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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

#62

I have a genuine question for Meta engineers: what were you hoping to gain by working at this company? What motivated you, and what were your aspirations?

Money?? Isn't that why we put up with any of this shit? The stress in this industry is intense, espically in big tech companies, and the only reason it's worth it is the extremely high salaries and stock vests.... I've been at Amazon for 4 years and if I didn't get paid like I do now there's no way I would stay.

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

#63
Things have changed and I think most employees in SV/big tech have not yet come to the realization that the executives really, genuinely, honestly, actively despise their employees and gleefully want to see them suffer. It doesn't matter if it's bad for the company's long-term health, or bad for customers, or or bad for finances or PR or anything else, it is now pathological/idealogical now.

They do have a small circle of trusted people who they like (like the 1%, lol), but if you're not in, you're just trash that they haven't gotten around to cleaning out yet.

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

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Meta engineer, but if I had to offer a guess, the answer would be money.

I saw a comment by an anonymous Meta engineer who said that it's difficult to leave when you see $2m worth of unvested stock sitting in your account. How many years would you be miserable for $2m? Many people can be easily seduced by that amount of money

[deleted]

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

#65
post #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.

They are not replacing anybody with AI. Meta has been a bloated hell hole for a very long time now (maybe 10+ years). Nothing, literally nothing beyond Ads and AdTech makes a dent in their earnings. The complaints here - it's not only the "recently toxic environment"; I remember a conversation I had with a Meta SWE in 2019; he said "If I stop doing anything right now, my manager would not realize for at least 6 months - the stuff I am working on is that unimportant". It's not hard to see how people will get disillusioned so quickly when the job itself is this meaningless.

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

#66

This is why companies don't announce layoffs before they know who will be impacted, as frustrating as it can be. My morale would be in the gutter too if I had to spend a month wondering whether I'm the unlucky 1 in 10.

They don't care. Only 5% of their people contribute to the bottom line. Rest are all deadweight.

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

#67

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.

Are you brave, or ready to resign by posting publicly that your current employer sucks? Either way, it’s wild watching several people in this thread literally not care if they get fired. I guess the article really is accurate. Maybe I’m miscalibrated, but “I work at X. This place sucks” has never been a safe thing to say openly, so it’s interesting seeing it from multiple people here. Plus there’s the usual angle of…

I mean, from the post it sounds like they already have a bank account large enough to say what they want without any repercussions having any side effects, such as unemployment.

Also, not all future employers are totally worried about that, especially when those that were doing the speaking have a very wanted set of skills. Quite often the future employer is like "Oh yea, everyone knows Meta/FB is balls, glad you pointed it out", especially in the case they are much smaller than the mega company.

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

#68
post #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.

How different is it really though, if you work for a company that buys the ads?

I've thought about this because it's true for most every place I worked, we just funnel money into Google & Meta's coffers and play the SEO and social hacks game just like everyone else.

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

Someone who is neurodivergent (which is itself an umbrella term) may very well struggle to accurately detect the level of morale amongst their coworkers (or signs of low morale), or may have a more difficult time fostering the level of closeness to their coworkers to build the trust with those people that they'd be vulnerable and share their feelings of low morale.

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

#70

I am wondering if Zuckerberg somehow stumbled upon the old Decimation thing on Wikipedia one late evening and decided it was a good idea to try. I don't really understand the rationale otherwise, hiring is hard, and they are not forced to reduce cost now. This seems like a colossal mistake. Not the first of course.

what is the Decimation thing?
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