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On Leaving Facebook

frantic.im

181–190 of 645 posts

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#181
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not a single interviewer (from junior engineers to directors and VPs of engineering) asked me anything remotely like "Why are you still at an awful company like Facebook?" Sure, we disqualified you when you listed them on your resume. You never got callbacks and probably blamed it on XYZ. You don’t understand, there’s a growing group of us in Silicon Valley that will never hire you if you have FAANG on your CV.

I really wish that people who let strong political opinions bleed into their professional careers would somehow flag that on their resumes, so I could likewise avoid them.

No post body was provided.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At Facebook I could get by barely working a few hours a day. But the job was so unsatisfying This is a little too first world. if the work were too sparse and wants more work, why not join interview loops or take classes/training, attend talks? Does Meta not have those options? The frustration feels almost artificial, if one does not want to get more work, then maybe just go boating or mountain biking. Watch some s…

It doesn't work like that. You have to be "on" even if you aren't working. That means you feel like you can't commit to anything substantial since you feel like you should be working. Fucking off on the internet is a coping mechanism to numb the pain of being in this limbo where you aren't working; but, feel like you should be working because you are getting paid a lot. In retrospect it's easy to see that there's thi…

Last two years of my life was this. Sitting at home with nothing meaningful to do but still having to park my butt in my kids bedroom.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#183
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: Facebook is widely disliked by the loudest voices in the room (for good reason), but the vast majority of people still just treat it like a fancy forum. It's not going to stain your CV. Plus, Facebook-the-app is far more disliked than Meta-the-company especially now that's a formal distinction. I imagine it's still relatively cool to work on Instagram, for example.

> It's not going to stain your CV. Not with that attitude. I refuse to hire anyone with FAANG on their resume and you can all do it too. Most of you on here are all woo woo Linux this and FSF that, but you won’t put your money where your mouth is. I won’t hire you if you work for these assholes, and I’d love for more of you to join me. To the rest of you: Sure, take that $300k total comp bro. Good luck working outsid…

Dude you just sound salty at this point...

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#184
post #85
post #79

It always blows my mind how most interview in our field. When I first started in tech I was afraid to talk about not knowing leetcode to my peers. 15 years in and I now can confidently say I’ve yet to meet someone who thinks these are a valid metric. Why do we make this the gate keeper to our industry when we know (except for the very specific roles) we will rarely need leet code type problems. When we do we just goo…

At some point in your career, you have the ability to simply reject leetcode-like tests. Just politely decline.

Is this the point in your career when you have so much money that you don't actually need a job?

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#185
How many companies did he end up applying to? I'm really not sure what is normal. I just applied to 10 companies and did 5 interviews, I heard other people have done hundreds. Or is it best to go 2-3 a month?

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#186
post #143

This man had 8+ years at Facebook and they still made him do programming questions? What is wrong with our industry?

It's pretty easy to do almost no coding at larger companies as a more senior engineer and become quite rusty. It sounds like he was interviewing for a position which he's actually expected to ship things and code, so it's pretty reasonable to ask him to code in the interview.

Where have you worked where senior engineers do hardly any coding? What else would they do all day?! Are you sure you aren't thinking of project managers?

Everywhere I've worked (mostly large companies) the seniors write much more code than the juniors.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#187
post #141
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not a single interviewer (from junior engineers to directors and VPs of engineering) asked me anything remotely like "Why are you still at an awful company like Facebook?" Sure, we disqualified you when you listed them on your resume. You never got callbacks and probably blamed it on XYZ. You don’t understand, there’s a growing group of us in Silicon Valley that will never hire you if you have FAANG on your CV.

Exactly. I cannot trust folks who have spent more than 1-2 years at FB to make ethical decisions and I will not hire them. Similarly, I will not go to a company if people up the chain, including my immediate boss or the CEO are ex-FB. If the CxOs are ex-FB I cannot expect it to be an ethical company. But, that’s me.

Thank you. A lot of mercenaries here are posting coopium all over this thread.

They just don’t get it, we don’t want them. We believe they’re evil. We see them, and their skills, as a liability and not employable asset.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#189
post #161
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please name your company? I haven't worked at FAANG but I most definitely would not want to work for a company like yours.

Not going to dox myself. > I haven't worked at FAANG I doubt that. > but I most definitely would not want to work for a company like yours. You do you. But I make sure we pay way above average, I want the best people and the best people don’t work for Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google.

So how do you hire the best people? Seems like most employers focus on name-brand resumes and leetcode. I've never met anyone who does an actual substantial interview.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#190
post #144
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't imagine a single person where I work factoring this in Then it’s entirely possible you work for an immoral mega corp and your judgment has been compromised by your paycheck. Let me put it in a more blunt way you are more likely to understand. Your team is interviewing someone who was a process engineer on the deep water horizon oil spill. You’d probably feel gross hiring someone whose incompetence poisoned…

Whoa, it seems like you might want to be careful with politics creeping into your decision making. I'm seeing several of your posts here and it seems like you are making the inference "worked at FAANG" -> "horrible person", and while I have never worked at FAANG I have many friends I respect who have, and eventually left though it took some time. It feels like you might be making an ad hominem attack here.

If you can make it into a FAANG/MAMAA/whatever flavor of the year acronym, you can make it into most tech companies (and still make a salary that's more than enough to live a dignified life and support yourself, and family if you have any).

Working at Facebook as a software engineer is a choice; just like working at a bulge bracket investment bank is a choice.

The type of people that choose to work at either of these two are (more likely than not) people who do not have morals or a sense of character and values.

In my experience, being a good person only works when you're interacting with good people. If you're a good person interacting with a "bad" person, you tend to get a worse deal -- and if not alert, will unconsciously "sink" to their level, and start mirroring their behaviors in order to not get a bad deal.

Sooner or later, you're surrounded by "bad" people and have become a "bad" person yourself, simply by moral "osmosis," all because a few "bad" eggs spoiled the quiche.

I have been the type of person that naturally gravitated towards the "money money money" professions, because I did not have any strong role models to build a value system. Now that I'm out of that moral rut, I do not wish to go back. Just like an ex-addict who decides not to associate with other ex-addicts, because the chance of relapsing increases exponentially: I do not want people without any moral compass dragging me back down to their level.

I like the way things are. Things are good. Associating with Facebookers will make things bad. I don't want things to be bad.

I've tried very hard to express this viewpoint, without making value judgements, but it's moot: I have standards for what it means to be a good person, and Facebookers do not meet my standards -- so I won't associate with them. I won't hire them. And I will avoid collaborating with them.

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