Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On Leaving Facebook

frantic.im

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 645 posts

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#461

Post by yourapostasy »

fallmonkey wrote: post #94

"A common question I get is about work/life balance. And I view it a little different too now. At Facebook I could get by barely working a few hours a day. But the job was so unsatisfying that it spilled the frustration in the “life” part" This is the golden piece for me. I too recently left a big corp to a smaller place, expecting to sacrifice WLB and my free time - yet I ended up feeling happier and spending less t…

This kind of context is very difficult for me to wrap my head around. So much so that it strikes me as a kind of artificial ennui, maybe even a kind of humblebragging. I'm open to changing my mind though, so I'd really like to hear explanations/clarifications that would help me understand this sentiment more.

In even my most over-resourced client, there is never a paucity of improvements to make. Ever.

My current working conclusion after seeing this many times and doing what I can to informally coach the ones expressing this kind of sentiment, is that there isn't a lack of meaningfulness, or purpose, or other lofty language. There is a lack of will to go outside of their comfort zone, very often due to non-technical factors. Or a lack of a sense of joy in the craft in even the smallest details and accomplishments. And that's okay. It's the reason we use specialization.

But let's not kid ourselves. I've yet to walk into a client that is so on top of their to do list much less wish list that there is nothing to improve. We also need to recognize there is also a substantial subset of people expressing this sentiment who dislike implementing some improvement without significant recognition, praise, and advancement; these are the ones who seek the big, splashy wins over the steady, incremental attention to craft that accumulate into the 20-year overnight successes.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#462

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

sofixa wrote: post #232
stickfigure wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having a moral/ethical compass isn't "political".

So there's only one true moral compass?

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#463

Post by [deleted] »

vlovich123 wrote: post #448
zionic wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason you sound salty is because you evaluate candidates based on whatever perception you have No, I’m making very real concrete moral judgements about you based on who you chose to associate with.

Shall we also start making moral judgements about the city or country you live/lived in? The products you choose to purchase? The schools you chose to attend? The political party you choose to support? The religion you are or aren’t a part of? The sports teams you support? Shall we look down on NASA engineers because it’s part of the US government and pulls heavily from the US military/has overlap with the intelligen…

[deleted]

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#464

Post by nathanfig »

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.

Some people are very good at BSing their way through interviews, even technical ones. Those people also end up being very difficult to fire and are generally poisonous to culture. Asking them to code is a great filter, it’s hard to fool a compiler. It shouldn’t be the only filter, but for coding roles a coding interview is pretty critical.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#465

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

foepys wrote: post #340
twy_new_fb_hire wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I view ad targeting as good for the world: they help make my life better by aiming me at products and services relevant to my interests and needs, sometimes when I didn't even know such a thing existed. It saves poor reinvention of the wheel in so many cases. And FB-the-social-network is also great in theory: groups help you make friends and go deep into very niche interests. Without it, I would be a more normal, les…

> I view ad targeting as good for the world: they help make my life better by aiming me at products and services relevant to my interests and needs, sometimes when I didn't even know such a thing existed. It saves poor reinvention of the wheel in so many cases. Let me give you another point of view: Ads benefit the already wealthy corporations above small businesses that cannot pay billions for ads and add another la…

In case you weren't aware, the targeting tools provided by Google and Facebook have actually rebalanced the advertising market back towards smaller businesses.

I kinda agree on the consumerism thing, but that's more a reflection of our society than evil genius advertisers.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#466

Post by sharker8 »

This post is missing the key detail: is this person taking risks with 'the house's money' (high net worth, can generate passive income) or not? The answer is probably yes having spent that many years at fb, but I found the tone of 'I'll cut to the chase, I took a pay cut' disingenuous. The real questions is 'is this person already high net worth or not'.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#468

Post by romanhn »

notacoward wrote: post #399
romanhn wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, very stressful for both individual contributors and managers. IMO many of FB dysfunctions are attributable directly to PSC and its focus on impact. When promotions and even continued employment are on the line, short-term thinking takes over and every decision is optimized through the lens of the performance review. The great work life balance the author described is far and between in that company.

3.5 years at Facebook, and concur with everything you said. I'll add two things. (1) You allude to it with "even continued employment" but it deserves to be explicit: "up or out" makes everything about PSC twice as bad as it already is. I wasn't subject to it myself (I was hired at a "terminal" level) but I saw it cause much grief for more junior folks. (2) Mandatory oncall can be "meh" on some teams but absolute hel…

Thank you for the extra detail. I will add that PSC exerts plenty of pressure at terminal levels as well, since two halves of Meets Most rating are likely to end your career there. Lots of weasel words from leadership about how it's not an official policy, but it's near impossible to recover from given that at that point your manager's PSC depends on getting the low performer off the team.

Really curious how it works now with the cycle moving to annual cadence. I really doubt though that two years of Meets Most is going to be acceptable.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#469

Post by bradly »

mattnewton wrote: post #276
bradly wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Nobody cares about the specific company when you are getting a loan.

That was not my experience - see my sister comment. Some companies advertise explicit perks to FAANG employees hoping to win their business, including things like waving fees. I don't know if they would have negotiated the rate down anyways but I was quoted at a better mortgage rate in part because of my employment.

Interesting. Different than my experience, but I was FAANG in Southern California, not the Bay Area.

We did have partners with all sorts of companies for discounts, so I would be surprised that there were discounts available, but it wasn’t like when you give your employee information when getting a loan they would do anything different. Now the travel perks were just being at FAANG we quite-nice and I miss those.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#470

Post by didip »

erwincoumans wrote: post #417

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.

oh, I heard mobility at Google is trivial? I guess that’s just a myth.
Post reply on HN