On Leaving Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#491

Post by doix » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #412

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cra…

> 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.

Tests are different because you are on a timer and they are balanced around it. I almost got straight A's in university, apart from a single B in a course I was confident I actually understood. I got A's in shit I couldn't even begin to explain. But signals and systems, which I genuinely understood at the time, I got a B because I didn't bother studying and memorising shit. I had to work stuff from first principles and ran out of time.

I feel like it's the same in programming interviews. There's no time to actually work out anything from first principles or any original thoughts. Either you know the answer immediately and you spew some shit to make the interviewer happy, or you fail.

Like you say, it's very different for physical activities (can't comment on music), because you cannot drastically increase performance by cramming for a few hours. I was an amateur powerlifter, I stopped training when covid started. There's no way I can get my strength back in 3 days. But I bet I can get an A in some random exam after cramming for 3 days in some random university course I did however many years ago.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#492

Post by throwaway1269 » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #402

davedx wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do quite a lot of screening/hiring. I’m personally very critical of Meta the company but have no issues hiring people who’ve worked there. The malaise in Meta is obviously a product of its top leadership not the engineering people

I would probably hesitate if someone was in a position of leadership at Meta in the past few years, had been leadership for a long time, or did their formative engineering years at Meta. I’d want to question to ensure they’ll actually push back against unethical suggestions by product people if they suggest things without knowing that those features might rely on something unethical like scraping personal data.

From my FAANG experience they are strict policies for dealing with user data and you actually have to think about such things and get approvals.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#493

Post by notreallyserio » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #305

> The salary is high. Facebook aims to pay top 5% compensation in the market (we’ll get back to that). This makes a lot of other things very comfortable: you can go to a restaurant without worrying too much about the bill, get a nicer car, a nicer house, better stuff. That's very normal, and I don't want to condemn the author for this, but this is a trap. If you get used to the consumption that a 5% salary offers you…

Every time I get a raise I make a one time splurge purchase and then look at ways to reduce my periodic spending. Cancel subscriptions, re-play old games, that sort of thing. I figure my spending will naturally rise again (always has, anyway) but not as high as it would have if I let it if I wasn't so cautious.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#494

Post by ericbarrett » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #375

throwaway894345 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like this could cut either way. Yeah, older people are more likely to have other priorities, but they’re also more likely to be financially secure and thus able to trade money for time to study. Also, they’re more likely to have gained time management/prioritization skills and discipline that they could apply toward studying. Ultimately it seems like arguing that older people lack time or inclination depends on…

Anecdotally, I am one of the older people in our dev team, and also once of the only people who cares even slightly about big O. I’m talking simple stuff, like knowing whether indexing a given list data type is constant time or O(n). To be fair, it’s not particularly relevant to what we do.

I think asking a candidate some basic big-O notation questions in an interview is great. Asking a DevOps candidate if a search algorithm developed and published in 2018 is O(n log(n)) or O(n log(n) K^(log n)), and then dinging them for not getting a perfectly correct answer, is over the top the kind of stuff that's used for age discrimination. Not because the young candidate will know it, but rather they will be excused for "almost getting it" and "having a good attitude" etc. in the hiring committee.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#495

Post by lolinder » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

yourapostasy wrote: post #461

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 wor…

I don't work for an FAANG, so if someone who does comes along I'll defer to them.

What I have gathered from those who do is that it's not that there's a shortage of problems to solve in the organization, it's that the bureaucracy is so thick that they couldn't solve extra problems even if they tried.

From your references to "clients" I assume that you work as a consultant of some description. Obviously, no one brings in a consultant without having a lot for them to do. Additionally, few orgs bring in a consultant with the intention of them doing only what they're told.

But if you're just one coder among tens of thousands, that's exactly what your organization expects of you. And that's what the people who tell these stories find so draining.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#496

Post by wreath » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #307

tippytippytango wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Someone here on HN once mentioned that they cleaned or worked on their deck or whatever while working and nobody cared. I did the same (well, no deck but other stuff) when i had long stretches of downtime or notice that nobody else cares as much as I do about the project. Same result, nobody gave a fuck really. I don't think it's sustainable, but whatever.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#497

Post by logifail » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

> [on health insurance] It’s very comfortable to know that you are likely not going to receive a huge bill for doing an ultra sound for a routine checkup.

Just as a comparative data point from the other side of the pond (we're mainland 'yurp): our eldest is currently fighting off some kind of infection with swollen glands and abdominal pain and within the last 10 days I have visited:

- our regular doctor twice - [the first time] was referred for ultrasound at another doctor, where he was seen immediately [then] - referral to a paediatrician, where he was seen the next day [and] - he eventually ended up having a complete check-up in the paediatrics department of our nearest hospital, including blood tests.

None of that was much fun at all, as any parent will know, thankfully so far none of it uncovered anything bad (thank $deity), but happily all of it was funded from general taxation and deductions that everyone here contributes to.

Which is a relief.

Next time I'm tempted to whinge about how high the tax rates are here, I need to remember not to.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#498

Post by me_me_mu_mu » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

hiptobecubic wrote: post #430

me_me_mu_mu wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean how much money is enough money? You have FAANG tier people crying about TC - at some point it becomes clear that's their whole identity. Maybe they're just sad to be stuck in horrible cities (I'm also in one of them lmao) where no amount of TC buys them peace and happiness. It is pretty cringey, and honestly sad. I've been to so many meetups which basically turn into grieving sessions for highly paid engineers…

And you have people making 6x less than you working at different jobs than yours. These kinds of complaints really lack perspective imo. Getting paid less at work is the same as over paying when buying something. Would you call it cringey if someone doesn't want to pay 30% more than all their neighbors for their house? They can "probably" afford it, can't they? Just be happy you have a house at all, right? What's a f…

What? I’m not the one complaining about comp. I’m in a peer group that’s highly paid yet still cries over compensation.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#499

Post by golondon » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

sharker8 wrote: post #466

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'.

I guess with 8 something years at Meta, if the RSUs were not spent stupidly, considering the stock appreciation and the refreshers, it would be safe to say this person's net worth is at least $2M.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#500

Post by davemp » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #438

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…

These BigCorps are hiring like mad and paying big $$ to fill seats more for the purpose of starving their competition of brains than actually using the brains they hire. The work is primarily organizational/drudgery and moves at a slow pace because of all the red tape and walls they've built around their projects in order to manage all the people. Endless incremental code reviews for small changes that get pondered f…

Very well put, your comment resonates with my frustrations at a BigCorp.

> These BigCorps are hiring like mad and paying big $$ to fill seats more for the purpose of starving their competition of brains than actually using the brains they hire.

I used to apply Hanlon’s Razor to these types of hypothesis. After spending more time with the decision making class, the amount of psychopathic behavior and analysis I’ve seen has let me to reconsider.