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On Leaving Facebook

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Re: On Leaving Facebook

#411

Post by pcthrowaway »

kortilla wrote: post #294
Godel_unicode wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking you at your word that you do this, I'm very glad I don't work with you. I would never want to associate with the kind of person who holds the employees responsible for the decisions of management, and then punishes them for wanting to leave that same management. Seems pretty biblical, in the original sin sense. The whole "won't say it to your face" is the absolute cherry on top. If you don't talk about it, how…

> I would never want to associate with the kind of person who holds the employees responsible for the decisions of management That excuse is maybe acceptable for someone who worked at Facebook 10 years ago, but someone who is still working there in the last couple of years? You might just be an employee but you’re willfully helping well-known behaviors. This isn’t like some revelation of fraud that employees don’t kn…

I don't disagree with this, and I've never worked at MAGMA for these reasons, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't incredibly tempted. As an experienced dev (possibly not a great one though), I'm struggling to make ends meet with one dependent. Being able to eat out without having to update a spreadsheet to see what other things we're not going to be able to afford is a pretty big draw.

And I'm above the median for software devs in my area, but in a high CoL city in Canada.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#412

Post by nickjj »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #308
voakbasda wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody here on HN recently shared the notion that leetcode tests are a legal way to discriminate by age or lifestyle, as older and well-rounded developers do not have the time or inclination to grind on such things.

As a successful developer well past middle age, I find this to be nonsense. The most common complaint I hear around this is "yeah, that discriminates against people who don't have time to grind to do the preparation." Why is it weird that people should spend time preparing for ask for a new job? I mean, ask an orchestra musician how much time they put into preparing for auditions, or how much time many degreed profes…

> Why is it weird that people should spend time preparing for ask for a new job? I mean, ask an orchestra musician how much time they put into preparing for auditions, or how much time many degreed professionals put into passing a certification (e.g. the bar exam or medical boards).

It's weird because the preparation is often the thing we're not doing in our day to day.

I'd also go as far as saying if you need to cram crazy hours shortly beforehand to pass any exam or test then you're not really qualified to pass. If you were qualified you wouldn't have to do this because you'd already comfortably know the answers. I get wanting to casually review the finer details which is fine, but if you're in "oh crap, it's Tuesday and the test is in 3 days, time to drop my life and cram 10 hours a day to prepare" mode, maybe you're not ready?

I also think you can't compare software development to musicians or sports. I do play the guitar and there's a massive amount of muscle memory involved. I've gone a few years without playing in the past but within a few minutes of picking it up somehow my brain can resume where it left off and my hands just move to the right places almost on their own.

The same can be said for sports, there's a lot of practice and warming up to burn in muscle memory and literally get your physical body in an optimal state. Also the stuff you're practicing is directly applied to what you're "really" doing in your professional day to day.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#413

Post by hiptobecubic »

purplehoodie wrote: post #362
skydhash wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A musician put it in time for an audition because that will be the piece he will be performing. But doing leetcode when the job definition is: You will be working on this e-commerce site is not the most motivating things. While algorithms and data structure knowledge are important, most of the time is spent writing code gluing data sources to interfaces. I'm perfectly fine doing an interview on the technologies I'm e…

Minor bikeshedding, but orchestra auditions are more about measuring musicianship at various time constraints: sight reading - O(minutes) of prep, audition excerpts - O(days) of prep, and personal repertoire - O(months to years of prep). By and large, professional musicians are paid for a standard level of performance competence and a strong level of versatility. The small handful of remainders are the famous ones re…

It feels more like auditions for tech involved being assigned a random instrument, even though you've been playing flute for ten years and they are hiring because they need a flautist.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#414

Post by snovv_crash »

throwaway31332 wrote: post #265
Salgat wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's waiting on responses or is entering the final rounds for some of these companies.

Bingo. Mix of "offer in hand", "offer coming Monday-ish", and "finishing interview loops" Also, who says I'm a "he"? FAANG companies have smart female engineers too (not nearly enough, but we're working on it)

> Also, who says I'm a "he"?

Assuming you're saying this as a way to effectively double the pool of people your throwaway comes from, adding a bit to the entropy. Adding more writing style sample, and on another topic, probably does more to identify you than the extra bit of entropy reduced.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#415

Post by hiptobecubic »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #352
a10c wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a well rounded senior developer be interviewing for a role that requires a code monkey?

Why would you put out ads for senior engineers when you'll make them perform code monkey tasks?

Every job has random overhead and your productivity is boosted quite a lot by already being familiar with some random bullshit problem like "don't configure your test environment this way or you'll run out of file handles after a day or two." Hiring more experienced people means fewer delays due to issues like that, even for boring "code-monkey" work.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#416

Post by quest88 »

andrew_ wrote: post #26

I just do not understand why somebody with 20 years of experience would invest that kind of time in leetcode. just say "no" and be done with the BS, and with the kind of financial success the author has enjoyed previously, wait for the right company to come along that doesn't require it. That's the only way the industry is going to fix itself; enough people start saying no.

I don't like these questions either. But, I've come to accept that it's worth your time if the companies you're interested in ask the questions. Especially so if they have a big compensation package.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#417

Post by erwincoumans »

A very kind and insightful post. PSC = Performance Summary Cycle . At Google/Alphabet we call this Perf , performance reviews, every 6 months. Mobility at different parts of Alphabet is more difficult, you may even have to interview again, switching from X or Waymo or DeepMind to Google.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#418

Post by typon »

zionic wrote: post #116
tmule wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure you’re not violating your company’s guidelines. If I were at a company and I knew of signals based on subjective morality being used for filtering, I’d summarily fire the offending employee.

I’ve written all of my companies guidelines. I explicitly codify that the hiring of former surveillance capitalism mercenaries is a fireable offense. “But the equity was great” is not an excuse.

Not sure if you're making things up, but I really like your attitude. The world only moves forward because of people with principles, not because of people who make 'tough compromises'

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#419

Post by pawsforthought »

tjr225 wrote: post #163
Aperocky wrote: post #112

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…

Sure, maybe it is "first world." That doesn't change anything. If I'm stuck at home making 80$ an hour and I hate it, then it doesn't matter how "first world" it is- I'm still going to figure out how to change the situation. Are you saying that people who are dissatisfied with privileged situations shouldn't have opinions or write about them? Everything is relative.

Absolutely. I dislike the offhand dismissal of things as first world problems, most especially because, if we can find a way to a future where the rest of the world catches up in living standards, these will be everyone’s problems.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#420

Post by thebean11 »

andrew_ wrote: post #26

I just do not understand why somebody with 20 years of experience would invest that kind of time in leetcode. just say "no" and be done with the BS, and with the kind of financial success the author has enjoyed previously, wait for the right company to come along that doesn't require it. That's the only way the industry is going to fix itself; enough people start saying no.

But why? Sure it’s boring, I certainly don’t enjoy doing Leetcode, but if the job requires it I’m not above practicing. It’s not like I’ll have to do it once I get hired.
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