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Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

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Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#351

Post by lovich »

senordevnyc wrote: post #344
jordanb wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software developers in the US are seriously expensive, using them for data labeling would be a waste of resources. Zuck basically went to a town hall and explained to his employees that their remaining value to him is as training mules for his AI.

It seems really dumb to tell them that. I assume they’re all feeding garbage to the models now.

They’ve largely filtered their employees for people who have a mental breakdown if they don’t get 110% on a 100% scale or get the top of the top rating because they’ve done that their whole life until they got their first job at the tender age of 25-28 after getting their masters or PhD.

I’ve met too many meta members who have stories about their direct reports or peers who had a crashout because they got Exceeds Expectations and a mid 5 figure raise instead of Greatly Exceeds Expectations with a higher 5 figure raise not because of the money but because of not getting the top score.

I’m pretty sure zuck is being a rational sociopath and realizing he can use the PSC system to get these people to widely work against their best interests due to their ego.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#352

Post by bell-cot »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #302
jazzyjackson wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s doing a great job making sure I know where Burger King is when zooming into a city

No kidding. When I zoom in on a few square miles around my house and ask to see restaurants, it shows only a few of them even though there is plenty of space -- it isn't like it has to prune some to make it readable. I zoom in and some appear that weren't there before ... why? There was room to display it before I zoomed in. Gaaah!

I'd assume it's pruning to make only the best-paying (to Google) restaurants visible.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#353

Post by driverdan »

JacobAsmuth wrote: post #289
svachalek wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience at Google, they were so convinced they were the only good engineering company in the world and had to protect themselves from all the wrong-thinkers outside and yet the only progress they made was via acquisitions.

You'd say that Google Maps hasn't improved much in the last 20 years?

Maps peaked after Google acquired Waze in 2013 and integrated the data. Since then they've added worthless annoying social features and more advertising.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#354

Post by giantrobot »

malfist wrote: post #254
giantrobot wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh, and enabling human traffickers. Also the genocides.

Hey now that was an accident! They created a taskforce to prevent that from happening again, ignored all their recommendations and then laid them all off. I'm sure meta learned their lesson

Big whoopsies on that one.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#355

Post by drawnwren »

monster_truck wrote: post #15
fabian2k wrote: post #4

> 30-50% of engineers on core teams have been forcefully reassigned to data labeling and RLHF, upsetting folks even more. This really doesn't sound believable to me, but who knows with all the craziness going on. Software developers in the US are seriously expensive, using them for data labeling would be a waste of resources. And the percentage sounds very high, unless "core teams" is only a small subset of the total…

The belief that engineers are not doing anything for x amount of time that could be better spent on other immediately measurable things is as old as the profession itself. Ironically this vanishes when the tables are turned and we ask for things like better hardware or software. There are plenty of us here with stories of how much effort it took to convince employers that SSDs were worth it when they were new, small,…

see also: we're all developing on min spec Macbook Pros while being encouraged to burn > max spec Macbook Pros cost in tokens/month while still waiting for builds to compile.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#356

Post by ActorNightly »

gr_norm wrote: post #252
ActorNightly wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope sorry, you still aren't having a positive effect unless you live a barebones selfless life dedicated to helping others. You purchase products from companies, use services, and do things for entertainment that all somehow negatively affect someone in some form and way. Oh, you think that the arbitrary line your draw in your own life determines the standard for being moral? Well, welcome to the club with the rest…

This is tired and reductivist reasoning deployed only by those rationalizing wrongs, and immediately recognizable by nearly everybody as such. My kids could tell you what's wrong with this thinking. I believe that working a job where I would knowingly contribute to mass mental illness (including but not limited to inducing teenage depression and body image issues leading to suicide), the destruction of liberal democr…

I hope you realize that you have addressed nothing in my post, you are just squirming on some irrelevant stuff.

Once you find a solid counter argument to "its a product that people are free not to use", then we can have a conversation.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#357

Post by huflungdung »

swatcoder wrote: post #56
fabian2k wrote: post #4

> 30-50% of engineers on core teams have been forcefully reassigned to data labeling and RLHF, upsetting folks even more. This really doesn't sound believable to me, but who knows with all the craziness going on. Software developers in the US are seriously expensive, using them for data labeling would be a waste of resources. And the percentage sounds very high, unless "core teams" is only a small subset of the total…

> Software developers in the US are seriously expensive, using them for data labeling would be a waste of resources. The frontier work is on labeling and training expert content, by experts. It's unglamorous work and almost certainly doesn't warrant FAANG pay, but neither did most of the work that most FAANG engineers were already doing. But it does require competent talent from the expert domain. Like their peer com…

[dead]

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#358

Post by ActorNightly »

jazzpush2 wrote: post #285
ActorNightly wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Id honestly wager that at you and most of the people who are agreeing with you in the comments don't make the meta SDE salary, and if offered the 300k/year positions at Meta, even for a limited time, you would absolutely take it And you would be stupid not to. One one hand, you can be that guy that says you declined a Meta job, and be stuck at your current salary level, watching people make more money around you, and…

I work at a frontier lab and have rejected Meta interviews (for much higher salary) many times over the years. And BMW meetups are not good ways to meet high-salary people. Likely the exact opposite.

The point is that there is a number for everyone to go against their "high level" morals (i.e stuff that is far removed from actually physically harming humans yourself). Anyone who says they don't have one (and not a buddhism follower) is lying.

As for BMWs, thats the idea - you can buy an M car with that salary and everyone who can't afford an M car is gonna wanna be your friend.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#359

Post by uejfiweun »

layer8 wrote: post #170
laweijfmvo wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but who’s going to pay Meta for it?

??? The same market that is paying for Codex or Claude Code, if Meta offers competitive services.

I find it pretty hard to see how Meta could possibly catch up to the existing frontier labs. Distillation, I guess, if you want to go that route, but between the fact that they're already way behind and the constant deluge of negative press like this, it strikes me that they would straight up need an architectural miracle in order to actually be competitive.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#360

Post by asdff »

JacobAsmuth wrote: post #289
svachalek wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience at Google, they were so convinced they were the only good engineering company in the world and had to protect themselves from all the wrong-thinkers outside and yet the only progress they made was via acquisitions.

You'd say that Google Maps hasn't improved much in the last 20 years?

It is still drawing bike lane networks in cemeteries and random bits of grass and pavement. So no. The way I see it is is actually worse than it was in 2006. When I opened it today it asked me if I would like to see Dua Lipa's recommended restaurants.
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