Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

ericlippert.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 482 posts

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

#291

Post by mirker »

rurp wrote: post #249
astrange wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What actually happens with vitamins is people love taking them (because they’re colorful and some of them are food preservatives) but there’s like no evidence they have health benefits.

I don't know, I was surprised to learn that my vitamin D was quite low, and I get a fair amount of sunlight each week, probably more than a lot of office workers. Now that I take supplements though my levels have been fine. From what I have read, quite a few people fall into a similar bucket.

Do you feel different? There is a theory that vitamin D is merely correlated with a healthy body. Sunlight may be required.

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

#292

Post by milesward »

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) "…

Badass response, I thought exactly the same thing

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

#293

Post by projectazorian »

madrox wrote: post #227
dnissley wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

We're talking about cynicism and not criticism, correct? In my experience, cynicism is unproductive at best and anti-productive at worst. Criticism, of course, is valuable and healthy. Cynicism is a good and healthy thing to share with colleagues over a beer, but when you're on the clock will kill morale. Arguably dumping loads of money on a vaporware moonshot is also a morale killer, but sniping at it in meetings he…

It’s easy for bad leaders to redefine legitimate criticism as cynicism. When I worked for a company with a similar culture I saw this happen all the time.

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

#294

Post by bombcar »

zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #46

3 years of work being thrown away is not a big deal. Imagine a retail employee complaining about how nobody cares what they did the past 3 years. I don't see a difference.

There's a difference between working on a job that you know is repeated every day (this is retail) and working on something that's supposed to be "one and done" - this is more like a retail manager working for three years to get a new location up and running and then having it shut down.

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

#295

Post by ericlippert »

defen wrote: post #153

> Then said Jesus unto him, "Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword". I'm a big fan of Eric Lippert's work, but this blog post comes across as whiny and evinces a completely unwarranted sense of entitlement. This is a person who voluntarily chose to get paid (I can only assume) a very large amount of money to work on something that he found to be exciting a…

I am very thankful for that opportunity. I learned so much from my colleagues! And they were genuinely great people to work with.

I was well compensated, it's true. It's also true that for every $1000 I was paid, I lowered FB's costs by about $4000. The argument that I should be eternally grateful to Zuck for allowing me to keep a quarter -- before taxes! -- of the profit that accrued to him for writing zero lines of compiler code while he keeps the other three quarters is maybe not the strong argument you think it is.

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

#296

Post by projectazorian »

hobs wrote: post #229
madrox wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about cynicism and not criticism, correct? In my experience, cynicism is unproductive at best and anti-productive at worst. Criticism, of course, is valuable and healthy. Cynicism is a good and healthy thing to share with colleagues over a beer, but when you're on the clock will kill morale. Arguably dumping loads of money on a vaporware moonshot is also a morale killer, but sniping at it in meetings he…

Excessive cynicism in the face of actual positive change is bad, however when you have no power to change something, you resort to cynicism. If your employees feel no power to express themselves over your bad decisions, you've built a truly toxic system.

The tone comes from the top. If criticizing the CEO’s strategy is prohibited as “cynicism,” then lower level leaders throughout the company will take that as license to prohibit criticism of their own ideas. And often that type of criticism is far more productive.

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

#297

Post by acdha »

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.

Older automobiles were still useful, though. The Model T transformed rural America and many cities. VR has been portrayed as close to that point many times for decades but has flopped hard at finding anything many people want to do. It was primitive back then, but so were video games in the 1970s and they still sold a ton of systems. Maybe there’s an inflection point where things will flip but it seems hard to believe that we’re still in the pre-Pong era of something which will become huge.

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

#298

Post by fallingknife »

kelnos wrote: post #271
bombcar wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay me enough money and I'll work very hard trying to disprove the laws of thermodynamics. I'll tell you it can't be done, of course, but if you insist I'll work hard at trying to do it.

Sure, but you trying to do that won't hurt anyone (well, aside from the bank account of the person paying you, but that's on them). Building a dystopian VR-based social network hurts a lot more people. I would hope we have better ethics than to work on things that harm others for truckloads of money. Then again, a lot of people still work for Meta (and Twitter, and...), so I guess ethics is pretty lacking.

How, exactly, does building a VR social network harm anyone?

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

#299

Post by D-Coder »

defen wrote: post #193
aerovistae wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment conveys to me Asperger's levels of superrational thinking and lack of empathy. "How could someone be resentful at losing their job to a nonsensical decision making process? How could someone possibly be frustrated to be shown zero gratitude for their very profitable work for someone else? I simply don't understand, on paper it is the logical outcome." Okay spock.

He can feel however he likes; nothing compelled him to post it publicly for all the world to read and comment. > How could someone be resentful at losing their job to a nonsensical decision making process? How could someone possibly be frustrated to be shown zero gratitude for their very profitable work for someone else? He chose to work for Mark Zuckerberg. He wishes he could continue working for Mark Zuckerberg, in…

> He can feel however he likes; nothing compelled him to post it publicly for all the world to read and comment.

He has a blog. He can post any thing he likes, any time he likes. As can anyone here who can manage to put together a blog.

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

#300

Post by ericlippert »

defen wrote: post #193
aerovistae wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment conveys to me Asperger's levels of superrational thinking and lack of empathy. "How could someone be resentful at losing their job to a nonsensical decision making process? How could someone possibly be frustrated to be shown zero gratitude for their very profitable work for someone else? I simply don't understand, on paper it is the logical outcome." Okay spock.

He can feel however he likes; nothing compelled him to post it publicly for all the world to read and comment. > How could someone be resentful at losing their job to a nonsensical decision making process? How could someone possibly be frustrated to be shown zero gratitude for their very profitable work for someone else? He chose to work for Mark Zuckerberg. He wishes he could continue working for Mark Zuckerberg, in…

Nor did anything compel you to read it, or post whiny comments here!

I did choose to work for Facebook. The pitch I was given seven years ago was that (1) the mission of the company is to lower costs of building community and connecting people; running an ad-funded social media platform is the means to that end. That's not a mission that is super important to me, but I can respect it. And (2) FB is the company that is investing heavily in advancing modern developer tools outside of the Microsoft ecosystem. That is a mission that is important to me.

Your statement that I wish I could continue to work for and enrich Zuck is false. I was regretted attrition.

Your lack of empathy is clear.

Post reply on HN