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Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

reuters.com

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Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how bleak it must be to be an average SWE at facebook. Sure, you get paid a ton of money, but now they are going to "turn up the heat" on you to pump glorified CRUD message board features faster. (yes, I know there are probably lots of intellectually interesting jobs at Meta, but the overall purpose and mission just isn't exactly inspiring)

> glorified CRUD message board features faster I think this comment says more about you than anything. If you look into Meta's tech stack they have challenges no company on the planet has and clearly a lot of talent. Having just played with CacheLib it's an impressive project and yet to see an equivalent anywhere else. And I imagine much of what they do is like this when you're operating at their extremes.

[deleted]

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how bleak it must be to be an average SWE at facebook. Sure, you get paid a ton of money, but now they are going to "turn up the heat" on you to pump glorified CRUD message board features faster. (yes, I know there are probably lots of intellectually interesting jobs at Meta, but the overall purpose and mission just isn't exactly inspiring)

I quit Facebook because I was getting pings by Zuckerberg himself on button padding on one of his pet projects.

Is this literally true?

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, not in the codebase I was working in at the time. Paddings being manipulated programmatically all over the place. Also, what a clear signal the CEO is not focusing on what matters. This was during the time the Cambridge Analytica thing broke... There's really nothing more important that needed his attention?

Maybe he needed something to direct his stress into and distract himself. I'm not saying what he did was right, BTW.

That was kind of my read too. Focus on the small things you can control to make up for the loss of control over the big things.

I just didn't like to be on the receiving end of his coping strategy.

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#64
Left Facebook for quite awhile now. Got punished with post restrictions for quoting Futurama's Bender's "kill all humans" under friend's status update of how he's gonna watch the show after a hard workday. I mean, it utterly failed to deliver the very core basic feature it's supposed to - random socializing with your friends. My pal still doesn't have a clue I'm a fan of Bender.

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he needed something to direct his stress into and distract himself. I'm not saying what he did was right, BTW.

That was kind of my read too. Focus on the small things you can control to make up for the loss of control over the big things. I just didn't like to be on the receiving end of his coping strategy.

> I just didn't like to be on the receiving end of his coping strategy.

That's a very fair need. Hope your life turns out better than you ever hope it to be.

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a company the size of Facebook, the CEO should not be involved at that level.

Why not? It's his company. He can do what he wants.

His company pays design and UX experts a huge amount of money to come up with designs that work for users, not for him personally. Meta isn't Zuckerberg's toy. Ignoring that expertise, and designing for himself instead of users, is failing the shareholders by wasting money and not maximizing revenue.

The parallel to Steve Jobs is a fair one, except that Steve was brilliant at design and UX and got things right. He wasn't bothered about tiny details like the padding on a single button but rather the design of the entire system, and he picked up on things that didn't sit in the overall architecture brilliantly.

He also drove people to leave Apple, and that was a bad thing. Things aren't right or justifiable just because they're like things Steve did. Sometimes he got things wrong, particularly when it came to managing people.

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how bleak it must be to be an average SWE at facebook. Sure, you get paid a ton of money, but now they are going to "turn up the heat" on you to pump glorified CRUD message board features faster. (yes, I know there are probably lots of intellectually interesting jobs at Meta, but the overall purpose and mission just isn't exactly inspiring)

> glorified CRUD message board features faster I think this comment says more about you than anything. If you look into Meta's tech stack they have challenges no company on the planet has and clearly a lot of talent. Having just played with CacheLib it's an impressive project and yet to see an equivalent anywhere else. And I imagine much of what they do is like this when you're operating at their extremes.

Hardly. A lot of what they do is likely filibuster.

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how bleak it must be to be an average SWE at facebook. Sure, you get paid a ton of money, but now they are going to "turn up the heat" on you to pump glorified CRUD message board features faster. (yes, I know there are probably lots of intellectually interesting jobs at Meta, but the overall purpose and mission just isn't exactly inspiring)

Meta has done a lot of interesting work in the hardware space. In hardware, you just kind of accept, regardless of your company or its vision, that your work is ultimately used to facilitate the watching of cat videos.

Alternatively, your work is being used to process financial information and trades a few nanoseconds faster, or your work is being used by the military, ...

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#69
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a company the size of Facebook, the CEO should not be involved at that level.

Respectfully: Zuckerberg has earned the right to care about whatever he darn-well pleases at company the size of his.

Sure. But random employees also have the right to quit, if they don't like that meddling.

Re: Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds

#70
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a company the size of Facebook, the CEO should not be involved at that level.

Steve Jobs was famously known to be involved in even more micro product details than that.

“So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I’ve already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow” said Steve.

“I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I’m not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?” Of course this was okay with me.

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