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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

#71

Post by loeg »

afavour wrote: post #21
rwak12 wrote: post #7

How will the people here who continuously rationalize AI rationalize this? A substantial number of the cheerleaders are financially invested in AI of course, but there are useful idiots, too. You are destroying a profession that was fun and profitable. Don't come with your Luddite and " a subset of us did it to others as well" talking points. Adding numbers wasn't fun, spreadsheets by hand weren't fun. But you are ac…

I don't know that this has a ton to do with AI. Meta has had "fuck around" money for a very long time, the kind of money that let Zuckerberg hire a ton of people to make the Metaverse. And it let a lot of engineers work on things they were passionate about but that don't directly drive profits. As Meta's stock price falls that fuck around money falls away and people's jobs are suddenly a lot more focused on making th…

It's a story, but I don't really agree with this explanation. Fucking around burning money on VR didn't help morale in the other 90% of the company. And in general employees (all with RSUs) were happy about the stock price appreciation that came from a renewed fiscal discipline post 2022 or so.

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

#72

Post by pavel_lishin »

jopolous wrote: post #59
maxwellito wrote: post #4

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?

I work at Meta (for now…) I really care about VR and had the opportunity to work at Reality Labs. They paid to relocate my family to the Bay Area, where I was able to get better medical care for an autoimmune disease. I interviewed at other companies too but it was late 2022 and hiring freezes eliminated my other opportunities. So my motivations were: - Working on something I care about - Getting to the Bay Area and…

I used to work at a company that had a client that was... let's call them morally dubious, because if I start typing out what I really think of them, there'll just be a paragraph of profanity that dang will probably remove.

Anyway, since we billed hourly, I ended up keeping track of all of the money I made while working on that client's work, and donated all of it to St. Jude's hospital.

But I still feel really fucking gross about it, and I don't think that will ever go away.

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

#73

Post by alex1138 »

discordance wrote: post #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…

Myanmar to me is damning because a) if you read Sarah Wynn's book things were reported to the company and nothing was done about it b) possibly the algorithm, you're not getting a chronological list of posts; FB favors "engagement". Though I don't know how this works in other languages

but c) because they forced this on themselves. Free Basics is Zuck's idea to own everything. They expand into markets without, I guess, checks and balances. Remember this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791198

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

#74

Post by jmye »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #56
rsweeney21 wrote: post #19

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…

> Plus there’s the usual angle of people not wanting to hire someone that’s willing to publicly trash their current employer. Will you be as vocal next job?

Someone at Meta saying it sucks publicly and that they no longer want to be there would be a positive hiring signal for many people.

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

#75

Post by carabiner »

ninininino wrote: post #23
glaslong wrote: 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?

The word is, Zuck is going through his midlife crisis (42 yo) and wants a tougher, more driven, and more masculine environment. Zuck has been pro-Trump for a while, and palling around with MMA guys. He's also open to importing 996 culture because of his appreciation of China, which stems from his Chinese wife.

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

#76

Post by bradlys »

fooker wrote: post #29
maxwellito wrote: post #4

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?

The usual bet is that you double your salary by tolerating a toxic work environment for a few years. If you are not in the Bay Area, the absolute numbers might seem unbelievable but here you go - I have seen mid-senior engineers (4-5 years exp) get Meta offers with 700k yearly TC.

No one is getting $700k tc for senior eng outside of speciality AI roles. That’s beyond even staff level.

You can stay at the company and get stock appreciation up to that but you’re not getting a new hire offer at $700k below staff level. (Even for staff, it’s high)

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

#77

Post by hsuduebc2 »

bluecheese452 wrote: post #38
ninininino wrote: post #23

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?

This is the guy who tried to make the metaverse a thing. He has been out of touch for decades now.

Exactly. The yes man culture must be pretty hard near him.

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

#78

Post by sillysaurusx »

jmye wrote: post #74
sillysaurusx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Plus there’s the usual angle of people not wanting to hire someone that’s willing to publicly trash their current employer. Will you be as vocal next job? Someone at Meta saying it sucks publicly and that they no longer want to be there would be a positive hiring signal for many people.

Good point, that makes sense. It happens to be a special case, so they’re saying it here. But in general very few will probably be saying “this place sucks” about their employer.

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

#79

Post by glaslong »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #3

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.

This has been building with every layoff, reorg, roadmap thrash, policy rug pull, etc since roughly 2022.

It ratchets up both after the silent layoffs, and before the announced ones; after the silent refresher reductions, and the announced MCI-like initiatives.

It's nice to think morale is only bottoming out for a month, but in actuality it is spiraling catastrophically.

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

#80

Post by bradlys »

postexitus wrote: post #65
ryandvm wrote: 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 month…

This is large ymmv. Most people would get fired for not shipping stuff regularly. Just because some engineers at a big company are able to skirt by without shipping doesn’t mean that’s the norm.

The company has tens of thousands of people. There will be some variation but a lot of orgs are quite ruthless with their metrics.

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