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Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

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171–180 of 195 posts

Re: Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

#171

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Sure, but it's still not enough. FB recruiters are super aggressive and I have zero qualms unloading on them for their BS behavior, every. time. I've asked five (5!) times to be taken off their list and added to a blacklist for candidates and I still get emails, calls, and LinkedIn messages. The first two "buzz-off" messages were polite, but now I'm just downright rude and respond with my actual opinion on their empl…

How do you even end up in a situation where recruiters are banging down your door with such offers? I know developers who have reverse engineered applications, fixed unbelievable bugs deep an application stacks, written top tier code that make them the go to people in teams for all the tough problems and yet they barely get any call backs much less for companies like Facebook. They have to grind leetcode for 1 year j…

Live in a city with Facebook offices. Work for a similar company.

Recruiters offer phone calls not jobs. You still have to grind to pass the interviews.

Re: Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even end up in a situation where recruiters are banging down your door with such offers? I know developers who have reverse engineered applications, fixed unbelievable bugs deep an application stacks, written top tier code that make them the go to people in teams for all the tough problems and yet they barely get any call backs much less for companies like Facebook. They have to grind leetcode for 1 year j…

Live in a city with Facebook offices. Work for a similar company. Recruiters offer phone calls not jobs. You still have to grind to pass the interviews.

So the strategy is basically to get into the FAANG club once and then you are golden as long as you keep up your grinding?

Re: Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

#173
post #68
post #36

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> They can’t hire people with good ideas anymore because as we know money isn’t a great motivator This is not entirely true. I have seen excellent people go to Facebook because they gave out the highest offers. Now whether they get people with good ideas is something I don't know.

I spent five years golden handcuffed at Facebook and hired a large number of brilliant, driven people there. Most of them are still there because of the obscenely large sums of money Facebook pays to keep them there. Note that Facebook does not do counteroffers, and instead makes sure to keep the best people financially motivated to stay each year.

Curious, why did you leave?

Since you are on the outside now, do you still agree with their mission and tactics or do you see them on a path towards 'user-engagement metrics over everything' ending in destruction.

Re: Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

#174
post #156

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To clarify, if you're employed at Facebook and get an offer from another company, Facebook won't attempt to counter that offer to keep you. The initial offer to get employed at Facebook is of course negotiable.

Probably for the better. People who have already gotten a competitive offer must be determined to leave.

Yes, it is genuinely a good policy. It results in happy employees not being penalized for not shopping around for offers.

Re: Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

#175
post #55

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It would be very hard to “taint the legacy” of a person like Carmack. He will be excellent no matter where he is because he is given essentially free reign to work on what he enjoys the most. And if that changes it will be unlikely to be the company that did it, since a person in his position would just move to another company and re-acquire free reign.

I don’t usually complain about spelling, but you used it twice. It’s “free rein.” https://grammarist.com/spelling/free-rein-free-reign/

Hehe, while you are usually quite correct in that spelling, in Carmack's case "free reign" may actually be more appropriate since he exercises pretty much sovereign power there!

Re: Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

#176
post #146
post #110

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A person would have to drink an awful lot of kool aid to think their work at Facebook is valuable to anyone but the Facebook shareholders.

Hey if your work on OSS infrastructure, it's not really that bad.

I honestly don't know the answer to this: How much are people able to choose to work on OSS projects vs. being told "This is the project you're working on."

Also, OSS tech that's in service to ad tech may still not be enticing. Even if it's not directly used for ad tech, everything you would do for facebook would ultimately be for the purpose of ad tech. Rationalizing that your particular work has non ad-tech related applications seems like just that: a rationalization. Other companies offer OSS work opportunities, as well as the opportunity to carve out, say, 5-10 hours a month to the project of your choice regardless of your day job.

I'm not coming down on one side or the other of such a moral choice. I don't think things are that simple. I think it's a spectrum, and people should weight these things when making a decision, if they have the luxury of doing so.

And I have to say, at this point ad tech is probably only one of a few major problems with Facebook content. News feeds, memes, etc. that are rewarded with shared & likes for being the most inflammatory/emotionally manipulative are at this point at least as bad as micro-targeting of ads, and I personally think are much much worse.

Re: Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

#177
post #146

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Hey if your work on OSS infrastructure, it's not really that bad.

This is the thing. I don't like facebook, and they do a lot of bad things. They also have some amount of good they do.

Very few things are purely good or purely bad, which should be a caution against all-or-nothing judgements. For example I think Apple is bad for inching its way towards an ever more restrictive MacOS. But I think Apple is good for its efforts to protect user privacy and give users more control over it. And as a FAANG, it's example puts pressure on other companies to compete on privacy as well. (Though I think we know Google will never go that way, unlike Apple their business model isn't based on hardware or software sales, but on the very private information Apple wants users to have control over)

Re: Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live in a city with Facebook offices. Work for a similar company. Recruiters offer phone calls not jobs. You still have to grind to pass the interviews.

So the strategy is basically to get into the FAANG club once and then you are golden as long as you keep up your grinding?

GAFAM if it has to be an acronym. Other big software companies work too. Basically yes otherwise.

Re: Facebook Declared War on Apple, and It Just May Signal the End of Facebook

#179
post #59
post #17

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Tell that to John Carmack, who apparently is quite fine with tainting his legacy and wasting his last few good work years working for Facebook of all companies. And to top it all off, they're going to ruin Oculus, too (where Carmack is working), going by the latest moves in that division.

I think he left (for all practical purposes) to focus on AGI now. There were rumors he didn’t like the way fb execs were planning of taking oculus. Think he’s still an advisor or similar, but spends his good time no longer there

Given what I learned when a friend purchased multiple Occulus, I think Fackbook really fucked up. Each unit has to be attached to a different Facebook account, and creating multiple Facebook accounts is forbidden. Bye bye having 2 units at home for when friends come over. They deserve to be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible under anti-trust laws.
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