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On Leaving Facebook

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Re: On Leaving Facebook

#601

Post by davemp »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #570
davemp wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 see…

I don't think it's psychopathic or malevolent beyond what's normal for capitalism. It's how you win at making money. In any market you're either disrupting or at risk of being disrupted. There's multiple strategies you could take for the latter. And it certainly helps if you have a firehose of money (ads revenue). Not speaking from any inside knowledge, BTW. Just my philosophizing.

That may be a legal/valid strategy, but it seems pathological. Instead of spending money on unproductive employees, these companies could just pass their excesses down to share holders. If a specific company is out competed fairly, oh well, companies don’t need to last/grow forever. The share holders will hopefully have allocated the returns more efficiently (maybe in the new competition).

I see it as an invasive vine using all its spare energy to block out the canopy and choke out the forest. Rather than a native tree that uses spare energy to bear fruits, which nourish various critters who in turn contribute to a more efficient and robust ecosystem.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#602

Post by skinnymuch »

zionic wrote: post #255
skinnymuch wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I wouldn’t. I’d feel gross being so judegemental and thinking so highly and self righteously about myself. I highly doubt the work your company does is blessing the earth with immense positivity. I highly doubt, just based on sheer numbers and basic data, that the people working at your company are amazing humble people who care so much about the world. I doubt they are concerned with the homeless population and o…

> No I wouldn’t. I’d feel gross being so judegemental and thinking so highly and self righteously about myself. Why is applying realistic negative values to behavior such as willful FAANG employment “judgmental” You made the choice to work for a morally bankrupt megacorp because they paid you a crap ton of money. They paid your bills. You sold out, just own it and be a human instead of coping. I didn’t say I have som…

Of course we have no way of knowing what you or your company does. You believe you make the world a better more honest place. Funny how often self righteous people believe that. I’d be willing to bet there will be plenty of people who have in my opinion more consistent views and principles on the problems with the current status quo and capitalism that would easily find your business not as amazing as you claim.

> You made the choice to work for a morally bankrupt megacorp because they paid you a crap ton of money. They paid your bills. You sold out, just own it and be a human instead of coping.

Almost all of this can be tuned up a bit and be used against you. Unless you’re an incredible rarity that is doing amazing selfless work. I highly, highly doubt it.

It is much easier to point to easy “bad guys” and delude one self of one’s own work not being such great stuff either. Beyond that. This is a general moral stance. I’m sure if one was to compare you overall life, principles, morals, and a good hearted person working for a FAANG, your life wouldn’t be the one coming out ahead.

At least most humbler people can see “selling out” is not binary. You have sold out too. We all have.

—

Just realized. It appears you or whomever owns the business and companies. It is so incredibly easy to point to how self serving and it being the definition of selling out to gain more from the effort of others without doing equal amounts of work and effort. And no I’m not a socialist.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#604

Post by poopypoopington »

zionic wrote: post #109
code_biologist wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll match your anecdote with mine. I'm an engineering leader at a small company that has worked at FAANG. I have personal mixed feelings about working at FB, but it's a very strong positive signal about someone's engineering ability (and comp expectations lol). Send any good coders you toss out because they worked at FB my way!!

I’ll match your anecdote with mine. I’ve been everything from CTO to lead engineer. I’ve made sure we always pay well above average for every role because I’d rather have one exceptional engineer than 10 regular ones. FAANG on your resume is an instant disqualification.

This is a monumentally stupid take. I would never want to work for you if your judgement is this poor and politically reactionary.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#605

Post by poopypoopington »

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.

I assume you live in the United States. By your logic, you are complicit with the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of peoples from Africa then.

How do you live with yourself?

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#606

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> Because they made the choice to work at some incredibly evil corporations

FAANG are not incredibly evil corporations.

They are average evil, and incredibly successful.

If you are CTO at another company and you think your company is less evil, it's probably just less successful and you’re blinded to its evil by your vested interest in changing the “less successful” part.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#607

Post by infinitone »

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…

This is so true to the T.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#608

Post by summerlight »

zionic wrote: post #109
code_biologist wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll match your anecdote with mine. I'm an engineering leader at a small company that has worked at FAANG. I have personal mixed feelings about working at FB, but it's a very strong positive signal about someone's engineering ability (and comp expectations lol). Send any good coders you toss out because they worked at FB my way!!

I’ll match your anecdote with mine. I’ve been everything from CTO to lead engineer. I’ve made sure we always pay well above average for every role because I’d rather have one exceptional engineer than 10 regular ones. FAANG on your resume is an instant disqualification.

Does your company explicitly state this criteria in the job description?

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#609

Post by sockgrant »

jonwithoutanh wrote: post #578
xyzi2 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 technic…

Perhaps your technical questions are not adequate enough if someone can sound like a "rockstar" while not being able to program an if statement? I've interviewed hundreds of people over my career and I've never had an interview where I couldn't figure out their technical abilities through a conversation. I'll tell you what leetcode interviews do find you though, they find you people that have no idea how TCP/HTTP wor…

Yeah FAANG have those type of interviews too.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#610

Post by saghm »

jmorag wrote: post #505
sailingparrot wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'd push back a bit on the orchestra musician preparation relevance. Playing at an audition alone is very different from playing in a section. The hyper critical attention to minute details that wins you a job at, say, the New York Philharmonic, isn't what makes you good at blending with your section. Also, no one is ever practicing concert repertoire as much as they practice audition excerpts so what you hear at the…

> I'd push back a bit on the orchestra musician preparation relevance. Playing at an audition alone is very different from playing in a section. The hyper critical attention to minute details that wins you a job at, say, the New York Philharmonic, isn't what makes you good at blending with your section.

A bit off topic, as this isn't orchestral music, but in college I was in a couple of bands as a bassist, and in one of them the guitarist was probably one of the best musicians I ever played with technically. However, because he was so good, sometimes he would get taken by surprise when someone less talented in the band messed something up during a performance. When practicing before one of our gigs, I noticed that our rhythm guitarist was playing a certain section incorrectly and essentially finishing it in half the time he was supposed to; the drummer and I would generally catch on immediately and course-correct, but the lead guitarist tended to be flummoxed and took the longest to group up with everyone. I made sure to mention it to everyone since I figured it might come up again, but I think everyone else forgot by the time the gig happened, and the same exact thing happened, and even though it was the rhythm guitarist who made the initial mistake, the lead guitarist ended up being the one who "looked" the most wrong to the audience because the drummer and I knew that the only way we'd get back on track was grouping up with the rhythm guitarist and leaving the lead guitarist behind. If anyone were trying out our two guitarist to join an existing group, I think almost everyone would take our lead guitarist due to how much better he'd perform in an audition. However, if the band he tried out for wasn't able to keep up with him, it's very possible he would have been the wrong choice. This seems pretty similar to "leetcode" style interviews for a software engineering role; the person who is able to impress the interviewers the best technically might end up being a bad fit for some teams if they aren't able to collaborate as effectively with their team.

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