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On Leaving Facebook

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Re: On Leaving Facebook

#621

Post by Octabrain »

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 totally understand you. I also did something similar recently. In my case, I’m leaving a company I’ve been working in for six months where I’ve been earning a very good salary but the lack of technical challenges, learning and political battles combined with nobody requesting me to deliver anything simply made me feel bored and miserable. Now I’m about to start in a new position from a different place where the salary is not that good (although still pretty decent) but I know from friends that are working there that the environment is much more satisfactory.

It’s simple, silly me, I consider work a big part of my life. And given the fact that I have to do it for living anyway, it *must be* gratifying.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#622

Post by deep_lol »

29athrowaway wrote: post #541
deep_lol wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe. Learning also takes time and in software development you need to learn constantly. You can optimize some type of work, maybe you can code faster, but others are fast too! Remember, everyone around you passed the LeetCode test. How would you optimize meetings, communication with the team, reading/reviewing other peoples code?

> How would you optimize meetings, communication with the team, reading/reviewing other peoples code? 1. Having purposeful, moderated meetings with minutes and deliverables that can be evaluated. When you force people to deliver something, and when that something will be subject to open evaluation, meetings stop being "free" and people that see "meetings as a job" will quickly give their 2 weeks notice and go away to…

These points are all valid and might work this way in an ideal company. It may even worked this way in Facebook 10 years ago. In reality engineers have little control over these things and little time to implement them. Therefore we've got: toxic managers, unclear goals, direction change, overwork, burnout, churn etc.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#623

Post by erenyeager »

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…

So I keep seeing things about Netflix so I felt I might comment. Netflix is in a profoundly evil field. They work to manipulate people through media. They are not the only company, of course, but they are egregious.

For example, Netflix infamously pulled Hasan Minhaj’s episode on Saudi Arabia from Saudi Arabian Netflix in exchange for allowing Orange is the New Black to stay. They want to, for lack of better words, morally corrupt societies and they do not care if that means more injustice and political suppression.

Their leadership has stated one of their intentions was to promote things from western culture in other countries in order to change the culture and society there. This is blatantly cultural imperialism and an extension of US soft power projection.

The media has that addictive quality of captivating masses. I see Netflix as like a tobacco or Juul company — profoundly damaging for the groups of people they seek to captivate. And maybe a comparison to an oil company is apt; Netflix certainly pollutes in terms of the minds and behaviors of people. Time and focus and cognition spent watching their shows pushed by their algorithms entrenches their position in a world where they do not care for their negative externalities.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#624

Post by cantrememberpw8 »

zionic wrote: post #278
cantrememberpw8 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was previously at the top of the salary band for Sr. Software Engineer at a decent big company, making 1.7-2x mediocre engineers I know elsewhere. Joining FB, my total comp (400kish) is an ample 5x mediocre in my area, and I hear thats normal across FAANGs. I know 2x is still ridiculously high, even 1x is a very reasonable amount to live on, but 2x doesn't compare to 5x.

Sounds like you’re making bank now. The problem is that, you sound like are expecting me to respect you. You sold out, sure you got some more cash for your trouble so congrats I guess. I just want you to be honest about what you did.

I dont care about your respect... I'm just saying your 'top-tier salary' of 2x doesnt compare with an actual top tier FAANG salary, in my experience.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#625

Post by patja »

andrew_ wrote: post #488
patja wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because attorneys know how deep the employer's pockets are, which gives them a great incentive to pull out all the stops, which gives corp HR the incentive to make sure there is a long and painful performance management process before anyone can be fired without it exposing the company to too much risk.

This doesn't apply to right-to-work states. Nuance is required in an argument like this. For nealy half the country, "hard to fire" is bullshit FUD. It's another excuse to be lazy in interviewing and follow FAANG in lock step.

Having lived and worked in a right to work state all my life, your comment does not ring true for my experience. Employees can be members of a "protected class" (one of which is simply being over age 40) which is often the core of an improper firing civil suit.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#626

Post by lostmsu »

alexeiz wrote: post #351
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.

Several years ago, I've seen an opening where a company was looking for someone to "lead their engineering effort". When I applied, they asked me to pass a hackerrank test. I said, thanks, but no thanks. It's obvious that such mismatch of the role description and the methods of finding the right candidate can only mean they are either incompetent or lying. None of that says anything good about that company.

What do you think is a good prescreening test for candidates?

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#627

Post by netizen-936824 »

scaramanga wrote: post #614
Damogran6 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on the part of my career journey where I've realized you're _JUST_ exchanging time for money. They want you to work on something that gets thrown away? It paid for the mortgage, it made a car payment, it's thrown away JUST like 99.9% of the stuff I did for the first 10 years of my career. It's GOING to happen, best not to get too caught up in it. Going into SIEM build #8 in my life....it's just another SIEM. I ta…

I really find interesting the juxtaposition here. On the one hand, if the person is not given productive work to do and decides to just go for a jog then they must be racked by guilt for being a slacker, like GP. But if our organisations are diverting people's productive energy into unproductive waste, they need not feel any guilt about it at all since it is absolutely self-evident that this is the best and most prod…

>it is absolutely self-evident that this is the best and most productive of all possible economic systems.

It isn't very self-evident from my perspective, could you please explain how?

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#628

Post by 62951413 »

Damogran6 wrote: post #433
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…

I'm on the part of my career journey where I've realized you're _JUST_ exchanging time for money. They want you to work on something that gets thrown away? It paid for the mortgage, it made a car payment, it's thrown away JUST like 99.9% of the stuff I did for the first 10 years of my career. It's GOING to happen, best not to get too caught up in it. Going into SIEM build #8 in my life....it's just another SIEM. I ta…

Isn't the main risk here not acquiring new production experience and so reducing your chances for finding the next gig? As in "adding new buzzwords to your resume" basically.

When they ask you in three years about how you have spent the time. If you convert XML requests to JSON messages for a living and not even with Spark.

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#629

Post by 62951413 »

gorgoiler wrote: post #370
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…

The most amazingly productive engineers I’ve worked with have all been incredible leetcoders. You’re right though — I might as well be saying they were also incredible bakers or skaters. If those were also high signal identifiers of good devs then we’d be kneading dough while doing ollies in the interview rooms. What irks our industry is that there are plenty of good developers out there that produce quality day to d…

I have never applied to FAANG for exactly this reason. But I have seen this style of interviews creeping up to dominate over the last decade. At least in the Bay Area. My impression is that European interviews are more sane (no dynamic programming, more take home coding challenges).

Re: On Leaving Facebook

#630

Post by asxd »

steelframe wrote: post #575
bschne wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I joined a FAANG during the pendemic, and for the entire year I was there, I never got assigned a single task. Of course I kept myself busy trying to identify and solve problems around me, but I never had a deadline or anything associated with what I had chosen to work on. After a year I just couldn't do it anymore. A few acquaintances thought I was out of my mind and that I should continue milking that for all it's…

As another person who left a FAANG company because I found the work meaningless, I can assure you that what you were feeling is real and you probably made the right choice. My life is significantly more enjoyable now that I’ve joined a smaller company where the job actually motivates me.

For what it’s worth, almost everyone I talked to before leaving had the same take as what you described—that I should do the safe thing and just keep working there because the pay was high and it was relatively easy. I thought I was going crazy, because it seemed so obvious to me that I needed to move on.

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