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Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

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Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#411

Post by gnerd00 »

eitally wrote: post #402
da_chicken wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you moved there --to work at google; you reported it --while you worked at google. What is different hmmmm

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#412

Post by menloshark »

spamizbad wrote: post #384

Lots of people blame Zuckerberg, but my own view aligns with the author in that much of this is falls on Alexandr Wang's shoulders (Scale AI's founder). It's perhaps somewhat ironic that the "MEI" guy (Merit, Excellence, Intelligence) was permitted to poach high-performing subject matter experts from key engineering orgs and reassigned them to data labeling - something that, let's be honest, is not where you want to…

> was permitted to poach high-performing subject matter experts from key engineering orgs and reassigned them to data labeling

I think the main proponent was Bosworth, not Wang

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#413

Post by menloshark »

throwarayes wrote: post #118

If you get a FAANG job you need to think like a professional athlete. Save most of what you make. Assume it’s not going to last. Do NOT have an expectation that this is “normal” income. You’ll probably end up destroying your integrity or doing tons of BS work just to do anything to maintain that level of income. Expect the norm to be a startup, non tech company, or some other non FAANG big tech corp.

> or some other non FAANG big tech corp.

The acronym is outdated. I don't really see a difference between FAANG or Nvidia/Stripe/Uber/etc in terms of brand recognition.

And also it depends on where you land org-wise. What you actually are working on is more important than the brand name

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#414

Post by menloshark »

compiler-guy wrote: post #293
throwarayes wrote: post #118

If you get a FAANG job you need to think like a professional athlete. Save most of what you make. Assume it’s not going to last. Do NOT have an expectation that this is “normal” income. You’ll probably end up destroying your integrity or doing tons of BS work just to do anything to maintain that level of income. Expect the norm to be a startup, non tech company, or some other non FAANG big tech corp.

This really isn't true. I'm nothing special and have survived in the FAANG world for going on two decades. Excepting the very new in their careers, nearly everyone on my team has managed good length careers at the various FANNGS, possibly with stops at smaller companies. It was the startups prior to those that were terribly unstable and where you couldn't be sure your badge would open the door when you came to work.…

> median employee tenure

it's less than two years, probably well below average. maybe it was more previously

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#415

Post by hendnfjfk »

eitally wrote: post #402
da_chicken wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[dead]

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#416

Post by casualscience »

svachalek wrote: post #251
ironman1478 wrote: post #70

Having worked at meta, something I noticed is that the orgs that were well run were ones that were bought. WhatsApp, reality, insta, etc. I worked in an org that was not associated with those products and was purely homegrown and it was awful. Things got done but horribly inefficiently due to over hiring and extreme requirement and schedule shifts. I believe that the cultures that were developed outside of Meta are u…

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.

brain was grown in house and likely deserves as much or more credit than open ai for the current llm boom

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#417

Post by menloshark »

otekengineering wrote: post #149

because they need to make as many employees quit as quickly as possible if they hope to avoid bankruptcy. i don't think they'll be able to avoid that outcome, instead they'll die trying. maybe their capital and network will be enough to buy them time to fully pivot to hw, though that's probably less of a moat than i believe it is while wearing the rosy glasses of an EE software is now free, at least for the people th…

> because they need to make as many employees quit as quickly as possible if they hope to avoid bankruptcy

right now they're freaking out over attrition and making a bunch of posts internally about how they'll "do better"

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#418

Post by chuckadams »

Atotalnoob wrote: post #397
chuckadams wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kubernetes' YAML problem stems from its CLI tooling, and yes it was an atrocious choice once templating came in and visited horrors like helm on us. Internally, the the k8s api speaks only JSON, and you can already stuff whatever json you like in a yaml file.

Why does helm get all the hate? I like helm. Helm has so much to offer and it’s not complicated. It’s basically like handlebars/ mustache using golang. Handlebars/mustache was what early angular/react used for templating.

Look inside any bitnami chart and tell me that's anything you want to maintain. I'd rather have types and not have to count spaces for `nindent`.

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#419

Post by horns4lyfe »

Groxx wrote: post #66

Because it's safe to do so now, anyone on a visa is immediately in an extremely uncomfortable position if they lose their job. They won't leave. And anyone else who does voluntarily gives up on layoff packages. See also Twitter when Ol' Musky rolled in.

And that’s why they love visa workers

Re: Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

#420

Post by echelon »

casualscience wrote: post #416
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.

brain was grown in house and likely deserves as much or more credit than open ai for the current llm boom

They literally would have kept the entire thing to themselves and never productized it. Think about how much investment capital and human capital OpenAI poured onto this by having their big "hello world" with ChatGPT.
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