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Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

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Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#41
post #8

Currently at Meta. This place has always been a bit ruthless in the 8+ years I've been around to observe. But the article is accurate. Never seen people this universally fed up. I thought tech was too cushy for it to happen, but there's serious collective action posting out in the open all over the place. It's also never been more cutthroat, backstabby, scope-grabby, political, and uncertain. There seems to be a flyw…

Is Zuck just too...neurodivergent or lacking in social awareness or low EQ or whatever the case may be to understand morale? Or just so cut-throat/trusting that people who don't currently work there want the META paycheck badly enough that even if morale is horrible they can just backfill departures?

We need to stop suggesting that someone who is "neurodivergent" is more likely to be a sociopathic asshole. The two are not related at all.

Back in the day you could mention in passing "oh that guy is on a spectrum", but it was always because they were awkward and quiet, not anti-social.

Zuck has spent his life from birth in a walled garden. He cannot relate to normal human emotions. In a way, that's not his fault, but we showered people like him with praise for being "geniuses" and "visionaries", which did not help matters.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#43
Hey Meta folks, remember that time when Facebook:

- harvested user data which helped a company manipulate a US election and the Brexit outcome?

- played a role in spreading hate speech, which was used to support a genocide in Myanmar?

- harmed the mental health of a generation of young people.

Just highlighting some data points. I'm really not suggesting you stand up for yourself and do something that might harm your employer that is now harming you.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#44
Tech company leadership gleefully replacing engineers with AI is going to be an incredibly short-lived era. I'll admit I was a little shocked at just how susceptible software engineering was to the brute force of LLMs, but man, wait until they find out just how easy it is for an LLM to do their jobs.

This isn't stopping until it gets all the way up to the asset holders.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who work at Meta, the ones I met in London, didn’t seem too far removed from people working in the financial industry. They didn’t seem to look much further than their desk and their bank accounts for what was meaningful to them. That’s ok, I’m sure we need people like that, but a lot of them were just doing the “career” thing and don’t really mind about what happens to the system they’re contributing to after…

"Desk and bank account" makes for a very small world. Have we shrunk? Are we dwarfs now?

[dead]

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#46
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Meta. 1) Work with top minds in ML 2) Money But I have enough money now and no amount of more money (that Meta could reasonably offer for my role) would make it worth staying. This place sucks now.

Why do you stay?

[deleted]

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#47
post #8

Currently at Meta. This place has always been a bit ruthless in the 8+ years I've been around to observe. But the article is accurate. Never seen people this universally fed up. I thought tech was too cushy for it to happen, but there's serious collective action posting out in the open all over the place. It's also never been more cutthroat, backstabby, scope-grabby, political, and uncertain. There seems to be a flyw…

Is Zuck just too...neurodivergent or lacking in social awareness or low EQ or whatever the case may be to understand morale? Or just so cut-throat/trusting that people who don't currently work there want the META paycheck badly enough that even if morale is horrible they can just backfill departures?

I have a low but not infrequent amount of direct exposure to him and honestly I think it's ~30% he is extremely ruthlessly competitive at any cost, and ~70% every semi-reasonable idea he has gets immediately twisted into cargo-culting, empire-building nonsense by the VP layer.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#48
post #16

Meta is a normal high-comp company (for now) now. This is what it’s like to work at any mature F500 outside of privileged organizations and teams.

Extremely untrue. Meta is significantly worse than your average F500.

How so and in regard to which part of my claim?

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#49

I guess it's a sign of the times. I was just reading the old speech by John Barlow, in another post[0]. Sort of dovetails with this. I spent the majority of my career at a camera manufacturer. I probably made half of what I could have made, anywhere else, and there were lots of issues, caused by bureaucratic overhead, heavy-handed QA, and cultural misunderstandings. But not once, during almost 27 years, did I wonder…

I decided very early in my career that I would never work for a place that sells ads. Don't think I could sleep at night if I worked at a place like Meta or Google.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#50
post #8

Currently at Meta. This place has always been a bit ruthless in the 8+ years I've been around to observe. But the article is accurate. Never seen people this universally fed up. I thought tech was too cushy for it to happen, but there's serious collective action posting out in the open all over the place. It's also never been more cutthroat, backstabby, scope-grabby, political, and uncertain. There seems to be a flyw…

Is Zuck just too...neurodivergent or lacking in social awareness or low EQ or whatever the case may be to understand morale? Or just so cut-throat/trusting that people who don't currently work there want the META paycheck badly enough that even if morale is horrible they can just backfill departures?

I think that Zuckerberg is driven by numbers/analytics and the competition. He was lucky enough to be made a king in this world before he was fully adult, he is likely unaware of many of the realities we take for granted, and why would he care? Money is good.
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