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On Leaving Facebook

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Re: On Leaving Facebook

#551

Post by maxwell86 »

sailingparrot wrote: post #485
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? Because that preparation, by and large, is not related to the actual 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). Those are all instances of people being asked to do/know thi…

> Because that preparation, by and large, is not related to the actual job.

TBH, depends on the job.

I think the problem is hiring people with these skills to do jobs that don't require them. That's bad for both parties. The employer is going to be paying for a skill it is not required, and the employee will get bored and switch jobs, costing everyone time and money.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#552

Post by ncmncm »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #542
ncmncm wrote: post #509

NB, Replit is the outfit that did this: https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/

Replit's position there seems reasonable to me. Companies would be a lot less enthusiastic about hiring developers if it came with the risk that someone could take internal designs and open source them with no repercussions.

If your company's value proposition can be replicated by an intern in a weekend, you have a much bigger problem than interns.

Companies' enthusiasm for hiring developers worries me not even a little. Of much greater moment, IStM, is the character, or lack of, demonstrated by company officers. That CEO's final e-mail lays him all out. I will certainly not be applying to work at Replit.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#553

Post by earthboundkid »

bschne wrote: post #360
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…

I once had a job where I somehow didn't get assigned much work for a long period of time right after starting — something about no projects having open staff positions, and them not being able to use me anyway because they were using up all the budget with the existing staffing already and didn't want to do "free work" for the clients. For a while, I spent my days mostly doing tutorials, reading ebooks and papers, wa…

David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs has a good analysis of this. Standard capitalist theory is that people are lazy and will not work unless force to do so by threat of immiseration. But in reality people HATE bullshit jobs where you spend the day playing solitaire or whatever. People don’t want to burn themselves out but they do want to feel helpful. Good management is about helping people realize their natural desire to help out.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#554

Post by dymk »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #544
dymk wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is wrong. They care about the number on your paystub, not the company name.

Surely they take the stability of your job into account.

Credit scores are based on how good you are at paying off your debits, and how consistent your paycheck is. They care about the numbers, not the names.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#555

Post by throwaway_merig »

voakbasda wrote: post #95
elb0w wrote: 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…

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.

They are convenient and standardized ways of testing. These "legal ways to discriminate" that companies come up with are nonsense, that's not what is happening.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#556

Post by epgui »

zionic wrote: post #244
sockgrant wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I’ve worked for two of FAANG, it’s super duper easy to work outside of SV. The reason you sound salty is because you evaluate candidates based on whatever perception you have about who they are instead of trying to understand who they are. I’m sure you don’t care, sounds like it’s working for you, so in any event congrats on finding what makes you happy!

> 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.

Ah, yes, the “guilt by association fallacy”.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#557

Post by randcraw »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #413
purplehoodie wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pushing the metaphor further is surely silly, but I'd compare s/w dev to jazz improv or the ability to deftly adopt the musical expressive style of a new ensemble, and s/w design to musical composition or arranging. Switching instruments is more like switching programming languages or stacks. Presumably appropriate auditions should assess these complex skills and not rudimentary fare like scales or key transposition, AKA leetcode.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#558

Post by chrismv48 »

voakbasda wrote: post #95
elb0w wrote: 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…

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.

This doesn't make sense to me. I work in a FAANG and we are desperate to hire senior engineers and it wouldn't make any sense for us to turn our nose up at older candidates.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#559

Post by jakear »

boring_twenties wrote: post #525
jakear wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the critique is that you should be perfectly able to do all those thing and more, while working, if you have a job that properly respects work/life balance. On the other hand, if you spend a decade or two constantly grinding on work at the expense of all else, so that when you’re 40 you can do those things, you might find that your body isn’t up for the task.

No, you cannot do all those things and more while working. You can't even get a taste, it's more akin to looking through a store window. It's not possible to fully experience a foreign country/culture in a 1 week vacation. No idea about surfing, but it's not possible to even get a sense of what skiing has to offer in a couple of weekends a year. Maybe, for a few people, it's possible to find the motivation and energy…

I’ve known too many folks dead by 30 to take advice from someone advocating for “boring_twenties”.

This is the only life we’ve got. Don’t spend it bored.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#560

Post by honkdaddy »

zionic wrote: post #171
Godel_unicode wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to know this as well. Anyone willing to write off literally millions of engineers because they happened to work at some huge companies is someone worth avoiding.

> literally millions of engineers It’s tens of thousands, tops. And let’s be honest, most of them are highly overrated. > because they happened to work at some huge companies Because they made the choice to work at some incredibly evil corporations. Give them some credit, they didn’t sleepwalk into their roles. They did it for that fat cash, and they sold their morals out to do so. Jokes on them, I have the “fat cash…

So what's the company?
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