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“This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

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Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#101

Post by rhizome »

dasil003 wrote: post #77
calinet6 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's "just politics"—politics is what prevents companies from thriving. It's a sign of poor management, poor culture, and poor understanding of human psychology. In two words: screw that.

My point is that politics are endemic to large organizations. You can't have no politics, you can only have different forms of politics.

Politics are endemic to all organizations, and the larger an organization becomes, the more it loses the ability to keep politics from interfering with an employee's work and abilities to do that work. Workplace politics are a kind of professional corruption, and this corruption easily hides behind headcount.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#102

Post by marssaxman »

dasil003 wrote: post #77
calinet6 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's "just politics"—politics is what prevents companies from thriving. It's a sign of poor management, poor culture, and poor understanding of human psychology. In two words: screw that.

My point is that politics are endemic to large organizations. You can't have no politics, you can only have different forms of politics.

Sounds like an excellent reason to avoid large organizations.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#103

Post by rdl »

anonymous592053 wrote: post #35
anonymous592053 wrote: post #34

> This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook. My > experience here has been incredibly transformative: I joined > Facebook after dropping out of college having never faced the > challenges that I've seen during my time here. At this point, I've > worked through these challenges for longer than 4/5 of the people at > the company and thought I would share some of my insights in hopes > that other engineer…

[Continuing because of HN's length restrictions] > In the code base that you live in, you quickly develop an > understanding of how the components fit together. Use this > knowledge: instead of only fixing a bug you're assigned, consider > how you can prevent that class of bug from ever happening > again. Instead of implementing a new feature, consider how you can > create a common abstraction between the new and old…

The Facebook "bootcamp" process seems like the best way to get around the problems of "blind allocation" as well as the problems of "teams need warm bodies and thus lower standards, leading to eventual company-wide mediocrity".

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#104

Post by masklinn »

nilkn wrote: post #97
masklinn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems acceptable though it's really shitty if you end up not making the cut. FWIW most european countries allow 1-6 months probation periods (for non-temp jobs, temp jobs have either no probation or much shorter ones). During probation, either side can terminate the contract without most of the restrictive clauses applying, it's essentially a short period of "at-will" to check fit between the company and the new…

I think it's only acceptable if it's made very clear before you accept or decline the job offer. Otherwise it seems like it's taking advantage of people. The main reason I view it that way is because Facebook hires a lot of fresh college graduates who don't necessarily have much (if any) money saved up. To work for Facebook, they're going to have to find a place to live in one of the most expensive areas of the Unite…

An excellent point, I failed to notice that issue and completely agree. In EU contracts with probation periods the probation is explicitly spelled out in the contract (since labor laws allow for it but by no means mandate it), and generally discussed/mentioned during the interviews stuff.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#105

Post by officemonkey »

fizzbar wrote: post #89
officemonkey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New federal government employees also have to serve a 1-year "probation" where they can be let go for pretty much no reason. I've seen agencies exercise that right rarely, but it does happen.

I'd suspect that in more "mature" working environments the probation period is used more as a fail-safe mechanism, as opposed to being integral to the actual hiring process (which is what it sounds like at FB).

Treating new employees in this manner is okay if everyone's up front about it.

Telling people "Welcome to Facebook," having them quit their old job, and have them relocate just so you can smoke 'em and throw out the trash might be efficient, but it sure isn't kind.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#106

Post by jongraehl »

anon12345678 wrote: post #49
anonymous592053 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Continuing because of HN's length restrictions] > In the code base that you live in, you quickly develop an > understanding of how the components fit together. Use this > knowledge: instead of only fixing a bug you're assigned, consider > how you can prevent that class of bug from ever happening > again. Instead of implementing a new feature, consider how you can > create a common abstraction between the new and old…

I was also fired from an engineering role at Facebook. However, I look at the experience very differently. They seek candidates with strong engineering skills, and only do a little culture fit at interview time (this was my experience at least). The real culture fit test happens during bootcamp, where they try for 6 weeks to break any misfit. Now that isn't going to work for everyone, but their strategy is to go all-…

So, don't accept an offer at Facebook unless you're confident you'll shine in the first months (even in unfair situations, with people working against you). I can see how it's great for the morale of those who pass the hazing, but it sounds like perhaps they need to work on their on-boarding process - that incumbent teams and engineers are guided by selfish incentives that have nothing to do with helping newbies succeed.

On the other hand, those rejected will always have hurt feelings, and at some point their failure will be sealed by the lack of confidence/patience/charity established engineers have for them.

Probably the incumbents are often failing to appreciate the body of domain (FB procedures + code) knowledge they've accumulated, and that a new initiate likely lacks. Engineers are often poor communicators in that sense.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#108

Post by jongraehl »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #31
victorhn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know there are many red-ranked TopCoders and ICPC winners working on big companies like FB, in your experience does this ability translate well into "real world" programming?

I'm not really able to look at performance versus TopCoder rank (partly because I don't know my peers' TC rank because I'm not that into TC), but if I had to guess, I would think that there is no correlation. It's simply a matter of where one puts one's developmental efforts.

Given the same amount of time spent on TC, you'd definitely have the expected correlation (with the usual IQ common cause if nothing else). But I agree that once someone gets reasonably competitive in an area (esp. one w/ game-like mechanics and public recognition), they're at risk for overspecialization.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#109

Post by ericd »

onedev wrote: post #96
ericd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a miserable job and thinking that Facebook is largely a waste of great engineering talent are orthogonal things. I think a lot of good knowledge on the scaling front comes out of it, but I wouldn't say that it's the most efficient societal use of our best engineers by a long shot. I think it's everyone's right to choose how they spend their time, even if it squanders their potential impact, but we generally sh…

Right, changing the way billions of people interact every single day isn't impactful?

Of course it has an impact, I just don't think it's a net positive one.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#110

Post by onedev »

ericd wrote: post #109
onedev wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, changing the way billions of people interact every single day isn't impactful?

Of course it has an impact, I just don't think it's a net positive one.

Why not? Without FB, I wouldn't be able to connect as much with all the people I've met in multiple places around the world. All people that I care about.

I've also met a ton of new people that I otherwise wouldn't have met (e.g. from groups). I connect with the CS community at my school through FB. I connect with people in my class through FB. A lot of discussion happens on FB that I'd otherwise miss or not have the chance to participate in (everyone is extremely busy)

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