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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

#141
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…

> There seems to be a flywheel in effect where top talent exits and those who will drown each other to stay afloat are all that remain.

This is the death spiral of a company. Things start to get bad, the best people with the most external options leave, which makes things worse... the people left behind are either those with no other options, or people who strive in the backstabbing environment of a company in decline.

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

#142

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

Given it's like 30 years of my salary I'd probably be willing to be miserable for a number of years.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Rather than donating 5-6 figures, what about saving enough cash to live on? Roughly speaking you can "make" ~$200k/year on $5M in T-bills. You could live comfortably in the US or Europe, or basically like a king anywhere else in the world. You could work on the software you want, even pro-bono, and walk away any time. I believe this is called "F U money".

That 200k is a reasonable amount to start withdrawing from a 5M portfolio (exactly the 4% rule from the Trinity study [1]), but you’ll want to adjust it for inflation every year. My favorite tool for planning these strategies is TPAW Planner [2], which visualizes the distribution of withdrawals under various market outcomes. It’ll also suggest a portfolio of stocks and bonds that’ll be safer than just T-bills, which have a high risk of not beating inflation.

1: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates

2: https://tpawplanner.com/

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

#145
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Good (or at least smart) employers pay quite a lot of money on quarterly anonymised surveys precisely to hear what their employees truly think about the company. I think some shareholders care about those numbers as well enough to want to see them. Of course there is a difference between saying what is obvious to anyone interested anyway (like above) and crying publicly over some petty grievance.

Besides, if the company only seeks spineless lackeys would you want to work there anyway?

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. But there are things you say as a young person that are revealing of core personality traits. Most people would just not say that.

Yeah, I'm inclined to think people can grow. There's a reason juveniles convicted of crimes, even serious crimes, should be given a second chance and are given a second chance in most civilized places.

College is where things start to firm up for most people, though. I don't think I've ever known anyone who was a terrible person in college who turned out good.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Everything he's done since is far worse.

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yuck…

At least you know how much he is willing to sell his happiness for?

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