunities and working conditions at Facebook tend to be better than…
My theory is that pay and working conditions at Facebook are as good as they are precisely because of people feeling like this. They are having to pay a premium to attract engineers as a result of the moral opposition.
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Well, exactly; it's easy to take the moral highground when, well... it's easy. When there's a real choice at hand most people do what's best for them.
“What’s best for them” often also includes a vague notion of “feeling good by helping humanity” of similar, which often doesn’t show up when just looking at salaries.
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Apologies, my irony meter is malfunctioning today. I read it twice but I'm so used to reading this serious comments similar to your sarcastic critique online these days, it didn't read as sarcasm.
I like to say, the best thing about the Internet is the reasonable debate, and the accurate detection of sarcasm.
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My assumption with mission statements was that they were always bullshit made up by a marketing team or some exec and I wouldn't expect them to have much relation to reality. Was I in the minority?
Ironically I think Facebook is one example that (at least in the early days) had values that actually had teeth. "Move fast and break things" isn't just a feel-good truism like most values that companies come up with are. It's something that at least some people are going to disagree with, and it's something that can actually be instructive when making a decision at that company. I don't personally agree with it, but…