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Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

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Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#361

Post by echelon »

torben-friis wrote: post #283
throw-the-towel wrote: post #257

I think the gloating in this thread is very misguided. Meta is evil, sure, but that's not the point. The point is that this kind of AI psychosis might be the new normal for our industry, or at least one of the new normals. My last workplace absolutely did a jump in toxicity when the CEO got obsessed with AI, instituted token leaderboards, told us all to drop all non-AI work for a time, etc. We were no Meta.

I think it's just one more show of how addicted to the algorithm people are. The difference here is that this particular wave of propaganda hits people whose actions have deep effects on their industries, so their unreasonable actions are far more visible.

It's not propaganda. It's a market trying to find the new low energy state.

This stuff is putting an expiration date on your domain experience, and leadership is salivating at the chance to cut OpEx.

At bare minimum, every PM is soon going to be able to do your work. That's a huge talent pool to draw from. This also opens the door to easy offshoring.

They'll use layoffs to get rid of the existing high salary earners and backfill with new hires earning 70%, then 50%, then...

I can't believe how many of you are absolutely certain you're going to be working in software in ten years. Let alone five.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#362

Post by morganf »

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!

Oh wow I always complain about this, I didn't realize other people were also so frustrated by this. Tons and tons of cafes by my house, but I zoom in with about a six block radius, where there are at least 20 cafes or cafe-restaurants there, and literally 1 or 2 come up.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#363

Post by asdff »

TrackerFF wrote: post #300
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…

Have you heard about the various startups that specialize in expert data labeling, like Mercor? They can pay $100-$200/hr for highly specialized work, who knows how much they charge their clients. Translated to an annual wage, that's definitely in the SF/SV engineer range As others have commented, some of the training is very specialized.

Have you heard about working for mercor? You aren't working full time for them or sniffing anywhere close to a proper annual wage.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#364

Post by kokanee »

mlsu wrote: post #315
torben-friis wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's just one more show of how addicted to the algorithm people are. The difference here is that this particular wave of propaganda hits people whose actions have deep effects on their industries, so their unreasonable actions are far more visible.

I haven't seen anyone really talking about this, but we've seen many very public and powerful people have what is objectively a psychotic break, due to the content algorithm, AI, or both. We already know what the algorithm does to normal people - it should be treated like a radioactive object by anyone in charge of anything. Very powerful and strictly used judiciously and in small doses. Instead we've got some of the…

I've definitely seen some articles on the topic of AI psychosis among executives. I think there's something about being in a position of power that makes the sycophancy really psychologically dangerous.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#365

Post by jarjoura »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #278
throw-the-towel wrote: post #257

I think the gloating in this thread is very misguided. Meta is evil, sure, but that's not the point. The point is that this kind of AI psychosis might be the new normal for our industry, or at least one of the new normals. My last workplace absolutely did a jump in toxicity when the CEO got obsessed with AI, instituted token leaderboards, told us all to drop all non-AI work for a time, etc. We were no Meta.

> AI psychosis might be the new normal for our industry I've been fortunate enough to have worked on multiple AI intensive engineering teams (both on the product and research side) where considerable effort was spent reasoning through how AI was changing things and we were consistently evolving our practices. But they've all been orgs with 50 people less. AI psychosis seems to effect very large tech orgs in a differe…

I know at my company our leadership was quite indifferent to how AI was adopted and really relied on the ground level engineers to determine what AI was good for and how we can best make use of it.

It was the engineers at the ground floor who I watched become religious about it. They have been the ones pushing for deeper and deeper tooling. They have been the ones convincing leadership that this is the future and so now, well, it's leadership who is saying, we want more adoption.

This psychosis is happening at every level in our industry, and this isn't a big tech, or leadership problem. It's all our problems.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#366

Post by thraway3837 »

Um. What's there to engineer at Meta? They are an ad-tech company. I thought the HN crowd would make fun of them for this. For years. But now I guess AI coding is easier to pick on than advertisements?

There's nothing at Meta that other companies (engineers) haven't already solved. It's not impossible to load to millions of pictures per second and have them displayed to billions of users.

Just the other day, there was a blog post talking about how we should stop idolizing these companies because they're not doing anything groundbreaking or innovating. But now we're doing just that: expecting an ad company to ... do groundbreaking engineering?

Say what you will. Zuckerberg for all that we make fun of him is an insanely successful software guy and businessman. Being good at software is easier, but being strong at both is rare, and he's a multi-billionaire from it. The dude is wildly successful and no matter how much we hate on him or his orgs for it, the people love it. And the advertisers love it. People love Meta's products and even folks in AI governance and safety fields get the Meta glasses and actively use them.

He's built a company that's pretty much self sustaining and you don't need 1000s of engineers for that. Maybe that fact is hitting too close to home?

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#367

Post by throwaway894345 »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #242
throwaway894345 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to learn if people have structured approaches for identifying companies that are in that "least bad" band, but yeah, I agree that as long as we have a system based on extreme wealth inequality, it's going to be pretty difficult to find moral work. At the end of the day most of us are working to make billionaires richer--in the best case we do that by genuinely creating value, but frequently it's about ta…

Imagine yourself describing to your relatives how the company has made money and see how embarrassed you feel.

The difficulty isn't in making the moral assessment, it's in searching through tens of thousands of employers and understanding their business models.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#368

Post by tayo42 »

kxxx wrote: post #13
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…

Zuck literally said that he wants folks with higher intelligence on the Applied Intelligence team. And the best way to do that was to move folks internally, since they were "intelligent" enough to pass the Meta interviews. Soooo, yes it is a waste of resources ($$$). But this was the initial intention.

> since they were "intelligent" enough to pass the Meta interviews.

I haven't interviewed with them in almost 10 years. But aren't they doing the same interview everyone else does?

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#369

Post by throwaway894345 »

starik36 wrote: post #214
throwaway894345 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company's impact on the world isn't a good/bad binary, it comes in degrees. In the case of Meta, they are _aggressively_ promoting far-right wing propaganda (or at least that's my feed, and what appears to be the general consensus on the Internet), and they are clearly very close with the far-right Trump administration. Never mind "ordinary" bad things like pushing ads, building addictive ad tech, etc.

What groups do you subscribe to? My feed is mostly relatives, friends and their photos. Occasionally there are panels with people I don't subscribe to, which you can press X on and you won't see them again.

I don't subscribe to any groups except maybe a neighborhood association or similar. I was basically inactive on Facebook from 2014 until the last year. I've never been remotely right-wing and while I'm sure I have some old acquaintances who have become MAGA, the overwhelming majority of my Facebook friends are decent people--either normies, moderates, or left of center.

> you can press X on and you won't see them again.

I'm not worried about Facebook showing me propaganda, I'm worried about Facebook aggressively propagandizing society at large.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#370

Post by shimman »

qwerpy wrote: post #261
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you’re comfortable knowing that your job is paid for by destroying society, It's so easy to reduce things! I'm still trying to figure out if my cousin who decorates offices for FAANG is destroying society or not.

It must be exhausting having someone like that (the person you replied to) in your life. So negative, judgmental, and filled with hate. Have to be careful about everything you do and say around them or you’ll be labeled as some kind of -ist or destroying the world.

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