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On Leaving Facebook

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Re: On Leaving Facebook

#451

Post by delgaudm »

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote: post #334
ravenstine wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if you can manage to find things to do to occupy the time and appear busy, you'll be lucky if management considers the importance of your work and schedule it with the rest of your workload. One too many times have I had to find something to do and spend weeks or months on that thing only to have management tell me to immediately stop working on it even though that thing was actually important. This may not…

> [...] having real work be tossed in the garbage is [...] demoralizing [...] This happened to me a few years ago. I got assigned to work on a small greenfield project solo. I had virtually full creative control, and it would solve a real imminent problem for the team. Sounds like a dream project, right? And it was for the ~1 month or so I worked on it, got positive feedback from the team, etc. However, with a stroke…

I find it helps to be cynical in these situations.

> I felt bummed out nonetheless.

Why? Don't get emotionally involved with work done for the company. They want to toss it? Why give moments care. Your time wasn't wasted. It was done doing what they asked in exchange for pay. That's it.

>_That_ I could live with, but getting dinged for "being unproductive for a month" during performance review, now that really stung.

And that's why, you shouldn't care or get emotionally involved in the work you create for the company. The company clearly, demonstrably doesn't care about you. They do not care about you. Why should you care deeply about work you create for them?

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#452

Post by ravenstine »

ipnon wrote: post #180
gzer0 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is the sheer number of fradulent and stuffed credentials people have begun using, and applying, en masse to job positions. To be clear, I dislike the current way interviewing is, but do you have a better solution to screen out 7,000 applicants? The vast majority will be knocked out by the leetcode style interview, and sure, some brilliant minds might fail because they can't remember linked lists in the mome…

I think the distinction to be made is between the process of finding the best out of 7,000 and finding someone sufficient out 7,000. The first is surely extremely expensive for companies. The second can be done in a week or two. I think the anecdotal evidence shows though that no company can accurately do the first, and the gamification of this process is a deeply researched topic, so it's likely that a company that…

That's a false choice. The number of applicants is mostly a function of time, so if 7000 applicants is too overwhelming then just throw out 6900 and focus on evaluating 100 of them. To weed through thousands of candidates is to believe that you can find the one that's exceptional, yet if the position being advertised doesn't need to be filled by a genius then it's strange to scour the earth for the right person. If you are at the point where a genius is needed then hiring through personal connections is probably the better approach.

But if I must write code as an applicant, it better be similar to real world tasks and not some bullshit, especially if my chances of getting hired are still slim. Having to do work in order to get hired is literally sucking the lifeforce out of me, so don't suck even more out of my via the agony of glorified brain teasers.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#453

Post by ipaddr »

vanusa wrote: post #332
ipaddr wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So someone shouldn't take a job at one of the biggest companies because 16 years ago the founder acted like a sociopathic in some people's opinion? I can't see that affecting someone's employment. Your points are why someone shouldn't vote for Mark for president not why someone shouldn't take a job.

The founder's destructive behavior wasn't the only factor mentioned - in fact it was the least of all factors mentioned. ... acted like a sociopathic in some people's opinion? What's with the attempt at dissimulation here? The issue is what the guy did . Not "some people's opinion" of what he did. I can't see that affecting someone's employment. I can't see how the founder's ethical standards (expressed not just thro…

The issue is labeling and some people like yourself have label this as sociopathic. Others see your label and think less of anything you say for trying to find the most cutting label vs the more accurate.

Why stop at facebook. Throwing chairs should make Microsoft a dead zone. Steve behaviour at Apple in the 80s should force you to return your iphone. Oracle, Amazon are not angels either.. Many of those small places are much worse..

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#454

Post by throwaway1269 »

zionic wrote: post #140
iamstupidsimple wrote: post #39

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#455

Post by vlovich123 »

zionic wrote: post #314
throwawai2021 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total comp at FAANG for a senior engineer who's been there a few years is more like $800k+.

If true, that just makes it worse in my opinion. Although maybe it’s evidence in my favor? They have to pay people that much to keep doing what they know is wrong…

Or the job is grueling and requires more time commitment/energy. Or it’s a very niche technical problem. Or the person has an outsized impact on the company in other ways like bringing prestige and making it easier to hire more people.

There’s lots of reasons people get paid large sums.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#456

Post by onos »

yalogin wrote: post #449

I dread interviews. I am an engineering manager, a product guy and have a long track record of finding creative solutions to problems, convincing leadership at all levels and executing on it. However, I suck at coding and coming up with solutions on the fly. I need that extra time to think through because I don't have every possible tech solution in my TLB buffers, I need to page them from main memory or even disk so…

Same here, in that I’m relatively good at slow thinking - pondering something over many days or weeks etc till I find a good solution.

I see prep for interviews as table stakes, and accept it as such. but I still regret that my slow thinking strength can shine in these contexts.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#457

Post by xyzi2 »

bmitc wrote: post #204
sockgrant wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about someone being hired that couldn’t write simple code. It’s easy to study leet code, and it’s relevant because it shows the interviewer you can write code. I’ve had non-leet code interviews, like write some feature in 60minutes. It was fine. It tests code and knowledge as opposed to just algorithms and tricks. I dunno I’ve always felt that the people who can’t leet code are the…

> It’s easy to study leet code, and it’s relevant because it shows the interviewer you can write code. I have a million things I want to learn about. If a potential employer would rather I spend time on what amounts to trivia, then great, I don’t want to work there. > I’ve had non-leet code interviews, like write some feature in 60minutes. This is also a problem because it’s impossible to understand the constraints,…

I’ve conducted many interviews that starts off with asking questions about projects. Many candidates sound like rockstars. They even nail all sorts of technical follow-up questions. Then when I start asking coding questions, and I’m not talking leetcode here, more similar to fizzbuzz, they can barely write an if-statement. My conclusion is that some people are great at talking, but you really need to test the technical abilities too.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#458

Post by Swizec »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #354
Swizec wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Coding is hard, but so is marketing, accounting, management ... But are your marketing candidates being put through the ringer too? I suspect software engineers are being uniquely hazed. My girlfriend works on the business strategy side of Fortune500’s. Our interviews look like a joke compared to theirs.

My developer friend stopped working as an engineer because he found out he can pass those interviews with no preparation and the job takes way less effort compared to software. He's now doing two jobs at the same time and the companies don't notice he's barely doing anything but appearing in meetings. YMMV Big corporations are incredibly wasteful, so I'm not surprised. I also know plenty of developers who do little a…

> he can pass those interviews with no preparation

I've never had to prepare for an engineering interview in some 15 years of doing this professionally.

> the job takes way less effort compared to software

The easiest part of my job these days is writing code.

The challenging fun part is setting a technical strategy that aligns with the business and gardening the team around me with soft influence towards that strategy. Super challenging. Would've been easier to just do it myself, but there's only so much I can do on my own.

Ultimately, you should go do whatever comes to you easiest and/or is most fun. No sense grinding away at something you're not good at. Maybe your friend has an immense talent for business and strategy.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#459

Post by throwaway1269 »

Wiseacre wrote: post #148
throwawaylinux wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it looks good on your resume. The type of clown who would get upset at you working for Facebook is not someone you want to work for anyway so consider that another plus. Some people get extremely sanctimonious about the latest thing their politics or corporate "news" media or the current popular trend on twitter gets them riled up about. Of course they will never face up to the fact that the companies they work f…

If they do face up to the fact, then that means they are not necessarily clowns. Some orgs do have ethical standards.

No post body was provided.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#460

Post by kyrra »

vlovich123 wrote: post #431
mFixman wrote: post #410

> I do miss a bunch of Facebook internal tools. Phabricator, Workplace, Scuba, Deltoid and a bunch of others. I had the opposite experience leaving Facebook for a company that uses externally-available tools. I do miss 2017 Scuba, Workplace, and Deltoid, since they worked well in Facebook's ecosystem. I do not miss the 2021 versions of those tools (and of most other internal tools in Facebook), which are bloated mess…

Workplace is definitely better than Google chat in my experience. Phabricator is miles ahead of anything. Automatic flaky test detection works like a charm and I miss it every day. However, the organizational culture… I agree with a lot of what he noted about reorgs and that it feels like walking through molasses trying to get anything done quickly.

Googler, opinions are my own.

If the Chat team is ever able to get inline-threads out the door: https://chromeunboxed.com/google-chat-rooms-become-spaces, it should make rooms/spaces a much better experience.

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