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How to succeed at Meta

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Re: How to succeed at Meta

#141

Post by autokad »

sleepybrett wrote: post #124
autokad wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your work is never your family, the sooner in life you figure that out the better off you will be. No matter what employer you have, they will fire you the first instance it is profitable for them to do so. Its a contract, you can take pride in your work, but at the end of the day its a business deal and its about money.

The work is your family if it's a family business. But that presents a whole set of different scenarios.

I disagree. even if you are the owner of the business, or working for someone in your family's business, its still business. full stop.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#142

Post by AlexandrB »

zh3 wrote: post #132
analyst74 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you feel like a family working for a company, but does not have significant ownership stake, you're being conned.

I'd disagree with that - what's wrong with working for a company that has a good culture, even if you don't have shares? i.e. shares or not, I'd prefer to work for a company where I felt I was part of it as opposed to one that's just time served.

I think parent is alluding to the fact that "part of the family" is a framing that often serves the interests of the employer. No matter how close you feel to the people managing you, chances are they will not hesitate to lay you off for financial/profitabilty reasons. This is in contrast to how an actual family (whether biological or "found") works where support and belonging is to some extent unconditional.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#143

Post by hnaccount_rng »

sebhook wrote: post #129
potatolicious wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, having been on the inside at Google - they are not good at producing customer impact. The orgs are so large, so diffuse, and upper management so disconnected from on-the-ground execution that it's really all about gaming metrics. Even people who still want to produce customer impact have to play the game of stuffing their feature into a metrics-shaped-box so their projects don't get shut down. Google is obses…

I listened to Kara Swisher interview some top Apple execs who used to work closely with Steve Jobs recently. Unfortunately I think we're now in an era where design and user experience is a lower priority when shipping new products. I'm not sure what the path to fixing this is, or if it even needs to be fixed, but I do think that Steve Jobs created a cult of innovation and a beacon to aspire towards creativity-wise, e…

They just delivered on the biggest customer facing improvement of any single piece of technology in the last 5 years with their switch to Apple Silicon. In an environment where it really wasn’t absolutely necessary. Yes people were crumbling. But nobody was switching away when they started the transition. This was a _completely_ proactive move.

Yes I’m also worried of them getting cocky and lazy. But so far they have done good

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#144

Post by mi_lk »

121789 wrote: post #31

this would work for like 3 months. the real advice is more nuanced and probably not Meta-specific 1. aggressively fend off low impact commitments or projects (there are always a million ideas and requests for help floating around) 2. make sure you have a good relationship with your manager, your team, and other teams that you need to work closely with 3. work in an area that either clearly makes the company money, or…

real answer right here based on my experience

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#145

Post by pcurve »

DethNinja wrote: post #42

I worked for large companies all my life and all of them are actually like this. I wonder how one can find companies with no office politics, and one that rewards real engineering work. Do any of the FAANGs actually qualify for this?

I just resigned last week having worked at a big company for 18 years. They dangled sr. director title, but it was just not worth it in the end.

I did so without any job lined up. I wanted a break.

My former colleagues are reaching out to see if I'd be interested in their gigs.

But they're all large companies, and all large companies have the same big company bullshit.

I do think smaller paycheck and smaller company helps, but I'm sure the grass isn't always greener.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#146

Post by uoaei »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #106
uoaei wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My concern is also the social dynamics that "TC or bust" people engender around them. There is an obvious mentality that goes along with that approach, and more often than not this turns what should be a collective, holistic approach to social well-being into a quasi-zero-sum game where everyone is just trying to extract value from everyone else. It is deleterious to community per se . Islands of nuclear families doe…

> But I would bet a lot of money that it's mostly people who spend frivolously and selfishly so that their kids go to good schools and have good opportunities, but that others' kids don't get access to the same kinds of on-ramps to success. Getting a higher TC does not take opportunities away from other people. What kind of communist thought is this? Line employees at these companies aren’t the ones appealed to in “T…

Getting a higher TC does not take opportunities away from other people. Spending those earnings on things that do not improve the commonwealth is what is being discussed in this thread.

It really is remarkable how, every time this subject comes up, reactionaries can swing only at straw men. It demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the arguments of their supposed opponents, which makes them seem naive at best.

In fact, seeing opposition where there is room for discussion is part and parcel of the same phenomenon of self-centeredness that I discuss above.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#148

Post by AlexandrB »

crazygringo wrote: post #66
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #29

This person is getting a lot of snarky responses, but all of this is relatively true at Amazon also and it was true when I was at Intel 10 years ago. This is how large companies operate once they surpass the innovation phase, so it should be no surprise to anyone that's actually worked in a FAANG and doesn't pound down the kool-aid. Interesting how there's comments on this person being concerned solely with "TC" as i…

Yup, this is all big companies. And if the metrics are wrong, that's not your responsibility . The PM's and VP's that come up with them know that metrics are imperfect and have tradeoffs. Let them handle the tradeoffs. If you're impacting the metrics, then you're doing the job assigned to you.

I'm pretty convinced that there's no set of metrics that can effectively capture productivity and business goals without being gamed. It seems to me that the only effective management system is a "web of trust" style system where middle managers have a lot more autonomy to make decisions based on their own judgement. Unfortunately it's hard to legally CYA if something goes wrong with that kind of setup and it has other vulnerabilities like being manipulated by sociopaths.

Overall, managing people at scale is always going to be a hard problem and it seems unlikely that technology will ever offer a satisfactory solution.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#149

Post by ativzzz »

cm42 wrote: post #125
ativzzz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is most of us do not have the skills, talent, drive or whichever other attributes needed to identify the next big thing or meaningfully contribute. > If you're a good engineer and can sell your work, contribute visibly to open source projects in your area of expertise and can present at conferences You are describing the top 1-5% of engineers here. Yes if you are in the top, you can literally do anything…

Since we're speaking loosely and broadly here, I want to throw in that "80-90% is just showing up" notion, which I've found to be more-or-less true. A while back, I estimated myself around 7-15%, based on an average of "average ___" searches (not remotely rigorous). I was shocked, given that I'm an essentially-average software developer in an essentially-average developer role. I would have been impressed with a "top…

> 80-90% is just showing up

They key is, showing up consistently over time for years and years. That's the key, and that's the hard part

> If you do it this weekend on just about any open source project, you'll officially, definitionally, be an open source contributor!

Nobody cares if you made some 1 line change to some OSS project. Any meaningful change requires more work and effort

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#150

Post by AlexandrB »

karamanolev wrote: post #72
lbotos wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best example of why large organizations are like this was Engels writing on "the state": “The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it ’the reality of the ethical idea’, ’the image and reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an ins…

I've seen many a "startup within a corporation", but the benefits of that are almost never, what what I've seen, realized. I wonder what gives. Why can't anyone figure out how to make that work?

When I've heard of this kind of thing working it's almost always informal and not pushed down from upper management. That also makes it very fragile as losing a few key people means the "startup" just gets absorbed into the larger culture.
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