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The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

ericlippert.com

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Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#261

Post by ska »

zaroth wrote: post #250
ska wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VR as a technology is cool and revolutionary That's a funny way of saying decades old at this point and still not ready for prime time.

The current state of VR is not decades old. It’s like saying automobiles are decades old so EVs are not exciting.

The current state of anything under active development isn't old, sort of by definition.

I take your point, but in my opinion nothing currently happening in the space gets remotely close to "revolutionary" , and maybe not even "cool" for some peoples value of "cool". It's more the same-old-same-old, chipping away at the broad array of problems.

So if you really want to us an automobile analogy, it's not like it's IC vs EV. It's more like steam powered vs. early electric (they predated IC's!) and nobody has come up with an IC yet. Or the right road system to use them on.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#262

Post by substation13 »

apohn wrote: post #3

I work in the field of Data Science and one upsetting reality has started to sink into my mind over the last year. In a business there is top line and bottom line. There are a lot Statistics/ML/Data Science jobs that are about moving that bottom line. You build something to optimize something to reduce costs. The value provided by the bottom line people is less visible than the value of top line people. The easiest w…

The potential gains from cost saving is always capped at total cost. The potential gains from increasing revenue are (typically) much larger.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#263

Post by ericlippert »

hkon wrote: post #58
ericlippert wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The team was all mathematicians. We did the math. I helped one of our data scientists put a model into production that saved $15M a year from that model alone, and we had a dozen people like that. We were working on signal loss models that had potential to save billions. I genuinely do not understand the logic of cutting this team to save costs.

> We were working on signal loss models that had potential to save billions What are signal loss models in this context?

"Signal loss" is the overarching term for all the factors that lead to the company being less able to make good inferences about users. Not just the obvious consideration of "how do we serve an ad that is relevant to the user?" but for any data-driven decision that affects a user's experience.

The biggest recent cause of signal loss was Apple changing the rules for apps on their phone, but there are plenty of other causes.

The idea of a signal loss model is to identify ways to work around signal loss and still do a good job of making a decision with the data you have, when some of the data you were relying upon disappears suddenly.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#264

Post by kelnos »

ericlippert wrote: post #239
rob74 wrote: post #91

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…

I see your point and don't mean to be argumentative, but a couple small corrections. First, the pivot to "meta" was just over a year ago, so it hasn't been quite years. Second, I haven't been shy about sharing my opinion internally, though I haven't been broadcasting it either. The first thing I said in our team group chat when we'd heard this announcement was (context, I am much older than most people on the team) "…

> Third, this opinion is indeed extremely common internally.

It is intensely weird to me that people hold the opinion that their company is building something that is bad for the world, and yet they stay there and continue to help build it.

I know that's easy to say as someone not in that situation, but not always easy to do for someone who is. I get that people don't always have a ton of choice about their employment; maybe they are afraid of losing their health insurance, maybe they are on a visa and can't easily switch jobs, or maybe they simply aren't able to find another job that works for them. Less noble, but maybe the pay is just too good, and if they stay for just a bit longer, it will be life changing. I can totally sympathize with that!

But if this opinion is "extremely common", I would expect that a good number of those people would have the ability to leave, to the point that perhaps Zuckerberg would rethink his strategy.

(I don't really buy the "change things from within" explanation; 1) that rarely works, especially in a company the size of Meta, and 2) if tried, that clearly has not worked, given Meta's continuing trajectory.)

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#265

Post by jrnichols »

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”.

This ties in with my earlier thought about why Zuckerberg is upset with Apple. He's not standing up for any little guy, he's upset that he's not getting his way with iOS devices anymore and that nobody cares about "the metaverse." It's essentially a tantrum.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#266

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

I don't know who needs to hear this, but the Metaverse is literally just The Sims with a helmet. The only reason FB cares about it is it's a place to sell advertising. But nobody wants it. We wanted Facebook because we could be voyeurs, shout into the void, and receive little hits of dopamine from "likes". But who wants to be a voyeur of virtual people? People who play The Sims, that's who. I don't think The Sims will make billions of dollars, with or without a helmet.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#267

Post by paganel »

dathinab wrote: post #236
jfengel wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory you're missing the network effect of everyone already being on Facebook. So they can quickly spin up a vast virtual world with all the people you know already in it. In practice, it hasn't happened, and nobody seems excited to do it. Whatever benefits they hope to get from the network effect seem unlikely thus far.

Through in my experience no one but old people is actually on facebook. (EDIT: In the country where I live.) A lot of middle aged people might still have an account because old people and aged contacts but don't really want to use it. And this scenario still requires most people to have a VR headset which doesn't make them sick and is comfortable and easy to use, which is not just technically still a bit off AFIK but…

> Through in my experience no one but old people is actually on facebook. (

I'd lower that threshold to middle-aged people (I'm in my early 40s myself), but that's about it. Facebook the social media platform is a sinking ship.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#268

Post by StillBored »

nemothekid wrote: post #164
dathinab wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically this quote also show how broken the US is: It's normal to take pain killers. It should not be. It should be a last resort. You should take what fixes the problem and give your body time to heal not take pain killers and pretend nothing is wrong. Pain killers are addicting, can have an increasingly reduced effect, can have a bunch of side effects and can make the end result much worse by not healing wounds…

> Ironically this quote also show how broken the US is: It's normal to take pain killers. I've heard this metaphor before, by a VC, and it was medicine vs vitamins.

Chuckle. I wonder about the "leopards ate my face" moment which seems particularly apt here if you consider Si valley VC money to largely be expensive steroids that appear to provide big growth fast, but will likely land you in worse shape long run either when you withdraw them, or by leaving you addicted trying to avoid the resulting crash.

AKA your removing the "vitamins" path in exchange for some future "medicine"

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#269

Post by Obscurity4340 »

treeman79 wrote: post #189
dathinab wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically this quote also show how broken the US is: It's normal to take pain killers. It should not be. It should be a last resort. You should take what fixes the problem and give your body time to heal not take pain killers and pretend nothing is wrong. Pain killers are addicting, can have an increasingly reduced effect, can have a bunch of side effects and can make the end result much worse by not healing wounds…

A real fun one is rebound headaches. Spent a few months with horrifically painful headaches. Turned out it mostly from painkillers. More I took. Worse headaches Got. My other less painful headaches that started the cycle were an actual brain issue. Just took a few years to get correct diagnosis. Eventually had a cycle of one round of pain killers every other day. Cycling through To a different kind each time. This mo…

What was the ultimate underlying pathology?

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#270

Post by kelnos »

dnissley wrote: post #140
rob74 wrote: post #91

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…

> You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he was still working for Meta... It's a pretty common sentiment in my experience here, de rigueur even. Expressing it in the way he does here is definitely frowned upon though -- one of the most interesting cultural traits I've noticed that Meta has fostered is an awareness and avoidance of cynicism. When people comment internally…

I get that cynicism can be a negative thing, and can drag down people and groups. But I think there's a fine line between cynicism and (constructive) negative feedback. And I wonder if an anti-cynicism culture has the effect of silencing legitimate negative feedback as well.
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