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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

#111

Post by scottious »

scylla wrote: post #28
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…

How will the people who continuously rationalize cars justify that they are destroying a profession - horse carriage driver - that was fun and profitable ? How will the people who continuously rationalize the Internet justify that they are destroying a profession - travel agents - that was fun and profitable? If we blocked every possible innovation because it lowered the fun of something existing we'd never have prog…

cars are not exactly a success story. Both of your examples (cars and internet) are things that had some great applications but also have been mis-used or over-used.

cars: people now live completely car-dependent lives and drive way too much. our infrastructure cannot handle people driving so much and it's extremely expensive and bad for our health and terrible for the environment

internet: well... obviously... social media and all the harms that come with that.

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

#112

Post by mdip »

renegade-otter wrote: post #41
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?

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…

You make a good point.

I'm "neurodivergent" but when it comes to empathy/sympathy, I tend toward the over-sensitive side rather than oblivious (as does my son, who is diagnosed with ASD Type 1).

I don't take any issue with that being used in this context, though. I mean, I wouldn't really in any context as long as the person writing it isn't intending malice -- they're just words, people can misuse/abuse them -- but specifically this context. "Neurodivergent" covers a lot of ground, but in reference to Mr. Zuckerberg, nearly all of us[0] pictured one of two things: Data (Star Trek) or Data with Borg accessories attached. Which you chose largely depended on your opinion of him, but both had an android character who has no ability to feel emotions or understand the emotions that others feel.

... and since good communication largely rests on people's understanding of your message, I think OP's word choice was largely sound. :)

[0] As in those of you who, like me, have never been in the same city at the same time as the guy so we know "him" based on what we read about him.

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

#113

Post by neilv »

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?

I wouldn't blame company culture on neurodivergents. It's explained by a stereotypical ruthless flavor of business, which reinforced itself with the culture they hired and nurtured.

The company has been known as kinda sketchy almost continuously since it was founded, yet people went there because it paid the most money.

If leadership is now thinking that an executive "ideas person", plus a small execution team fortified with AI, can bang out a product more quickly than the massive army of corporate workers they've been feeding at top of the market rates, and at the same quality level as the previous inefficient bureaucracy managed... isn't that plausibly correct?

Now, the company just needs to be the best-paying job available to enough of those workers. And the company believes this is getting easier for the company, due to the state of the job market. The workers who remain will remain motivated by money.

And the company may think they're not losing anything of value, since they knew that their culture was already sick.

Example: They think they weren't getting creative, aligned, diligent brilliance, amidst all the backstabbing and politics they'd created, and so mechanically executing on an executive ideas person's vision yields the same product result, faster.

From the outside, I think this shouldn't be a surprise, nor blamed on possible neurodivergence of individuals.

(Of course this isn't my own philosophy about morale and effective product teams, and I wouldn't want to work at a company like that. But you can see some company cultures from thousands of miles away.)

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

#114

Post by alex1138 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #98
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta is a scourge of a company. You literally work for a guy who, talking about the user data he dubiously acquired, that said "they trust me, dumb fucks". It's hard to feel sorry for workers who chose that road, the writing was on the wall. And to be very well paid to create the biggest spying tech on the planet, making doomscroll addictive, ads that serve scams, AI slop everywhere, and being accused of having parti…

A dumb thing Zuck said when he was in college pales in comparison to the horrible stuff he's enabled as a fully formed adult who should know better.

Ok

"A" dumb thing

Ignore dumb fucks

What about "if you need info on people at Harvard just ask"

Or "I'm going to fuck them in the ear" (Winklevosses)

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

#115

Post by geodel »

SwellJoe wrote: post #100
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…

It's easy to keep employees happy with good pay and benefits and a nice work environment, as long as the work is reasonably ethical and life-affirming and generally compatible with human well-being. Meta hasn't been any of those things in quite a while.

That good pay , benefit, nice work environment comes from destroying environment, communities, lying, cheating and so many other such wonderful things.

People do like to remain oblivious to all. Some go even further to blame company for their immoral activities but remain firmly in place as income from those activities is just too good to leave.

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

#116

Post by shikshake »

jjulius wrote: post #25
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #11

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 probably made half of what I could have made, anywhere else... Peace of mind over peace of wallet for me, every time.

Hear hear. I feel lucky to have a stable job in education even if I make less than my big tech colleagues.

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

#117

Post by bongoman42 »

jackmott42 wrote: post #102
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…

Why does anyone want to work for companies run by such awful people in the first place? I saw me CEO make up a whole new persona to suck up the new nazi administration I would be gone the next day.

I have a friend at Meta. He said he hates every moment of working there but when the sweet RSUs drop every month it makes it all worth it.

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

#118

Post by ryandrake »

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…

Thanks for the honest assessment. I'm certain it took guts to open up about this, especially to the hostile crowd on HN. This comment is a good counter to the no-nuance "Everyone who works at Company X are terrible people!" narratives. Also, it brings up a point that often gets overlooked: These companies are absolutely enormous, and there are very likely small pockets within each of them with people who are at least trying to do good and stay out of the evil lanes. Not everyone working in BigTech is actively churning through Torment Nexus JIRA tickets, and at the very least, if you're working at one of these places, finding a team that is not actively harming the world is a good compromise.

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

#119

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #36
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…

I also work at Meta. The chaos and instability is awful. But I think they could fire pretty much everyone and the ads business would still continue to grow at nearly the same rate. I think it will take a very long time for leadership to feel the effects of what they've done.

> I also work at Meta. The chaos and instability is awful. But I think they could fire pretty much everyone and the ads business would still continue to grow at nearly the same rate.

I spent 5 years at Facebook (2013-18), and I can guarantee you that if you fired the sales teams, revenue would take a pretty large hit.

More generally my friend who was there till last year (at a pretty senior manager level) said that once the AAP thing happened with Apple, it got really really nasty.

Like, every company tends towards the median of it's geographies over time but Facebook was a pretty special place to work at back in the day, and it looks like a lot of that has been lost now.

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

#120

Post by arolihas »

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…

Donating to charities or NGOs might be more harmful than anything you've ever done.
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