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Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

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Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#401

Post by asveikau »

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 also read another lesson from this. The performance review system was already broken in the pre-AI golden age the article describes. Lines of code written and individual impact should not have been the goal. Team cohesion, architectural cohesion, building things that make actual sense are what you want.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#402

Post by eitally »

da_chicken wrote: post #388
JacobAsmuth wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My best friend bought a house. She noticed within the first month that the name of the road she lived on was misspelled in Google Maps. Specifically, it's a slightly unusual spelling of the road name. Like "Chickorie" vs "Chickory". It's particularly annoying because there's a road the next town over with the traditional spelling. It doesn't even share address numbers, but Google Maps still frequently misdirects peop…

My anecdote is worth just as much as yours. I moved cross-country in early 2016 (for work at Google) and noticed when we closed on our house that the next street over was mis-pronounced by Google Maps. I reported it and it was fixed within a week.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#403

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

awinter-py wrote: post #393
JacobAsmuth wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

odds of a given street being labeled on gmaps for android still feels like 50/50 unless you get the zoom exactly right

This is my biggest annoyance. Such a crap shoot if I can actually see the street names.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#404

Post by lokar »

Danox wrote: post #207

Meta is starting to recognize that they are hopelessly behind the other model makers, and they have been just burning cash over the last three years.

Past a certain point top talent care more about how they are treated then even more money. The top of the field can get generational wealth at a bunch of different places, why would they put up with Zuck?

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#405

Post by lokar »

spamizbad wrote: post #390
lokar wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuck hired him and has always been super hands on. He is responsible.

To an extent that's true, but while Zuck might be hands on but he doesn't typically micromanage his lieutenants. Alexandr was clearly in over his head, has never run anything resembling a high quality engineering org, and blew it up in less than a year. I think his days are numbered.

He does not micromanage, but at the same time he does not tune out. He has to see what’s going on.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#406

Post by smrtinsert »

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.

    the new normal for our industry
Not really. This level of toxic is definitely just Meta.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#407

Post by lobf »

not_a_bot_4sho wrote: post #229
gulugawa wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Meta is not uniformly bad, but I would not consider React to be a great tool. Every React project I worked on has turned into an unmaintainable pile of spaghetti.

I was going to say, isn't React something to hold against Meta? Being intimately familiar with it, I don't consider it a positive contribution to the world.

I work in film, not software engineering, but I've heard lots of shade thrown on React for a long time, mostly for this reason- messy code.

The question I have is, does React somehow encourage or enable code that is messier than in other frameworks? Why is it so popular if it's so widely hated? There's something I'm missing here.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#408

Post by smrtinsert »

davebren wrote: post #136
monster_truck wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

One of the funniest things is how hard it was to get approval for a $100 software license but now people are being encouraged to burn thousands on tokens.

My favorite one is "NO ACCESS TO PRODUCTION DATA" "it's for agent" "do whatever you want"

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#409

Post by smrtinsert »

desolate_muffin wrote: post #331
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…

My partner works there as an engineer. The org they work in had loads of people transferred to the "AAI" org doing data labelling. I find it almost unbelievable as well, but it is true.

It's 100% unbelievable and hysterical that its true. Have they done the simple math on how much labeled data they need to make a model of value?

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#410

Post by _heimdall »

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.

Token leaderboards are a ridiculous idea, but I'm also not surprised. Over the years leaders have tried tracking lines of code committed, total commits, etc. It always boils down to disconnected leadership that needs quantified metrics to watch because they don't know their front line employees and don't understand the work actually being done.

Statistics really is a bitch.

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